Patch 3 for AR System 7.5 released

Now BMC has release patch 3 for AR System 7.5. I contains many fixes. And some of the fixes make you think if 7.5 has functioned at all before patch 3. And also that there still are some serious bugs that will give some real problems.

• AR System suite installer
• AR System server
• BMC Remedy Approval Server
• BMC Remedy Assignment Engine
• BMC Remedy Data Import
• BMC Remedy Development Studio
• BMC Remedy Email Engine
• BMC Remedy Flashboard
• BMC Remedy Mid Tier
• BMC Remedy User

All these components are updated in the patch. I have not tested any thing yet. Actually, my installation of 7.5p2 has not been used at all. One thing I noticed that I did not know was that web service plugin has moved from the C version of the plugin server and now in the Java plugin server. I guess it is a good move. But then when you see fixes related to web services plugin you know it never going to end up in 7.1. Which is really annoying.

Web services by the way, the infra structure should really by upgraded. AXIS 1.4, it is really old and not containing all the new stuff that will make web services scale. If using AXIS2 or maybe Sun Metro you could use things lite MTOM and XOP to reduce package size and better serialization and encoding/decoding to increase performance. This is really needed. And also I am really annoyed the remove something that worked in 6.3 when they released 7.0. I am referring to sequences in sequences. You can at least in 7.1 work around that since it still stores all the data. But you have to build your own workflow to maintain the references. You even can use the fact that now Request ID is available in phase 3, which is when push happens.

So now I am only waiting for patch 8 of 7.1. And hoping it really contains some good stuff.

Total Commander 7.50 is in the open

One of the tools I have used the longest on the windows platforms are Total Commander, previously known as Windows Commander. The license I have is from 1996. That I get for helping with beta testing. Before that I used it at work where they had a license. It was back in the windows 3.11 days, and I had been a big user of Norton commander in DOS.

So what is new in 7.50. I guess full UNICODE support is the big one. But now also I think Ghisler has let go of the idea of the install have to fit into a floppy. OK, I do not know if or when it got to large. But I guess whit the new help file there is no return. So now the response, it will not fit within the size limit.

Also, Ghisler is now maintaining sftpplug. The problem is that he still can not export the whole package since the laws in his country. So you have to download some files separately. Two DLLs from libcurl.

EGC and USGC 2009

Both European Go Congress and US Go Congress over for this time. I do not know so much what happened this year. Only that it was very few Swedish this year, maybe from Sweden arrange the tournament last year. The other thing I get feeling of from EGC is that the pairing and by that the SOS count might not have been fair. But I can not judge that. In USCG an 18 year old amateur player beat 3 professionals to win the ING tournament. Very good.

I do not know why, but there was no computer go tournament in either EGC or USGC. I have no clue why. I have not look to hard either. At Computer Go Info you could find, up to yesterday, that those tournament were canceled. Now they are not to be seen at all in the planned or played tournament lists. If you look through the mail list archive you can probably find why.

361points.com write this about EGC/USGC 2009.

Totally missed EGC 2009

I have totally forgotten about European Go Congress 2009. And after a quick look at the starting field, so have all the Swedish players. I guess everybody in Sweden put to much into arranging the event last year, so they stay home this year. Or maybe they got stuck in the coffee shops. After a closer look at the standings there are only 3 Swedish players. You can find the current standings here. And as of today 7 out of 10 games have been played.

Also I see that there is no computer go tournament this year. If there had been one I would have noticed on GNU Go mailing list that they where looking for someone to operate the program.

BMC UserWorld 2009?

I guess now it is for sure, there will be no BMC UserWorld 2009. At least I can find no information about this. Which would be a major marketing blunder if the information is not there.

So where to go instead. I guess there are lots of local events, even arranged by BMC. And the topics may be more specific to one product or branch.

ARSlist have there own WWRUG 2009. It is in November. And it is in Las Vegas. Maybe should give that a shoot. Doug Mueller is booked as the keynote speaker.

New web and new release for php-arapi

Finally some activity on php-arapi. The web has been rewritten. More information about how to compile, and how to use. But it is still quite thin. Hope more will come soon.

Code update include better support to compile for arapi 6.3/7.0/7.1. But RTL, which is used to access arapi, still miss some features wanted in 7.1. It does not handle the new selection field in 7.1. By not handle I mean it can not translate between value in database and the text seen by the user in the application.

I've supplied some patch to RTL, but the project seem dead. No activity. And there is more code needed in RTL to handle arapi 7.1 and 7.5. I guess the feature for php-arapi is to rewrite without use of RTL.

The new binaries you can download is for arapi 7.1 and php 5.2.x, at least up to 5.2.10. php 5.3.x is not supported at the moment. It might very well compile and work fine. But there are some changes in 5.3.x related to extensions. And I guess I should look into what need/should be changed in php-arapi before I say php-arapi support php 5.3.x.

Patch 2 for AR System 7.5 released

I know, late again. It has been available for a few weeks already. Both server and mid-tier had quite a lot of fixes. I wonder how many bugs still there. Many of the fixes on the server were about memory leaks.

So today I finally installed a test server with 7.5 patch 2. It is Windows 2003 server with MS-SQL 2005 and IIS. I installed server, mid-tier, development and user on the server for testing. There was no problem with the installation. And I actually like the new java based installation. I just hope it can run in console mode on linux so you do not need to install X. Patch 007 for ITSM 7.0.003 did not want to run in console mode.

A quick check that everything was working showed that everything installed just fine. And I was surprised that import tool was change to something based on eclipse. That is nice, I hope. The old tool really sucked.

So now I just have to work with the thing to see what is new. I already know what is new in ARAPI. One thing is added parameters for error handling in active links, even if it is not there yet. And then also the dynamic joins query. I have to try that one.