© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2 An introduction

Dragos Cojocari

IBM Rational Publishing Engine

© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2: Overview

Release’s major points – Usability

– Reuse

– Consumability

Solutions – holistic approach, aimed to improve all aspects of RPE

• individual RFEs are subsumed to the release themes

– major shift in how users design, manage and use templates and documents

© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2: Main Themes

Workflows Improvements

Centralized Management

Query Management

Web Services Improvements

Java Script Improvements

Installer

Documentation

© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2: Workflows Improvements

Themes: reuse, usability, consumability

Simplify the document generation for all user roles with a focus on end users

Push "technical oriented info" back to being managed by those that know it – reduce need for designers and end-users to know and have to interface with this

– move the information in the central library

Redesigned roles and new features to support them – Administrator

• Manages global assets ( variables, value sets, templates, JavaScript, styles etc)

– Report Designer • designs documents

– Report Generator • Uses assets defined by the Document Designer

• variable prompts and other features assist the user to quickly configure reports. Built on a mechanism provided in

RRDG that can be used by all RRDG consumers

Support for sharing artifacts – Relative paths in the document specification

– Zip document specification and related artifacts ( templates, styles etc)

– Remove credentials

© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2: User Experience Improvements

Themes: usability

UI cleanup; UI & UX consistency; improve usability

Review the overall RPE user experience with the UX team – Provide more guidance to end user

– Offer actions to user ( ex: start publish wizard as Launcher starts)

Document Studio – Multi template editing

• Copy & Paste between templates (not committed)

– Specific Template Element Property Views

• Provides a better editing option for the most common properties

– Search

• Search usage in template of a given schema element, variable, master page or style

• Navigate from template element to the schema for its query

Launcher – Hide non mandatory information

– Prompt for information

– Replace text input with selectors

– Improved error display

© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2: Centralized Management

Themes: usability, reuse

Simplify deployment; improve administrators control; support reuse strategies

Central libraries supporting 'physical' embedding & 'dynamic' referencing – Templates, JavaScript, Style Sheets, Snippets, Files

– Does not replace source control or storage systems but acts like a catalog of data

Central definition/maintenance for usage by designers – Global Variables

– Variable Value Sets to support Variable Prompts

Central definition/maintenance for usage by administrators – Web service URL, RPE debug settings, log settings, other runtime settings

© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2: Query Management

Themes: usability, reuse

Improve reuse; encourage modular template design

Move, copy-and-paste elements with data ( queries, conditions, variables) – support for copy & paste between templates

– support for multi-template editing

Re-use of templates/snippets in 'nesting' usage scenarios – supports building modular documents

– templates are referred vs. their content embedded

Support Variables in Queries – Allows to dynamically specify the data to use at runtime ( through a variable) while preserving the

efficiency of statically specifying the data at design time. Applicable to data sources that support field

selection.

© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2: Web Services Improvements

Themes: scalability, consumability, performance

Improve Remote Generation scalability and performance; simplify deployment and

administration

Separate Process for each document generation – document generations are not executed in the same process as the web service. For each document

generation request a separate process is spawned

– system admins can control the amount of memory allowed for each process and the maximum

number of concurrent processes

– provides error isolation and scales with physical memory even on 32 bit JREs

Support for 64 Bit JREs

Merge RPE Remote Generation with RPE Monitor&Control – Required for controlling the individual document generation processes

– Simplified deployment

Redesign Remote Document Generation API – adds authentication support (default) to the RPE Web Services.

– REST-full API

– Removed SOAP

– Java Client API remains unchanged, customers already using the RPE Web Service

programmatically are not affected

Client UI – remote results dialog

© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2: Remote Document Generation Flow

When the RPE Client ( Launcher/Studio

etc) requests a document generation,

the WebService will:

– Start a new job on the

Monitor&Control

– Start a new doc gen process

providing the ID of the

Monitor&Control job through a file

passed as parameter

All communication past this point until

the doc gen process is complete is done

through the Monitor&Control service

– Update event information

– Check for commands ( cancel,

pause etc)

The doc gen process will update the MC

job with progress information and read

control commands

The RPE client will get process

information and issue control commands

to the MC job

© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2: JavaScript Improvements

Themes: reuse, usability

Enhance reuse and simplify experience for less technical users

Support using JavaScript from external files – Central JavaScript library, improving re-use (under Central Management)

Context Sensitive Editor

Edit/Create rich text from JavaScript

Support for complex structures being passed between scripts ( arrays, maps etc)

New template "element" to include java code within template (Code Block)

Script review - security

© 2012 IBM Corporation

RPE 1.2: Miscellaneous

Themes: usability, consumability

Installer – Automate installer to deploy RPE services on a new/existing WAS

Licensing – Correct inconsistencies in how RPE consumes license

Public Java API for document generation – Sample application source code provided with the installer

