The spring equinox is between 19th/20th March this year, in the North this signals the start of new growth for the year. Whilst there may be some debate between the astrological and meteorological communities (23.44° axis tilt to the sun or the start of a block of 3 months) in the Northern hemisphere it certainly signifies longer and warmer days.
Traditionally we might fly round the house and office running a spring clean after we have been hunkered down over the winter. (Although in 2021 we seem to have been hunkered down for the last 12 months! This month sees a year for many, including 3SL staff, working from home.) This surge in activity can be a bit chaotic if it is not planned and controlled. In fact the surge of activity at the beginning of the hare mating season gives rise to the English idiom mad as a March hare.
Tearing up a list of requirements, designs or processes would be a bit wild. Generally evolution is better than revolution when it comes to engineering. However, sometimes a design of a long-standing product, or honed process, may become tired. It will have had sticky plaster on sticky plaster to alter and tweak it. New technologies, new materials and processes may be available on the market, so it is always good to have a review and plan the next solution. Make the decision whether it is a new broom sweeps clean or just a spring tidy.
A rush of activity is good, but plan it. If you are playing with a design, make an adaptation of if rather than tweaking the current working design. (see white-paper ra00407-Reuse_Adaptations.pdf). Compare the solutions and agree to move forward, make another iteration, or wipe the slate. Involve the team and spring into action for 2021. Just a note though; Whilst we always advocate a good cuppa (or coffee if you prefer) and a meeting (virtual or otherwise), we’re not suggesting endless tea breaks and procrastination meetings with the Mad Hatter…..
Cradle Release
Cradle 7.6
Don’t forget if you have not downloaded the latest version of Cradle 7.6, see the release announcement, and update today!
If you have a single user version, don’t forget to take advantage of the 20% discount before the end of the month.
We liked the IsoCool holistic design view of ensuring processes with heating and cooling requirements can use a transfer rather than disparate systems.
Here at 3SL we’ve been using Hyper-V for most of our visualisation needs. On the whole its done a good job, but as we’ve been moving over to more and more Linux based systems we’ve been looking at alternative solutions to see how far we can reduce our dependence on Microsoft Windows.
Comparison
We looked at ESXi (from VMWare) – and then sat down after looking at the pricing for high availability, failover, and backup capabilities. Whilst undoubtedly suitable for a critical primary system, the level of cover was more than strictly necessary in our test and development environment. We looked as Xen (from Citrix) – and while it does plenty out of the box, it was still lacking in certain key functionality we were after. These included replication, failover, load balancing, which, at the time, were available as extra add-ons.
Currently
We’ve ended up with Proxmox (for now). It allows us to run a number of Linux services as containers (LXC, not Docker) as well as KVM-QEMU based VM for the few Windows systems we want to keep around (for testing and the like).
Proxmox
Its been handy to create an entirely self contained Cradle cluster behind a single external IP address with load balanced web access and VPN access for clients.
Note:
These are statements of fact regarding the installation and use of technologies at 3SL. No affiliation or approval from the third parties mentioned should be implied or inferred.
We’ve changed our mail server slightly. Improving the e-mail verification between ourselves and mail recipients.
Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) have been around for a while. Here at 3SL, we’ve implemented them on our mail server.
Technologies
SPF defines which addresses are permitted to send 3SL email. DKIM adds a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) signature. This verifies and authenticates email as coming from 3SL, showing its not been modified in transit, or faked. DMARC combines SPF and DKIM to authenticate the emails and reports any emails which do not conform.
E-Mail Verification Result
What this means is that all emails claiming to be from 3SL should only be coming from our mail server mail.threesl.com. This should help stop the occasional 3SL email from ending up filtered off as spam. It should also help identify fake 3SL emails as being unsolicited emails.
The data to be exchanged, and the mechanism to be used to exchange it, will depend on the scenario between you and your customer. In this post we will outline the approach that can be used in two main scenarios when one of the parties isn’t using Cradle:
One to One – single need to single response
One to Many – single need may link to one or more responses
Each of these scenarios can be further varied by being a ‘one off’ or an iterative repeated exchange.
Scenario 1 -One to One
This scenario is where the customer has a list of needs and each need will only have one response, you then have the option of capturing the data only once or capturing the needs and responses multiple times.
Once-only Data Exchange (one to one)
The simplest approach where your customer/supplier has a list of needs, you can then respond to each need with values for the new attributes. One file is exchanged between you and the customer which they incorporate with their needs.
