An overview of the new product functionalities and enhancements
Software AG releases new product versions twice a year: in April and October. This article provides an overview of the new functionalities and enhancements officially released on October 16, 2018. The new release contains a lot of new innovations:
- In webMethods Cloud, we are now providing two new components: Cloud Deployment and B2B Cloud
- In API Management, we have added Microgateways
- In Process Transformation & Management (PTM), we have added Smart Modeling and in Portfolio Management, we have significantly improved the user experience
- In AI, we have extended our offering with an AI Modeler to support model creation and model testing
- Adabas & Natural were enabled to run in container and cloud infrastructures
Issue 4, 2018 | ![]() |
Adabas & Natural October 2018
Software AG is pleased to announce general availability for the Adabas & Natural October 2018 release, also comprising new releases for EntireX, ApplinX and CONNX.
As one important element of Software AG’s “Adabas & Natural 2050+ Agenda” the new release supports customers in optimizing and modernizing their mission- and business-critical Adabas & Natural applications to fully harness the innovation potential provided by digitalization.
Specifically, this release enables customers to:
- Offload almost any Adabas related z/OS workload to zIIP™ as Adabas for zIIP can now also offload load from Adabas add- ons, such as Adabas Review and Net-Work
- Offload replication workload to zIIP with the new product Adabas Replication for zIIP
- Take advantage of containerized and cloud environments as Docker®, CentOS® and Microsoft® Azure® are now officially supported
- Attract new talents and deliver innovation faster by embracing EclipseTM-based and DevOps-ready NaturalONE, which now becomes the default development environment for Natural, replacing the green-screen Natural Editor on mainframe, UNIX® and Linux®
- Increase the value of core Natural applications by exposing APIs, internally and to business partners, with the new EntireX “one click” REST enablement
See release notes at: http://techcommunity.softwareag.com/download/AdaNat/Releases/2018_10_Corporate_Sheet_A&NOctRelease_Web.pdf
Alfabet 10.3
Most organizations across the globe are seeking new ways to accelerate their path to digitalization. It demands fundamental changes to the business and operating models and the IT supporting them. It requires IT to be agile, nimble and fast to deliver new digital solutions quickly. It also elevates the role of IT to that of advisor, co-strategist and guarantor of successful execution.
As essential disciplines for business and IT transformation, Enterprise Architecture (EA) and portfolio management are also evolving. In today’s multinational organizations, these disciplines must embrace the many distributed stakeholders involved in transformation processes. They need to facilitate bipartisan involvement of both business and IT in the transformation plans. And as guarantors of successful transformation execution, enterprise architects and IT portfolio managers need to close the gap between strategic planning and operational systems to have “360-degree view” assessments available for informed decision- making. Our new release features:
- Automated instance translation
- Microsoft® PowerPoint® publication engine
- Automated assistants
- Integration with webMethods Trading Networks
- Microsoft® Project® integration
Apama 10.3
Software AG's Apama Streaming Analytics is the market-leading platform for streaming analytics and intelligent automated action on fast-moving big data. The latest release adds:
- Monitoring of correlators using the ubiquitous, open-source Prometheus toolkit for monitoring and alerting
- Faster runtime performance when using the compiled runtime capability to natively compile EPL applications
- Execution of Python® code within the correlator helps customers use Python scripts for tasks such as data pre-processing as well as utilizing Python’s many third-party libraries
- Easier Docker deployment from within Software AG Designer using the new tools that automatically create Dockerfiles
- Cumulocity IoT integrates Apama for advanced real-time streaming analytics in cloud or edge-based IoT
- Stack overflow now provides tags for Apama and Apama Community Edition has a number of new developer-focused blog posts (http://www.apamacommunity.com/)
- Capital markets adapters upgraded and enhanced with support for new vendor platforms, the latest vendor specifications and with new capabilities
See release notes at: http://documentation.softwareag.com/apama/index.htm
ARIS 10 SR6
ARIS reinforces your Enterprise Digital Twin with capabilities around professional process modeling and knowledge sharing in large enterprise scenarios. An appealing, easy-to-use end-user interface combined with integrated process mining, performance measurement and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance are the features of the newest ARIS offerings that will help organizations achieve excellence.
