Releases - independIT Workload Automations (EN)

BICsuite 2.11

New frontend: Release 2.11 contains a completely new frontend developed from scratch as a beta release. The design of the frontend, usability and performance have been significantly modernized and improved.
Approval system: A sophisticated approval system has been implemented in Release 2.11 to enable the dual control principle. It is now possible to handle different operations in a differentiated manner and to place the approval request before or after execution.
Detailed operator privileges: In addition to the individual OPERATE privilege, detailed privileges are now also possible. The OPERATE privilege can be revoked and reassigned in the form of privileges for individual operations.
Complete front-end support for object monitoring: Watch Types and Object Monitors can now be defined from the GUI. It is no longer necessary to switch to the command line level to create and edit watch types.
Cancel with Kill: It is possible to specify the Kill option for Cancel. All running jobs with Kill Option are then first aborted and then canceled.
List Scheduled command: A new command LIST SCHEDULED has been implemented to determine when which batches and jobs are to be executed for a defined period of time. Both LIST SCHEDULED and LIST CALENDER can now also be filtered by group and job name.
Java compatibility: With Release 2.11, newer Java versions (11, 13, 17 and higher) are also supported.
EXITCODE parameter: The EXITCODE parameter has been added as a “special parameter for jobs”. It is used for more precise error messages in notifications, for example.
New parameter type: In Release 2.11, the parameter type IMPORT_UNRESOLVED was added. Parameters of this type are evaluated in the context of the job to be imported and not, as with IMPORT, in the context of the defining job.
Jobserver connected display online: Job servers are now displayed in red if they have no server connection. This eliminates the previously occasionally misleading display in which the GUI displayed interrupted job servers in green for some time in the expectation that they would reconnect immediately.
Extension of the Connect command: The ZERO TERMINATED addition can be specified for the JSON, PYTHON and PERL protocols. The output structure that is returned in response to a command is then terminated with a zero byte. This extension makes it much easier to read the response.
Condensed Output: The listing of the job definition hierarchy and dependency hierarchy can be shortened. Unnecessary columns are removed from the output, which leads to better performance due to the reduced amount of data.
IP address of the server: If a redundant second server is started, which takes over immediately if the active server fails, it is not always obvious which server is currently active. The IP address of the active server is now saved in the REPOSITORY_LOCK table.
Jobserver configuration: Release 2.11 offers three additional parameters for the job server configuration, which prevent possible design and operator errors and improve compatibility between different operating systems.

BICsuite 2.10

The new BICsuite and schedulix Version 2.10 is available to our customers since May 2021. The key new features in Release 2.10 are:

Zope 4 / 5 based on Python 3 is now officially supported for the BICsuite / schedulix Web GUI. Zope 2 based on Python 2 is still supported but will be deprecated in the next release.
The BICsuite and schedulix Web GUI (Zope 2 as well as Zope 4 / 5) can now optionally configured to grant access to users using SSO via Active Directory.
The configurable audit trail of changing commands written by the BICsuite / schedulix server process is now written in chunks of a configurable size with a time stamp extension.
A disabled job / batch can now be enabled after the batch / job was submitted if it is still in state DEPENDENCY_WAIT.
Disabled batches / jobs can now be enabled even they have been suspended.
The monitoring pages now allow to filter out disabled jobs/batches.
The bulk operations available in the Running Masters view are now also available in the Search Running Jobs and the Job Details monitoring view.
Now batches containing a cancelled disabled child still can be enabled and disabled.
Jobs already in a final state can be executed a second time by cloning the job to create a new submitted entity. However, this is only possible if the parent of the job has not yet adopted a final exit status.
To reduce the amount of data to transfer and tuning frontend performance, a number of list commands now support a condensed option only delivering information needed by the Web GUI.
The Named Resource, Folder and Batch / Job editor now provide a refresh button.
The submit parameter sequence can now be defined by a comma separated list in a parameter with name PARAMETER_SEQUENCE.
A range of day can now be set to end at the day by adding minute 59 to the selectable minutes of a range of day scheduling interval. Setting end to T00:00 will be replaced by T23:59 if start =T00:00.
For better performance, large lists of editor tabs in the Web GUI are populated only if those tabs are selected.
In addition to the enable interval of parent child definitions, a condition can now be specified.
The exit state to use for disabled jobs can now specified explicitly in Exit State Profiles.
Parameters can now be specified for users to store configuration data of applications for users.
Time Scheduling calculation performance was improved by implementing an enhanced caching of intermediate results while calculating time scheduling trigger times.

