If upgrading from or have had exposure to a previous version, here are some of the highlights that were introduced in version 7.
The following is a list of new features that directly affect most users and administrators:
Integration with Amazon SES SMTP and support for the Amazon Elastic Load Balancer provides for complete cloud-based installations. Please note that for Amazon SES, even though the Amazon documentation calls for TLS, they do in fact mean SSL and do not support StartTLS. This is being highlighted here as it can be very confusing.
The documentation has been split into guides that are more relevant for specific users. This cuts down the size of reading materials and allows for the specific documents to be better targeted. In addition, the rules reference is now a separate document that is built upon demand, based on the actual rules installed in the console.
The new credentials vault provides a central place to store user IDs, passwords, access keys and the like. This ensures that this sensitive information no longer needs to be stored directly within the rules in clear text. Instead, the relevant credentials are supplied to the rules engine in encrypted form as part of the deployment process.
The spy cam feature provides a method for recording and visually playing back user interactions with a website. This feature is currently experimental and has a significant number of limitations. It is included in this version as a technology preview and has limited support.
The rules editor has been given a face lift with newer larger connection points, better graphics and an editing grid.
Within the rules editor, any rule on the canvas can now be right-clicked to access the help documentation on that specific rule which was previously only found in the full product reference document.
Test data is no longer collected by default. With the introduction of the built in browser proxy in version 6 there has been a steady decline in the need for the test server. Instead, there is now the ability to turn test data collection on and off on demand, providing a better balance between memory consumption and actual data needs.
User roles can now be used to grant/restrict access to specific flight recorders.
A number of new rules have been added (including the Filter rule and experimental rules to support HBase). The HTTP Servlet Execute rule has been renamed to HTTP Server Execute to make it more intuitive.
Due to the large increase in rules over the years, the rules editor has now been equipped with a search feature that includes instant results based on search characters typed.
The user interface has been given a face lift which includes new graphics, more consistent button icons and a better login experience.
Console users can now be authenticated against a central LDAP server
The following is a list of major changes that are relevant to administrators and extension programmers.
By moving the various user IDs, access keys and passwords used by rules to access external services to the credentials vault, those items are no longer exposed to the rule writers and generic rule sets can be shared without the risk of also accidentally sharing restricted information. In addition, those credentials are now only transmitted to the rules engine in encrypted form.
To facilitate the use of resource bundles and properties files for internationalization of rules engine output, the home folder of the rules engine is now included in the class path of the rules engine loader. This inclusion applies to individual files only, not JAR files.
All extensions now have the ability to include code that will be run upon installation and removal. This allows extensions to automatically create credential templates in the credential vault, install database drivers or perform other console related tasks as part of the install.
The console now makes use of a technology known as COOP (Change Oriented Object Persistence). This technology significantly reduces the time needed to add new features to the console. The database will now automatically adapt to the configuration objects instead of the other way around. There is a one-time conversion step where data is copied from the old table structure to COOP when first migrating from version 6 to version 7, but that will be the last database update ever needed for console configuration items.
Rules extensions now ship with the ability to include rule documentation. The rule documentation is automatically merged into the rules reference PDF document as part of the install process. It is also made available as a help feature in the rules editor. Please refer to the Programmer's Guide for more information.
Emails sent from both the rules engine and the console now support both SSL and StartTLS (Transport Layer Security with fall back) for SMTP emails.
The console can now be remotely managed by providing scripts in the TCL language via HTTP.