List of needs from customer, each with an ID (n#)
Within Cradle you have a single item type for these needs, the item type would be made up of the following attributes:
Need #
Need ID (n#)
Need
Text frame to store the need statement
Compliance
Category to record the compliance of the response
Response
Text frame to store a statement of how it is compliant
List of needs shown in WorkBench
Responses would then be added to each need, with values for the new attributes, such as the degree of compliance and a statement of how it is compliant.
Response to needs
Responses shown in WorkBench
There are a number of ways the response could be sent to the customer / supplier, as a report, a document or using an interchange such as CSV (Comma Separated Values).
Once all your responses are updated the next step is to create an export file to send to your customer.
Use CSV which includes only plain UTF-8 and avoid codepage issues. Only one file needs to be sent which includes:
Need #
Compliance
Response
To make this process easier you can set up export formats with the settings you want so that each time you want to run the process you don’t need to remember what the correct setting is. You can choose to load the export format which will instantly load the settings you have saved.
The customer then merges your response into their needs by importing the file with overwrite set to merge. The customer could also use import formats so each time you supply an update they have the correct import settings.
Repeated Data Exchange (one to one)
Your customer/customer has a list of needs where there are multiple copies for each need, you would then respond with datestamps so that when the customer imports the file the correct needs are updated. One file is exchanged between you and the customer which they incorporate with their needs.
List of needs from customer, each with an ID (n#) and a date
Within Cradle you have a single item type for these needs, the item type would be made up of the following attributes:
Need #
Need ID (n#)
Need
Text frame to store the need statement
Compliance
Category to record the compliance of the response
Response
Text frame to store a statement of how it is compliant
Need-Datestamp
Category to record need date (ndate)
Response-Datestamp
Category to record response date (rdate)
Needs with datestamp in WorkBench
Responses should then be added to each need, with values for the new attributes, such as the degree of compliance and a statement of how it is compliant. Responses have a datestamp and will overwrite their predecessor when loaded.
Response to need with datestampResponses in WorkBench with datestamps
Once all your responses are updated the next step is to create an export file to send to your customer. There are a number of ways the response could be sent to the customer / supplier, as a report, a document or using an interchange such as CSV (Comma Separated Values).
Use CSV which includes only plain UTF-8 and avoid codepage issues. Only one file needs to be sent which includes:
Need #
Need-Datestamp
Compliance
Response
Response-Datestamp
To make this process easier you can set up export formats. (See above regarding export formats)
The customer then merges your response into their needs by importing the file with overwrite set to merge. Responses have a datestamp and will overwrite their predecessor when loaded. The customer could also use import formats so each time you supply an update they have the correct import settings.
Scenario 2 -One to Many
This scenario is where the customer has a list of needs and each need may have many responses and/or a single response may be valid for multiple needs. The advantage of this scenario is that duplication of data is kept to a minimum, you also have the option of capturing the data only once or capturing the needs and responses multiple times.
Once-only Data Exchange (one to many)
Where your customer has a list of needs, you then respond with the new item (response) which you can link to a need. The major advantage of this is that a response can apply to more than one need removing the possibility of duplicate data/information.
List of needs from customer, each with an ID (n#)Needs shown in WorkBench
Within Cradle you have two item types one for needs and one for the responses.
The need item type would be made up of the following attributes:
Need #
Need ID (n#)
Need
Text frame to store the need statement
Compliance
Category to record the compliance of the response
The response item type would be made up of the following attributes:
Response #
Response ID (r#)
Response
Text frame to store the response statement
Compliance
Category to record the compliance of the response
Response items would be created for each need with values for the new attributes, such as the degree of compliance and a statement of how it is compliant and linked to the corresponding need.
New items as response to needs
Response 1 linked to multiple needs
Once all responses are updated the next step is to create files to send to your customer. You can send one file which includes the Response #, Compliance, Response and a list of related need #’s. This single file would be loaded from a Word table with the above columns. Or load two CSV plain UTF-8 files, one with responses and the other with links.
Sends 1 file:
Response #, Compliance, Response, list of related need #s
Or 2 files:
Response #, Compliance, Response
Need #, Response #
To make this process easier you can set up export formats. (See above regarding export formats)
The customer then incorporates your responses with their needs by importing the file with overwrite set to merge. The customer could also use import formats so each time you supply an update they have the correct import settings.