BICsuite 2.9

The new BICsuite Version 2.9 is available to our customers since April 2019. The key new features in BICsuite 2.9 are:

The new GUI shell now allows the API command language to be used directly from the web GUI. This obviates the need to open a terminal window or log in remotely on another machine.
With external dependencies between jobs and batches in seperately started master batches are now possible.
Intervals such as public holiday calendars and exception rules can now be edited directly in the graphical user interface using the new Interval editor from the web GUI.
The disable function in the parent-child hierarchy can now also be set up at scheduled times by using intervals.
The web application server or other web servers can be used as a proxy to access log files. This means that only one port has to be opened between the user and the scheduling system. Apart from the consequently simplified and better firewall configuration, it is ensured that only authenticated users can use the function.
Large process structures with hundreds of processes and dependency relationships could have caused long response times in the web GUI. Transferring the HTML generation of large lists from the web application server to the browser enabled the response times for large volumes of data to be substantially reduced.

BICsuite 2.8

The new BICsuite Version 2.8 has been available to our customers since October 2017. The key new features in BICsuite 2.8:

Many features of the PROFESSIONAL/ENTERPRISE Edition of BICsuite are now available with BICsuite BASIC/schedulix.
(Exit State Translations, Dependencies with Conditions, Milestones, Asynchronous and After Final Trigger, Finish Child Trigger, Folder Environments, Folder Resources, Batch/Job internal Resources (Resource Templates), Resource Trigger, Writable Resource Parameters)
Parameters can now be of any length.
Paremeters of type PARAMETER and RESULT can now be changed using the web GUI.
If a job is restarted one or mor e times, every single run will be recorded now.
Resource expirations can be ignored on rerun now.
The batch in folder convention is now supported in copy/cut and paste from the content tabs of folders.
A new dependency Mode (DEFER IGNORE) has been introduced.The dependencies will be ignored if the required batch/job is not submitted in time.
The ‘SET USER’ API command allows for temporarily change of the user without reconnect.
The WITH clause of SELECT commands now supports names to be quoted, to ease the generation of API commands using SQL.
Now also writing transactions can be processed multithreaded.
Ports to IBM AIX, LinuxOne, Z-Linux

BICsuite 2.7

The new BICsuite Version 2.7 has been available to our customers since April 2016. The key new features in BICsuite 2.7:

Children of batches and jobs can be temporarily excluded from processing by setting the ‘disabled’ flag. Dependency relations of the whole process will be kept intact.
Setting an ‘export name’ in the parameter definition of a job will make the parameter available to the job as environment variable.
triggers can now also be defined with the triggered job.
A new ‘local’ suspend mode allows children of batches or jobs to continue processing.
A FINAL exit state can be defined as ‘broken state’ in exit state definitions now.
Restart triggers will now fire also for the job states BROKEN_FINISHED and ERROR.
Restart triggers can set a ‘Warning’, when the maximum number of restarts is reached.
A job can be set to a defined exit state, when the maximum number of restarts is reached.
Objects can be commented with multiple comments now
A ‘manage nice profiles’ system privilege allows non ADMIN users to work with nice profiles.
The export of objects can be configured to produce a backward compatible export file.
The BICsuite repository now supports DB2 and Informix RDBMS.

BICsuite 2.6.1

The new BICsuite Version 2.6.1 has been available to our customers since March 2015. The key new features in BICsuite 2.6.1 are:

Automatic deletion and optional archiving of historic runtime information limits size growth of the BICsuite repository and reduces maintenance cost.
Additional attributes deliver detailed information supporting statistic analysis of job run times.
Administrators can suspend batches or jobs such, that administrator privileges are required to resume them.
With Nice Profiles administrators now can easily suspend, change priorities and resume groups of batches or jobs without changing batch or job definitions. Thus dealing with exceptional situations causing backlog processing is simplified.

BICsuite 2.6

The new BICsuite Version 2.6 has been available to our customers since July 2014. The key new features in BICsuite 2.6 are:

The server parameter MinHistoryCount allows low frequency master jobs to stay in memory for a longer period.
The server parameter MaxHistoryCount can be used to preserve memory by keeping less high frequent master jobs in memory.
The scope of sticky resource allocations can be defined more precise by a name and a parent. Critical regions within the same master batch can now be implemented more easily.
Server startup times have been reduced.
Bookmarks are now available for the ‘Submit Batches and Jobs’ dialog.
Bookmarks can be selected directly using an option field without visiting the ‘Bookmarks’ dialog.
New user properties allow the configuration of timestamp time zone and output format.
Mixed case identifiers will no longer be converted to upper case on rename.