Highlights are:
- End-user experience and support enhancements: UX improvements, smart modeling, and personalized navigation and viewing
- Business & IT alignment: 100% BPMN™ 2.0 support attested by OMG, DMN™ 1.2 support in rich clients, many new features around SAP® solutions, and IoT projects enhanced with real- time data
- ARIS Process Mining: Root cause miner, AI-driven process conformance check, new widgets in ARIS Aware, and a pre- configured dashboard for governance, risk and compliance
- GDPR compliance: Method extensions, new survey templates, dashboards, and reports
- Large enterprise scenarios enablement: Integration with Microsoft® SharePoint® 2016, intelligent document search, right- to-left language support, and accessibility for handicapped people
Where to find more information:
Fact sheet
Presentation
MashZone NextGen 10.3
MashZone NextGen 10.3 introduces significant new data visualization and data preparation capabilities to the Digital Business Platform. The 10.3 release brings enhancements in the areas of multiple language support, mapping and data management, including:
- Multilingual dashboards to static dashboard content into multiple languages to reduce the cost of supporting dashboards in multilingual deployments
- Two new geo-mapping widgets, supporting points and vector areas is available based on OpenStreetMap
- The ability to materialize the results of long-running and complex data feeds in Terracotta DB (separate license required) for reuse in dashboards across multiple servers
- Visualization enhancements, including data-driven dynamic images in the image widget, hiding axes and labels on charts and setting the exact value on the slider widget
See release notes at: http://documentation.softwareag.com/webmethods/MashZoneNextGen/MashZone_NextGen_Business_Analytics/index.htm
Terracotta DB 10.3
Terracotta DB 10.3 introduces key enterprise readiness features and analytical capabilities in Terracotta DB. With this release, Terracotta DB took a big leap forward to support multi-cloud deployments, security and operational usability. Some of the notable features of Terracotta DB 10.3 include:
- Azure certification as a supported platform for Terracotta DB deployments
- Terracotta DB now available on Docker Store
- Security enhancements including authentication, authorization and auditing support for Terracotta DB
- Write-behind support for clustered Ehcache
- Hybrid storage support for Terracotta DB
- Configuration helpers for easy-to-use, XML-based configuration import and export
- Numerous operational usability enhancements, including latency metering refactoring and role-based access in Terracotta Management Console
This release also includes enhancements to Terracotta Ehcache 10.3.
Where to find more information:
- http://documentation.softwareag.com/terracotta/index.htm
- https://confluence.terracotta.org/display/release/Home
Software AG Universal Messaging 10.3
Universal Messaging is a high-performance, multi-protocol messaging platform designed to provide fast, guaranteed message delivery across all mainstream enterprise, web and IoT platforms. Universal Messaging 10.3 builds on the 10.2 innovation release:
- Horizontal scalability, enabled with a simple configuration change
- Publish and subscribe
- Java® native API and Java® Message Service (JMS)
- Health checker tool enhancements
- Improved usability
- Cluster installation and environment consistency checks
- Configuration simplification
- 54 configurable values have been removed, the appropriate defaults are automatically provided by the product
- Documentation restructuring
- Realm startup properties
- Clustering now included in HTML
See release notes at: http://documentation.softwareag.com/webmethods/universal_ messaging/umessaging_vers.htm
Cumulocity IoT 9.8 - 9.15
Cumulocity IoT is a complete platform that supports rapid start and deployment to quickly prove value of solutions and deliver fast ROI. It is open and independent (device, protocol, IaaS agnostic), supports different deployment options (cloud, on-premises and edge) and is able to grow with customer requirements. Cumulocity IoT combines our leading technologies ranging from secure device, cloud and enterprise integration over streaming and predictive analytics to process automation and application development.