Repeated Data Exchange (one to many)
Where there are multiple copies for each need, you then respond with new items (responses) with a datestamp which you can link to a need. The major advantage of this is that a response can apply to more than one need removing the possibility of duplicate data/information as well as dealing with multiple copies of a need.
List of needs from customer, each with an ID (n#) and a date
Needs with Datestamp shown in WorkBench
Within Cradle you have two item types, one for needs and one for the responses.
The need item type would be made up of the following attributes:
Need #
Need ID (n#)
Need
Text frame to store the need statement
Compliance
Category to record the compliance of the response
Need-Datestamp
Category to record need date (ndate)
The response item type would be made up of the following attributes:
Response #
Response ID (r#)
Response
Text frame to store the response statement
Compliance
Category to record the compliance of the response
Response-Datestamp
Category to record response date (rdate)
Response items would be created for each need with values for the new attributes, such as the degree of compliance and a statement of how it is compliant and linked to the corresponding need.
Response to needs with datestamps
Responses are created for each need, each with an ID (r#). Responses have a datestamp and overwrite their predecessor when loaded. All links to needs are replaced in each load.
Response 1 linked to multiple needs with multiple copies of need 5/8
Once all responses are updated the next step is to create files to send to your customer. You can send one file which includes the Response #, Compliance, Response and a list of related need #’s. This single file would be loaded from a Word table with the above columns. Or load two CSV plain UTF-8 files, one with responses and the other with links.
Sends 1 file:
Response #, Need-Datestamp, Response-Datestamp, Compliance, Response, list of related need #s
To make this process easier you can set up export formats with the settings you need so that each time you want to run the process you don’t need to remember what the correct settings are.
Customer loads responses and links each response to the associated needs. If the customer has multiple copies of each need, the need datestamps identify which needs to update. There are a number of options you can use to capture the data:
Load a Word table from Microsoft Word®
Using two CSV plain UTF-8 files one with responses and another with links
Monetary sub divisions, we are these days, quite familiar with. However, mathematically simple and consistent measurements certainly have not always been the case. The units and ratios we have used in the past had their benefits, and also their complications.
This was the popular name for the once common pre-decimal currencies throughout Europe. Spread by the Romans, it was the king of the Franks that standardised the non-decimal ratios between them. Librae, solidi and denarii were introduced into Britain in the late 8th century by King Offa. The British coins became £sd or pounds, shillings and pence. Money like many of the other measurements, such as length, mass and volume had evolved from various systems used locally and built upon when exchange or trade became necessary.
Europe switched to decimal relationships in the 18th and 19th centuries. The UK held out until the 20th before swapping. Fifty years ago on February the 15th the UK switched to the decimal system. There was now a simple decimal relationship between the pound and it’s sub divided part the penny, of 1:100, rather than 240. Out went Shillings, Thropences, Florins and Crowns. However, whist all major transactions and banking rounded to the penny, for small value items there was a need for another sub division. It was decided 0.1p was too small to be of use in the conversion between old and new so the ½p or half penny at 200th’s of a £ was part of the mix. It remained so until 1984!
Switching
The switch took around 18 months to complete. Shop keepers often showed dual prices using the agreed conversion tables, to make it easier for shoppers to make the switch. This swap was remarkably quick compared to the change to the metric system. Hundreds of different measures were localised, and it took the French revolution to kick-start the change to decimally divided measurements based on natural physical constants. From 1799 it was around 50 years before various decrees and the spreading of standards really took hold. Seeing no reason to change, the UK other than those in the scientific communities who needed to share data remained with the non-decimal non-metric measures until the mid 20th century.
Units
Units
There is an importance to uniform measure and units to make sure everyone uses the definition. In Cradle labelling the column of the View or the element in the Form can make it more clear to the reader what the value represents. A description can be added to the category itself which will be displayed as a tool-tip. Additionally you may want an additional category with a set of units that the user can choose from. This will also make for easy querying and sorting (for example search for all components specified in feet)
Cradle Release
Cradle 7.6
At the beginning of February we released Cradle 7.6. Details of the new features (Risk Management and Test Execution and Recording) and updates to existing functionality can be found in our Release announcement. Keep an eye on the upcoming blog articles detailing their use. Full details of all the changes are included in the release notes included with the download.
For those with maintenance, if you have not downloaded the software and requested a new security code, contact 3SL support so you can upgrade for free.
