Want to ensure the files you have downloaded are the original files published by 3SL?
On our website as well as being able to download the Cradle software we supply two text files. These files contain checksums, which are used to ensure the integrity of a file after it has been transmitted from one storage device to another.
Checksums available on 3SL website
SHA512.txt
This file contains SHA512 checksums for the files. You can generate a SHA512 checksum using the sha512sum command. For example:
sha512sum Cradle72_Setup.exe
Compare the output to the contents of the sha512.txt file.
SHA512 Integrity Checksum on Windows
MD5.txt
This file contains MD5 checksums for the files. You can generate a MD5 checksum using the md5sum command. For example:
md5sum Cradle72_Setup.tar.gz
Compare the output to the contents of the md5.txt file. The md5sum utility is available for Windows from various websites on the Internet.
The short answer is yes you can reset an item’s auto numbering. The more complex answer is a word of caution. Firstly to reset the auto number for an item you need ACCESS_BYPASS, or PROJECT project privileges. This is to prevent any accidental operations by a user. Secondly you should ensure you understand the issue you are trying to resolve and the consequences of resetting in a live database.
Item Numbering
Every item in the database has a unique identity made from a combination of attributes. These usually include the Identity,Version and Draft. Model based information includes the Domain and MUID. The identity can be manually entered or automatically filled. There are benefits to both. For example; if your customer sent you a set of user requirements in a CSV file, you would want to retain whatever ID system they had used UF1.45 to UF6.78 having a Cradle Auto ID and then having to place their ID in the Name field would make little sense. On the other hand when raising a new Issue, you’d expect them to be sequentially numbered without having to find the previous item and mentally add ‘1’ and type into a field.
When Values Need Resetting
In the case where a batch of items have been imported or created, but whilst at draft a decision has been made that none of them are required, or are fundamentally wrong, they would normally be deleted. The next item to be created would then have an auto number of say “Res-103” which may not be appropriate. In this case resetting the count for the “Result” item type makes sense.
When Values Need Setting
It is possible that batches of requirements come in from various sources, it may be convenient to start each batch at a ‘nice’ number point “Reference-1 … Reference-560” and then “Reference-1000 … Reference-1304“. In this case setting the number by advancing the count would be appropriate. If new versions of the item were brought in by import expecting to overwrite the old ones, and the user forgot to mark “Ignore project’s current auto numbering” you would end up with two versions of the item. In that case 1..n and n+1..2n+1, deleting items n+1..2n+1 and choosing “Set Highest” would return the database to the point before the mistake.
When Caution Should be Exercised
Once the items are stored in the database, their Identities should remain fixed. Creating a new version of an item would normally involve the original version being baselined, a Change Requestbeing raised and a Change Task being issued to allow the work to create the next draft version of the item. In this case the identity remains the same but the two versions of the item are unique by their Version and Draft. Changing the auto number when there are items in the database and then creating new items of that type would cause conflict with items already stored. This is not a desirable effect. Therefore, the message is be careful, this feature is necessary and useful in some cases but incorrect use could have undesirable side-effects.
This feature provides the ability for Cradle to authenticate a user against an LDAP server instead of passwords held in Cradle user accounts within a Cradle project database.
Used to look up user login information from a server
Avoids the need for user to enter username and password entry when launching the tools
LDAP is an optional part of Cradle that you can enable or not (disabled by default)
Supported by all Cradle tools
Login dialog showing LDAP being used
Cradle supports two methods of LDAP authentication:
The first for systems where the username can be inferred from network username and the second for systems where the username can not be inferred from the network username.
Force Network Login Name
The first method assumes that Cradle username is to be inferred from the current network username (Force Network LoginName). A user authenticates against LDAP when they login to the network by supplying a network username and a network password.
This method is to allow a user to login to a Cradle project without specifying a username or password. In this situation, the users are already authenticated to their desktop or Citrix environment and we do not require them to login again with a username and password to gain access to Cradle. So, provided that a user has logged-in to their desktop or Citrix environment and they have a User Profile in a Cradle project, the users will be able to login to Cradle without supplying a username or password.
Username/Password validated via LDAP server
The second method allows users to enter username and password to be validated via LDAP server. A user authenticates against LDAP when they login to the Cradle tools, by supplying a username and password.
LDAP control with ldap_config
Contained within the ldap_config file is an attribute called AUTO_LDAP_LOGIN
If AUTO_LDAP_LOGIN is TRUE then Force Network Login Name method is used (login with current network username) If AUTO_LDAP_LOGIN is FALSE then Username/Password validated via LDAP server is is used (allows users to enter LDAP username and password)
For more information on how to setup Cradle to intergrate/interact with your LDAP server please refer to the online help section.
The aim of World Telecommunications Day is to highlight the importance of communication and how information travels across the world.
The day is closely connected with the International Telegraph Union (ITU), the committee formed in 1865 to handle the emerging technologies.
We’re celebrating Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency signalling (DTMF). This is in-band signal alongside the normal voice data, between equipment and other devices and usually at the exchange. DTMF was first developed in the Bell System.
