© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1- Overview 2013.11.18

RPE Development Team

IBM Rational Publishing Engine

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1: Overview

Release’s main goals – Improve the stability, performance and quality of existing functionalities with a relatively

small number of new features added

– improve RPE’s scheduling capabilities

Release’s major points – UI/UX improvements

• Continue work started in 1.2 to simplify UI/UX

– Automation expansion

• Report scheduling

– Performance

• Data read ahead, post processing in RPE etc

– Output improvements

• Updated Aspose

• Improved XHTML support

– Globalization

• Fully translate all RPE components, including the WebService

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1: Features to Theme Mapping

Usability Reuse Consumability Scalability Performance

UI/UX Improvements X X X

Report Scheduling X X

Performance improvements X X

Output Improvements X X X

Globalization X X

Documentation X X

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 – Installation

New Interactive Install Guide available

Installation procedure unchanged from previous release. See Installing – ability to suppress the creation of desktop shortcuts for a silent installation

Upgrade from 1.2. See Upgrading and migrating for more details

– start existing IM - will prompt to upgrade to IM 1.6.3.1

– choose the UPDATE button.

Standalone installation can be performed directly from the Launch Pad or from IM

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 – Licensing

Rational Publishing Engine feature

Licenses required by local document

generations

Licenses required by remote

document generations

Launcher client 1 license on the client 1 license on the client + 1 license on the

server

Launcher add-in 1 license on the client 1 license on the server

Document Studio client 1 license on the client 1 license on the client + 1 license on the

server

Java™ API 1 license on the client 1 license on the server

License date refreshed to October 30, 2013. Customers with older licenses will need to refresh their license files. See Setting up licenses

RPE 1.2.1 works with Rational License Server 8.1.2 and later.

When RPE Launcher is started in Publish Wizard mode (ex: from RPE’s DOORS addin) it does not consume a license. The license is consumed by the docgen itself.

– main use case: remote docgen now consumes a single license while 1.2 consumes 2

After Launcher & Studio are idle for more than 1 hour they check-in the consumed licenses

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 Documentation Changes

New Infocenter RPE 1.2.1

Old versions still available: 1.2, 1.1.2

New Interactive Install Guide available

Java Doc of the RPE Public Java API in the Infocenter

Added documentation for deploying the Remote Services for load balancing

Component name changes

Old New

Web applications Remote applications

Web services application Remote services application

Data Services application Reporting data services application

Data services adapters Reporting data services adapters

Monitor and Control Monitor & Control component

Central Library Central Management component

© 2013 IBM Corporation

Platform Support

Server Platform (Data Services and Remote Services)

Operating System -- works on 32 and 64 bit

RHEL 5 – 5.8 Advanced Platform (32 & 64 bit exploitation)

RHEL 6.1 Advanced Platform (32 & 64 bit exploitation)

Windows 2003 R2 (32 & 64 bit exploitation) R2 SP2 (32 bit & 64 exploitation)

Windows 2008 (32 & 64 bit exploitation) SP2 (32 & 64 bit exploitation) R2 (64 bit exploitation)

Application Server

Tomcat 6.0.1.18, 7.0 (+ future fixpacks)

WAS 7.0.0.11 (+ future fixpacks)

WAS 8.0.x.x (+ future fixpacks)

Web Browser

Internet Explorer 7.0,8.0,9.0,10 (+ future fixpacks)

Firefox 3.5, 3.6, 5.0, ESR 10, 17 (+ future fixpacks)

Client Platform (Document Studio + Launcher)

Operating System

RHEL 5 – 5.7 Desktop (32 & 64 bit tolerant)

RHEL 6.1 Desktop & Workstation (32 & 64 bit tolerant)

Windows XP SP2 (32 & 64 bit tolerant) SP3 (32 & 64 bit tolerant)

Windows Vista SP1 (32 & 64 bit tolerant) SP2 (32 & 64 bit tolerant)

Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit tolerant)

Eclipse Client IBM Eclipse SDK 4.2.2 (+ future fixpacks)

Legend: this font added with this release this font removed with this release underline bundled with product

Java Runtime Environment Java SDK 6.0.13 (+ future fixpacks)

Installer

Install Manager 1.6.3 (+ future mod/fixpacks) License Management

RCL 8.1.2 (+ future mod/fixpacks) Virtualization

VMware ESX 3.5, 4.0, 4.1 (+ future fixpacks)

VMware ESXi 3.5, 4.0, 4.1 (+ future fixpacks)

Citrix XenApp 5.0 (+ future fixpacks) External Style Sheets

Microsoft Word .dot / .doc (MS Word 2003, 2007, 2010) . dotm / .dotx / .docx (MS Word 2007, 2010)

