What's new in SIL™ 4.0
- Jonathan Muse
Looking for the documentation on the newest versions of SIL Engine and the Simple Issue Language for Jira 8 for Server/Data Center? Click here !
We have managed to include certain awesome features to SIL™ 4.0, we simplified the apps administration and configuration. The following changes and improvements applied to all our apps are available free of charge to users who leverage the benefits of the cPrime app suite.
Contents
Configuration Changes
Additional Tables
We have passed all features including configuration from the custom tables, and we transferred data access to the standard mechanism Jira provides. This is a huge move that will simplify the import / export of Jira.
Data Sources
Data sources can now be defined directly from Jira. It means you have the driver already in the Jira's 'lib' folder. Of course, the JNDI mechanism still works, but you will find it more convenient to define a datasource directly from the apps, and have the chance to test it before usage.
Virtual Files
Starting with this version, files may be stored either on disk or in database. We plan to add a feature to move all the files from disk to database or vice versa, again to simplify the instances configuration.
LDAP Support
We now have multiple LDAP support, although only for Microsoft Active Directory. To add support for other LDAP types contact us here.
Mail
Mail support was enhanced as well. We added new configuration options that simplify the development.
STL - SIL™ Template Language
A major change is the mail templates support. We introduced STL (SIL™ Template Language), a feature that allows you to put snippets of SIL™ in certain file and run embedded programs. The feature matches closely with JSP in terms of syntax, for instance you write embedded SIL code within the email body.
Other
We unified our thread pools across all apps. You can see now live scripts that are running in time so you can adjust your parameters also. Task queue also records the maximum number of jobs waiting to be executed, so make sure you have enough threads.
User Interface Changes
You may notice a lot of changes in the user interface. We aligned the apps to the Atlassian User Interface Recommendations and we introduced new menus and new shortcut links to the configuration sections. We also have changed the editor, adding more support to it.
Incompatibilities With Previous Versions
This version presents some incompatibilities with previous version. You are required to take all the necessary precautions when upgrading SIL Engine™ to the 4.0.0 level and above.
Always test your migration path before applying the upgrade in production! Do backups before!
The following table lists the incompatibilities and reasons, along with their solutions.
| Where / Functionality affected | Risk | Motivation | How to deal with it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduling | LOW | Scheduled tasks became permanent. Because of that, the previous rules linked to the distinct task as well as the keys of the scheduled tasks have been changed to reflect the new concept. | Mitigation / solutions may be found in the corresponding section: Scheduling routines. The identified risk is low, but make sure you have a good grasp of the change. You will need to modify the scripts to reflect it. |
| Mail Templates | LOW | Previous versions did a simple search / replace over variables defined between dollar signs (e.g. $var$). If one variable was missing, it was just skipped, and an error was logged. With the introduction of STL, the produced intermediate SIL™ script syntax must be valid, and all custom fields and variables must exist in the scope. | You will need to correct your mail templates. Make sure all variables are defined. You will find more information about the STL in its dedicated section: SIL™ Template language. The ending SIL™ script must be valid syntactically. |