Fully translate RPE including Document Studio – Web Services are not translated ( Web UI & messages)

Documentation – Template Elements & Formatting Features

– Best Practices, Usage Scenarios & Examples

– Java API: Configure & Launch Doc Spec (Make Public)

– Serviceability: document error messages

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Key Support Topics

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Installation & Post-installation

Java

– Java 5 support dropped, Java 6 required ( and bundled)

– Support for 64 bit JREs for the RPE Web Services

– RPE Data Services do not support 64 bit

Installer

– IM 1.5 required – RPE ships with 1.5.3

– Upgrading an older installation does not change the install path which will continue to show the

previous release number

– Version number removed from the default installation path

Licensing

– No changes to supported license servers

– License version changed, you need to renew your RPE licenses

Web Services

– RPE Web Services and RPE Data Services can be automatically deployed in a new profile created on

an existing WAS 7.0.0.11 and newer or WAS 8.0.0.4 (patch required) and newer

• We recommend WAS 8.0.0.5 as it can be used without any additional patch.

– The RPE installer can also deploy a patched WAS 8.0.0.4 instance (provided on the physical media

and as an optional download) and deploy the RPE Web Services and RPE Data Services

– RPE Web Services URL can be set at install time

• Locks the preferences page for RPE Web Services

New supported platforms

– See Linux System Requirements and Windows System Requirements for more details

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Licensing Changes

RPE Launcher now consumes a license while running like Document Studio does

– For remote document generation this means that 2 RPE licenses are used. To reduce this to a single

license the user can close the launcher as soon as the remote job is started and chose to keep the

remote job running.

Ensure the job is indeed started before closing launcher. Look for the message in the console view

Once restarted the job progress & results are visible in the remote results dialog

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Migration & Upgrade Procedures

No explicit migration required

All templates & document specifications created with older RPE versions are supported

New capabilities in Document Studio for better supporting compatibility between RPE and

RRDG consuming products – Template version 2 introduced

– Templates created with version 2 cannot be loaded by RPE 1.1.2.2 and older or by any of the current

RRDG consuming products ( DOORS 9.4, CLM 4.0 etc).

– When editing/creating templates for older RPE/RRDG versions you must select Version 1

When upgrading old templates to version 2 – Templates upgraded to version 2 cannot be downgraded to version 1

– Containers with “do while” conditions on them are transformed to iteration elements

Existing Monitor & Control databases are not upgraded/used by 1.2, a new database with a

modified structure is created

the RPE Document Generation Java API has been redesigned. Custom solutions based on

this API need to upgraded. – a sample application is provided to help use the new API

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Removed from 1.2

Java 5 support

– WAS 6 is no longer supported either as it is running on Java 5

Snippet Organization in Studio – superseded by Central Library

Template Library in Launcher and Studio – superseded by Central Library

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Troubleshooting Procedures

enable core debug mode from the preferences

examine rpe.log as it has more information than the console view

use the new “Preview data” function to inspect the data as returned by the provider

ensure RPE runs on a supported JRE and gather version details

cleanup the RPE workspace created for the thick clients. The workspaces are located in

%APPDATA%\IBM\Rational\RPE_ – note that this also deletes any preferences defined by the user

remote document generation specific – verify that the Remote Services URL is correct and the server is accessible from the client machine.

– verify credentials

– verify that the remote services is up and running. Quick way: use the Web UI

– define com.ibm.rational.rpe.remote.debug to true in the application container

– check the rpe.log using the “Remote Results” dialog from the thick client or the Web UI (requires

administrator privileges)

– check the application server’s logs

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Common Problems

Citrix installations won’t start – reduce max memory allowed for Launcher/Studio

RPE Launcher/Studio is slow to start and operate – If RPE Web Services URLs are defined verify they are accessible and responsive as RPE connects to

them for many of the UI operations

Web Service is not running on Tomcat – ensure Tomcat runs on a Java 6 JRE

Web Service is not running on WAS – ensure a supported version is installed ( WAS 7 or WAS 8)

– ensure users & roles are correctly assigned

– WAS 7 specific - check class loading options

Word output – Macro is not executed – ensure a macro enabled format is used ( doc, docm). Docx does not allow

macros

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Recommendations

All existing pre-1.2 recommendations still apply

We strongly encourage users to adopt Central Library for their RPE deployment.

The new Document Generation Wizard will provide the best user experience when used in

conjunction with the Central Library

Perform a clean install – uninstall previous RPE version, delete the RPE workspace in

APPDATA than install RPE 1.2

Specify authentication for both UI operations and for runtime as it can greatly increase

performance – document specifications created with RPE 1.1.1.x do not have the authentication property for data

sources, you need to rebuild the document specification

When sharing documents use the “Save document specification without credentials” and

“Export document specification”

Unless explicitly needed users should disable command execution on the web service for

enhanced security

For enhanced security define individual users for remote document generation

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Thanks