DSDs are a graphical alternative to the composition specifications in data definitions. In our model of the DTMF, the signal is shown comprising of the Low Tone and the High Tone. These are made up of the individual optional low and high tone components.
If you want a teaser for World Telecommunications Day 2017, why is the 1633Hz frequency not shown?
We’ve expanded the writing team to include authors from elsewhere in the 3SL team. Because this is a blog, there is more emphasis on people’s personal insights into the Cradle product. This should make the style and tone more varied and hopefully more interesting to read.
As you may have already seen the 3SL-Blog is groaning full of new articles. These are mainly “Hints and Tips” and longer RM/SE articles. Increasingly we’ve found that some of the support questions that arrive here in 3SL towers are very similar. To that end we’re publishing them under the FAQ section.
If you have a burning question and would like to see an article covering a particular topic, drop us a line at social-customer@threesl.com and we’ll see what we can do. On the other hand, if you have a novel use of Cradle that you’re happy to share with us, drop us a line with the article, screen shots and accreditation details and we may feature it.
Non Graphic Interfaces
There is widespread understanding of the WorkBench and even Web Access interaction with Cradle. It is, after all the main way we interact with the data. However, there are many occasions when we want some of the data from Cradle but don’t want to or can’t use a screen to interact. This month we’re highlighting c_table.
c_table
This command line utility can be used to produce Reports, Matrices, Metrics, Graphs or Queries in a tabular form. This can be an HTML, RTF, CSV or SVG output. If every morning you need to go into a meeting, or stand at your ‘toolbox talk’ with a printed report detailing the number of ‘Issues’ with a category of ‘Raised’ you can do this by running one command. Creating a desktop short cut to run the command / batch file you need not start WorkBench just to run the query and publish the result. Even more cunningly a script could be triggered at 8:00am every morning to create the document for you. Our blog article “Batch File Reporting in Cradle” adds more detail.
CompeteFor
If you are working or bidding on large infrastructure projects, Cradle is now available through the CompeteFor procurement portal. Whatever the size of your Requirements Management or Systems Engineering task, Cradle is there from Concept to Creation.
Here are some links to helpful topics since our last newsletter, they should improve your Cradle experience:
When working in large teams or over a long period an item’s edit history is very useful. See the LinkedIn discussion Who Changed That? When? Why?
When you have many items to submit all in one go, selecting them on the screen and submitting them is not practical. This article Configuration Management – Submit by Query discusses the alternative.
Want to run a Consistency Check on just a single diagram?
Consistency Check from the Project Sidebar
If the user doesn’t wish to open the diagram, to run a consistency check. They can just right-click on a diagram in the Project sidebar tree and select ‘More –> Consistency Check’ from the context menu.
Using the Consistency Checker for a single diagram
This will bring up a report on the errors and warnings within the diagram; it will not open the diagram:
PAD Consistency Check Report
Check Diagram within a Form
If the user is happy to open the diagram in a form, they can right-click on the diagram and select ‘More –> Consistency Check’ from the context menu. They can also select the Diagram tab and click on the Consistency button.
Single Diagram Consistency Checking from a diagram form
Once the check is done the diagram will show you with the colours red (item has an error) and green (item is fine) in the diagram. A report with the errors within the diagram will now open as well.
Physical Architecture diagram showing the errors
Once you have checked and corrected the errors found, you can then recheck the diagram if you so wish.
Complete Consistency Check of a single diagram in a form
Once the diagram is error free, it will show all symbols as green and the report will not show any errors.
Here are some small hints and tips for formatting/preparing your documents correctly, which will save you time and energy otherwise expended on laborious cut and paste exercises.
Microsoft® Word Formatting
In order to parse documents, Document Loader uses the hierarchical Word document structure. That is, it will assume that a Heading 1 is of higher importance than a Heading 2. It is important to remember that the document structure is more complex than just making a title by ‘increasing the font size’. Switching views to ‘Outline’ can help you understand how Word see the document. This will assist in preparing your documents for Document Loader to parse.
Document Loader expects each requirement to be in a single paragraph and formatted with an appropriate heading style to indicate its level in the hierarchy.
Document heading styles to indicate level in hierarchy
Requirement text, figures and other information should be positioned directly beneath the heading and formatted using paragraph style Normal or other body text-level style.
Use separate paragraphs for distinct pieces of information, e.g. Assumption text and Requirement text.
Always use paragraph styles rather than text formatting to change the appearance of a paragraph.
Heading styles apply an outline level to your paragraphs, which tell Document Loader about the level of each requirement in the hierarchy
Document Loader prefers pictures and OLE objects to be inserted in line with text. This means the picture is positioned in the text layer of the document, rather than floating on top of the text. In line pictures produce a better document structure.
If you use captions to describe the pictures in your document, make sure that the caption is positioned immediately before or immediately after the picture, and formatted with Word’s caption style.
If your document contains diagrams built with Word’s drawing objects, then you must ensure that all shapes in the diagram are grouped, otherwise Document Loader will parse each shape as a separate image.
If you plan to capture a table with a requirement in each row, then your table must be uniform, that is, no merged cells and have the same number of columns in each row.