- Apama integration into Cumulocity IoT Cloud. Using Cumulocity or Apama real-time event processing, you can add your own logic to your IoT solution.
- Cumulocity measurements, events, alarms, and operations are exchanged with Apama in both directions
- One Apama correlator per tenant, subscribed as application
- Apama is now offered in three packages with different sizes per tenant: S=(1 core; 4 GB RAM); M=(2 cores; 8 GB RAM); - L=(4 cores; 16 GB RAM)
- For more information, visit https://www.cumulocity.com/guides/apama/introduction/
- Cumulocity IoT Edge is an on-site, single server variant of the proven Cumulocity IoT (core) platform, with edge-specific extensions.
- Cumulocity IoT Edge software and documentation, both are currently in beta status
- Ready-to-use cockpit and device management apps
- Real-time analytics engine (Apama)
- Database for historic data storage
- For more information, visit https://www.cumulocity.com/guides/edge/overview/
- The Enterprise Edition of Cumulocity IoT provides several enhancements to the features provided by the standard edition.
- Key features: Managing tenants, managing user hierarchies, supporting users in other tenants, using the data broker, customizing your platform, storage quota
- For more information, visit https://www.cumulocity.com/guides/users-guide/enterprise-edition
- Microservices
- For more information, visit http://www.cumulocity.com/guides/microservice-sdk/introduction/
- Lightweight M2M
- LWM2M is a traffic and resource-optimized protocol to remotely manage IoT devices. The protocol is standardized by the Open Mobile Alliance. For more information, see http://openmobilealliance.org/iot/lightweight-m2m-lwm2m. You can connect any device supporting LWM2M to Cumulocity IoT without programming. Instead, you configure how LWM2M devices are mapped to Cumulocity IoT using device protocols.
- For more information, visit http://www.cumulocity.com/guides/users-guide/optional- services/#lwm2m
See release notes at:
https://support.cumulocity.com/hc/en-us/sections/200381323-Announcement
Software AG Digital Event Services 10.3
Software AG Digital Event Services (DES) supports event-based integration between Software AG products. The 10.3 release adds the following capabilities:
- Event generator tool
- Utility in Software AG Designer
- Wizard for creating an instance
- Editors for field rules and rate definitions
More information on DES is available at https://documentation.softwareag.com/webmethods/digital_event_services/dev10-3/index.htm
webMethods 10.3
Software AG’s Digital Business Platform powers digital transformation and enables any organization to become a Digital Enterprise. The webMethods product, a core component of the Digital Business Platform, helps you achieve this transformation. webMethods 10.3 provides significant enhancements in every functional area of the platform.
Integration
- Integration Server allows developers to develop REST APIs that adhere to the JSON™ API standard
- Integration Server has the ability to expose a REST API descriptor in Swagger format
- Software AG provides a sample Kubernetes® customizable script for Integration Server which allows users to create Integration Server pods and orchestrate those using Kubernetes
- The service development perspective in Software AG Designer provides a separate view for displaying on-premises recipes and browsing recipes stored in the Integration Cloud recipe store
- Software AG Designer Service Development provides the ability to connect and deploy custom packages and configuration assets to Integration Cloud
- Integration Server Administrator is now WCAG compliant
- Integration Server, in conjunction with Designer, supports a try- catch-finally flow construct in webMethdos flow language
- Integration Server, in conjunction with Universal Messaging, supports the ordered delivery of messages by webMethods messaging triggers
- ActiveTransfer Agent supports error handing in case of event failures. It supports certificate-based authentication for agents communicating between ActiveTransfer Server and ActiveTransfer agent
- ActiveTransfer has a new UI that supports listeners, gateways, users, roles, groups, templates and folders
- There has been a reduction in ActiveTransfer Agent installation footprint to 450 MB
- Trading Networks has an API gateway usage-monitoring feature that provides administrators the ability to view and monitor API invocations of trading partners
- CloudStreams connector services supports the ability to dynamically provide authentication details during service execution
- CloudStreams framework now supports inbound streaming at the connector level and supports creation of Docker image for a Microservices Runtime (MSR), which can be used across multiple environments
- The MSR supports the ability to externalize MSR configuration for Docker containers. It supports a health check pattern that is used to determine the overall health of the Docker container. It supports a “/metrics” endpoint which provides the current MSR metrics in a Prometheus format
webMethods API management
We launched webMethods API Microgateway with this release.