Viewers for Generated Output

Microsoft Word .doc (MS Word 2003, 2007, 2010) .docx (MS Word 2007, 2010)

PDF .pdf 1.5

html .html 4

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 New Features – UI/UX improvements

Reduce the number of UI actions ( clicks, key presses) to complete actions

Unify the look&feel of the various dialogs and wizards

Improved REST v1 Schema discovery for modeling domain – context picker

Improved copy&paste capabilities for elements with data (queries, conditions etc)

Improved performance and usability when working with referenced templates ( hotfix required)

Reorder templates in the document specification in the publish wizard

User prompted to use remembered credentials when configuring data sources

– NOTE: remembered credenetials are kept encrypted in memory and are not persisted

Help search widget in the Launcher and Studio UIs

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 New Features – UI/UX improvements (continued)

Improved search: full text search, wild card search and search in referenced templates

– Renaming a variable now annotates scripts to make it easier for the designer to modify the scripts

Common actions exposed as buttons in the toolbar: toggle remote document generation

Central Management

– Simplified editing of resources from the Central Management Library

Remote results dialog

– Completely redesigned from 1.2

– Fetches the list of remote document generations ( scheduled or manual executions) from server

– Only accessible to users with rpe_scheduler_user or rpe_scheduler_admin roles

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 New Features – Redesigned Publish Wizard

User intuitive publish wizard

Progress bar to inform pending configurations to the user

Users can configure the sections in random order

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RPE 1.2.1 New Features – Performance

Data read ahead

– Parallelizes RPE’s document generation

– Controlled at template and document specification level

• Allow data read ahead – template property, read only at runtime

• Data read ahead – document specification property

Field update

– Parallelizes RPE’s document generation

– Three possible values: false (default), true, progressive

• progressive gives the best performance

Various other changes that add up to the performance boost. None require explicit user

action

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 New Features – Output improvements

Word

– Field update – RPE can now update most Word fields by itself( ex. TOCs, Include files,

OLEs etc). This is not recommended to use for large documents.

• Allows specifying fields that are not to be updated

– Multipart - property of the report now

Word&PDF

– Added watermark support

– Master page properties ( width, height, orientation etc) can now be scripted

– “Row break across pages” – default is now true

– Support for setting the start number for numbered lists

HTML

– Collapsible TOCs

All outputs

– Improved XHTML support, especially for tables

– Ability to skip empty tables and lists

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 Miscellaneous Improvements

Robustness – Added ability to retry failed data requests

– Reduced memory consumption for the DOORS driver

Correctness – Invalid templates will not open in Launcher but can be loaded in Studio for the user to take corrective

measures. With RPE 1.2.0.1 and older template errors would have been silently ignored causing

crashes at runtime or, even worse, unexpected behavior

– DOORS: option to abort the document generation if the input configuration is not perfectly matched.

See “Stop if view or baseline are unavailable”

Usability – Improved error reporting (Server response included), more consistent and relevant messages, strings

prepared for end user ( URIs are shown unescaped)

– All the document specification properties and many other variables maintained by RPE are now

available to the template designer through the new _sessionInfo predefined variable.

– Access to the RPE log through the _sessionLogger predefined variable

Security – Support for TLS 1.0. See com.ibm.rational.rpe.ssl in the Infocenter

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 New Features – OSLC OAuth

Introduction of new authentication method - OSLC OAuth

Integrates with service providers like Rational DOORS® Web Access

Support for integration scenarios like RQM -> DOORS

– For standalone DOORS document generation users MUST still use the classic RPE-

DOORS driver

More information on the Infocenter at Integrating Rational DOORS Web Access with

Rational Publishing Engine

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 New Features – Report Scheduling

Reports can be scheduled for a later run

Schedules for daily, weekly, monthly and custom

Results can be seen in the remote results dialog and on the monitor Web UI

© 2013 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2.1 Defect Fixes

See the RPE 1.2.1 Download Document for the full list of APARs fixed in 1.2.1

See the RPE 1.2.1 Content for a list of all work done in RPE 1.2.1

RRDG

– Formatting fixes

– Performance defects in the input component ( hotfix required)

Launcher

– Usability defects

Studio

– Improved synchronization between the loaded template and matching document

specification

– Defects in the new properties editor: password editing, values getting cleared etc

© 2013 IBM Corporation

Useful Links

1.2.1 Specific

– RPE 1.2.1 Download Document

– RPE 1.2.1 Infocenter

Generic

– RPE Developer Works Wiki

– RPE Developer Works Forum

– RPE Actual

– Tips&Tricks in RPE

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Thank you