As with pictures, if you use captions to describe the tables in your document, make sure that the caption is positioned immediately before or immediately after the table, and formatted with Word’s caption style.
Caption directly above table
For more information on formatting your documents correctly please refer to our online help.
If you receive a CDS connection error when starting a Cradle tool, the following steps will help you diagnose the most common CDS connection errors and show you how to resolve them. These errors are highlighting a communication problem between the client tool (e.g. WorkBench, Document Loader or Document Publisher) and the Cradle Database Server (CDS). There are four main possible causes ;
Can not connect to CDS error dialog
1 – The CDS is not running.
The CDS is on the same machine as the client, (e.g. Single user products or Cytrix installations) . Run Project Manager to see if the CDS is running or look in the process list (Task Manager on Windows, or ps Process List on Linux) for crsvr.exe.
The CDS is running on another machine
In the same TCP/IP subnet (e.g. usual client/server Enterprise installation) . Start Project Manager and look for the CDS.
Another subnet. Login to that machine and look for it in the process list or contact the administrator of that other machine.
Solution – Start the CDS on the machine where it is to run, by starting Project Manager and starting the CDS. Or at a Linux command prompt
c_start start
If the CDS will not start and is not returning any messages then open a command prompt and perform the following dependant on platform
Windows
Type the following in a command prompt
cd %CRADLEHOME%\bin\exe\windows
crsvr.exe
Linux
Type the following in a command prompt on Linux 32 bit;
cd $CRADLEHOME/bin/exe/linux-ia32/
./crsvr
Type the following in a command prompt on Linux 64 bit;
cd $CRADLEHOME/bin/exe/linux-x86_64/
./crsvr
2 – CDS is running but the Cradle tool is not communicating with it.
Check the CDS is running on a different PC but your Cradle system is set to standalone.
Look for an environment variable called CRADLE_STANDALONE and if it exists either delete it or set its value to false.
Then look in the startup file for the variable STANDALONE and ensure that it is set to false.
3 – The Cradle tool is trying to communicate with the CDS, but its communications do not reach the CDS.
Check that there is evidence that the Cradle tool’s messages are reaching the CDS. To do this, look at the file cds_access.log on the machine running the CDS. There is one multi-line entry in this file for every connection attempt that the CDS receives. If the Cradle tool’s attempt to connect to the CDS reaches the CDS, it will be in this file. Make a note of the last entry in the file, then close it and attempt to start the Cradle tool. Look at the cds_access.log file again and see if a new entry has appeared at the bottom of it. If not, then the Cradle client’s attempts to connect to the CDS are not being received by the CDS.
If the CDS runs on a machine in another TCP/IP subnet to the PC where the tool is being run, define an environment variable called CRADLE_CDS_HOST whose value is the TCP/IP address or hostname of the machine running the CDS. Run the tool again and look for an entry appearing at the bottom of the cds_access.log file. If the CDS runs on a machine in the same TCP/IP subnet to the PC where the tool is being run, look for the CRADLE_CDS_HOST environment variable and check that its contents are correct. You can delete the variable if this CDS is the only CDS running in the subnet.
Ensure the correct ports are opened on your firewall, the specific ports can be edited from the ports file.
4 – The Cradle tool can communicate with the CDS, but the CDS is ignoring it.
On the machine running the CDS check the cds_hosts file. This file has to either be empty ( all clients are allowed to be connected to the CDS) or it contains a list of IP address / machine names allowed/disallowed to connect to the CDS.
Most Configuration Management tasks are achieved using WorkBench but Configuration Management in Web Access is also available. For instance you can submit and review information in Web Access as well as unsubmitting items. These CM tasks are available in the Web Access “Configuration Management” sidebar:
Configuration Management in Web Access
You can submit items by query or you can submit them individually. Providing there are reviewers for the information, any user can submit information for approval.
Items can also be unsubmitted which cancels their review. This does depend on:
The ownership of the items
The current user’s privileges
The status of the item in the database
Whether any reviewers have started to review the item
Once items have been submitted for review, they can also be reviewed in Web Access.
If you have the TEAM_APPROVE privilege you can review information on behalf of a team member, therefore preventing reviews being held up due to team absences,
Review Dialog
In conclusion, if you are remotely working, with access to Cradle only via a browser, it is possible to review and approve or reject items. This can have great benefits to time-scales, it alleviates waiting for reviews to complete and negates having to manage an email ping-pong.
If you are working on a large document and need to save your current position, for example if you need to shut-down your PC for any reason. You can save progress in Document Loader by using a session to save a snapshot. You can then return to the same point at a later time and date. You can then continue to finish your capture or just do a little more and re-save the session to continue again later.
A session stores information about the state of Document Loader at a given point, such as:
A copy of the current document
A copy of the current capture setup definition
Which parts of the document have already been captured
The state of the Document Explorer tree nodes
Any mappings, e.g. table mappings
Any changes made in the Options dialog
Load Session in Document Loader
For further information on how to save progress in Document Loader and Save/Load and Delete sessions in Document Loader please read this post.