It is a standalone, independent product with the capability to federate with webMethods API Gateway. Microgateway supports microservices and service mesh architectures offering independent and sidecar deployments.
- API Gateway now allows configuring multiple authorization servers that can be active concurrently. API Gateway also supports external OAuth2 authorization servers that do not allow dynamic client registration
- API Gateway implements the relying party role in OpenID Connect authorization flow
- API Gateway allows including custom claims in generated JWTs and it supports all JWT claim types
- The first release of API Microgateway comes with a self- contained Java application flavor with options to generate Docker images for independent and sidecar deployment
- You can provision Microgateway using a command line utility and provide configuration options by either reading it from a running API Gateway instance or reading it from an API Gateway archive
- webMethods API Portal comes with two new, additional customization themes built solely using API Portal customization features and it has the capability to set up and use multiple LDAP configurations
webMethods Dynamic Apps
This release includes Dynamic Business Orchestrator (DBO) process and case integration, among other exciting features such as the launch of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Robotic Process Discovery is a proprietary, AI-based platform that identifies business processes as they run, correlates all variations, and makes recommendations for enhanced efficiency via automation.
- The process-to-case integration scenario is supported by the new DBO engine. DBO calls the case in-proc mode. At design time, you can define a user task as either a webMethods task or a case
- The AgileApps Runtime UI is refreshed using the Angular technology and is in sync with the other products of the Software AG suite
- Task Engine is decoupled from My webMethods Server and resides in Integration Server
- Business Console is enhanced to adopt Task Engine instances, running on Integration Server
- DBO supports the migration of classic Process Engine 9.x models to DBO 10.x models
- DBO and Task Engine communicate in process
- Robotic process discovery can collect data on user actions and workflows with silent discovery robots, automatically identify which robotic processes to automate and directly create the respective wizards in RPA Studio
- The new workflow view provides a view of the overall flow of wizards along with all the details including the actions taken in each step, logical operations (such as loop and if/else), and fallbacks
webMethods platform
Overall, the webMethods platform includes enhancements that improve functionality across multiple products:
- webMethods 10.3 ships with the Azul Zulu JDK 8. Software AG products for this release are only tested and supported with this shipped version of JDK
- webMethods products are now compliant with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines to strengthen and unify data protection for our users
- Software AG Command Central provides a single executable file for its Windows® bootstrap installer
- The modern hierarchical Jobs view in Command Central has been improved to provide all of the useful capabilities of the older view
- To ease the product license distribution through Command Central, license keys can now be embedded in the license manifests
- Software AG Command Central connects automatically to a Universal Messaging server that listens only on an nhps or nsps interface
- MashZone NextGen supports enterprises needing to deliver dashboards to users in multiple languages, substantially reducing the maintenance cost of multilingual MashZone NextGen deployments
See release notes at: https://documentation.softwareag.com/ webmethods/wMSuite_rln.htm
webMethods Cloud Deployment
Developing new integrations in the cloud is easy to do with web- based visual drag-and-drop tools, but these don’t always offer the full range of integration, debugging and testing capabilities needed by professional developers. webMethods Cloud Deployment offers the ability to develop in Designer, a rich and full-featured professional environment, and deploy on demand into webMethods Integration Cloud. Choose from predefined cloud solution landscapes and select new or existing capabilities to deploy. Software AG does the landscape provisioning, deployment of integrations, fix management, patches, and upgrades, and CI/CD support in the cloud. It provides out-of- the-box monitoring dashboards to track solution health and Flow service behavior as well as alerts.
Cloud Deployment enables professional developers to have a direct path to deploying their integrations to a multi-function, multi-cloud iPaaS. Here is what it allows you do to:
- Develop new integrations, APIs and business logic in Designer, and then deploy them to Integration Cloud
- Select from a predefined deployment landscape which is automatically provisioned with the selected integration packages, APIs and business logic
- Choose number and type of servers to meet desired performance and scalability goals
- Deploy existing integrations and APIs from Designer to a cloud- based landscape
- Integrate with on-premises resources by using a VPN tunnel for secure transmission of data
- Manage application staging and migration in the cloud by selecting deployed assets and pulling them from one stage to another
- Monitor the deployed landscape infrastructure with built-in KPI- based dashboards
- Monitor flows with built-in flow dashboards
- Be alerted when system health is suboptimal
- Access collected Prometheus-based monitoring KPIs via a REST endpoint
- Increase business agility by combining powerful developer tooling with a fully managed SaaS platform
For more details, check out https://www.softwareag.com/corporate/products/webmethods_integration/cloud_integration/
webMethods Integration Cloud
webMethods Integration Cloud is the foundational bedrock for any organization’s digital transformation strategy. Our high-productivity enterprise iPaaS is optimized for integration project teams comprised of citizen integrators and developers alike. With governance capabilities for admin, security and control, the Integration Cloud is ideal for your mission-critical deployments.
Integration Cloud equips organizations with a platform for:
- Building, managing, testing and monitoring integration projects across cloud-to-cloud or cloud-to-on premises environments (hybrid connectivity)
- Connecting mobile apps, cloud services, and devices/things via pre-built integration recipes
- Orchestrating the movement and transformation of data via a clean block-like interface for development
- Deploying integration projects across stages and lifecycle management capabilities
The latest release of Integration Cloud brings new and improved capabilities in the areas of:
- Debugging – step through each step in your integration workflow and inspect the pipeline at each stage
- Improved ACL features for fine grade authentication and authorization of your integration services
- Two-way SSL capabilities for securing inbound APIs into Integration Cloud
- New user management APIs to control your WMIC tenant users
- Additional connector enhancements and new connectors
For more details, check out the link below or review the readme for what’s new.
https://www.softwareag.com/corporate/products/webmethods_integration/cloud_integration/
webMethods B2B Cloud
With webMethods B2B Cloud, built on the industry-leading webMethods Trading Networks, you can transmit business documents—like purchase orders, invoices and shipping notices—electronically with customers, distributors and trading partners without any hardware investment, maintenance or upgrades.
Software AG’s webMethods B2B Cloud is a consumption-based B2B document translation and transmission service that makes it easy to set up flexible and reliable partner communications. As a pure Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, you can forget about costly and time-consuming hardware and infrastructure investments, implementation and operations. Here is what it allows you do to:
- Real-time electronic document exchange over HTTP
- Integrate B2B documents directly with your back-end systems for fast processing
- B2B document exchange of EDI (ANSI X12) plus AS2 docs (more coming soon)
- Secure transmission and translation for Advanced Shipping Notices (ASN), invoices, purchase orders, proof-of-delivery, quotes and more
- Centrally manage important partner details, like contacts
- Send any number of documents and grow to connect any number of partners
- Greater control with end-to-end visibility of your partner network
- Peace of mind—count on the reliable connectivity of webMethods, the industry-leading hybrid integration platform
For more details, check out www.softwareag.com/b2b
Zementis 10.3
Zementis is a decision engine for operational deployment, integration and execution of AI and machine learning models.
- Support for anomaly detection models based on isolation forest and one-class support vector machines
- Updated PMML exporter packages for Python (PyPI Nyoka package) and R (CRAN pmml package) to export anomaly detection models
- Visualization of model KPIs including memory metrics and prediction metrics
- Different prediction metrics for regression and classification models
- Model KPIs are also accessible via the extended REST API
- Launch of Zementis Server AWS Marketplace AMI offering under Software AG banner
- Support lifecycle operations and configuration management via Software AG Command Central
See release notes at: http://documentation.softwareag.com/zementis/index.htm