If you have a single user version, because this is a minor version release (as opposed to a patch) you will need to buy the latest version to take advantage of some of the feature updates. Please note that some features, such as the new Test and Risk module, are not available in the single user versions and you must check their suitability on our products comparison page.
Training Courses
Don’t forget to check and book onto the Cradle Public training courses. The full calendar, and any updates, are available here. If you want a consultation, or tailored training just for your team contact salesdetails@threesl.com
Cyber Essentials
Cyber Essentials Badge
We were pleased to announce, earlier this month, another successful assessment under the Cyber Essentials scheme.
We think this scheme helps instil confidence when dealing with online companies and would encourage all our customers to consider using it or similar.
Social Media
Twitter
Framatome Tweet 2021
We looked at the advances made in nuclear fuels by Framatome
We highlighted how 3SL provide a set of Q&A for anyone writing a tool evaluation. 3SL also wished well all those celebrating the new lunar year bringing in the Chinese new year of the Ox.
Wishing all our customers staff and distributors who are celebrating the start of the new Chinese year, peace prosperity and luck.
The Ox is important because of its role in traditional agriculture. People born in the years of the ox are said to be hard-working and honest. They believe that people should do what is asked of them and that they should stay within their boundaries. A good working ethos for any engineer!
The years of the Ox align with the lunar cycle starting in 1913, 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997, 2009.
3SL are pleased to announce that the latest version of their requirements management and system engineering tool Cradle is available to download.
Cradle is offered in a number of configurations, from multi-user full scale enterprise with flexible concurrent module licences to the very competitive single-user installations:
Cradle-RM Desktop
Cradle-RM Pro
Cradle-SE Desktop
Cradle-SE Pro
Upgrade Offer 20% Discount
3SL are pleased to offer an upgrade discount of 20%** to those with any single-user Cradle-7.5 product who upgrade to any single-user Cradle-7.6 product by 17:00 GMT on 30.3.21.***
Email: salesdetails@threesl.com with your name, and contact details so we can verify you have previously purchased a Cradle 7.5 product. We will then send you a voucher code to use in the Cradle online shop against Cradle 7.6 products.
Customers who use the multi-user Cradle Enterprise and who have an active maintenance agreement with 3SL, can upgrade to Cradle-7.6 free of charge by downloading the Cradle-7.6 software for Windows and/or Linux and requesting a new Security Code for Cradle-7.6 from 3SL.
Please Note:
Some features are only available in certain versions of Cradle. Customers should familiarise themselves with these details on our products page in order to determine their suitability.
We, Structured Software Systems Limited (3SL), have been successful in our re-assessment under the Cyber Essentials scheme for another year.
As a Government-backed, industry-supported scheme, Cyber Essentials aims to help organisations protect themselves against common online threats.
IASME Assessment
IASME and GDPR Logo
The IASME Governance standard, based on international best practice, is risk-based and includes aspects such as physical security, staff awareness, and data backup. This is acknowledged, by the UK Government in consultation with trade associations and industry groups, as one the best cyber security standards for small companies.
We are happy to say we met the IASME standard including GDPR successfully.
Best Practice
These assessments provide a good reality check. We believe undergoing these processes will give our customers confidence when dealing with 3SL, and we would encourage our customers use similar precautions for their businesses. Whilst these assessments can provide confidence in your data security, the unexpected may happen. Whether this is a malicious attack, or simply a power loss and failure of your UPS resulting in disk corruption. Alongside good data security, we would also recommend you always have a good backup plan for your Cradle data.
We are pleased to announce the release of Cradle-7.6
Cradle 7.6
Cradle-7.6 is available now for download from the downloads section of the 3SL website. This is the latest version of Cradle.
3SL customers with active maintenance have been sent an e-mail notification, and details of which of their enhancement requests and bug reports are included in this new release. This is a significant Cradle release that increments the Cradle minor version number from 7.5 to 7.6. This means that the Security Codes for Cradle-7.5 will not work with this new Cradle-7.6 release. Therefore, if you want to upgrade to the new Cradle-7.6 then you must contact 3SL Support and request a new Cradle-7.6 Security Code since your existing Cradle-7.5 Security Codes will not work with this new release.
New Cradle-7.6 Capabilities
This release contains a range of new capabilities, including major new modules RISK and TEST for risk management and test execution and management, respectively – these are charged for separately – and a collection of enhancements and bugs for the existing Cradle components:
New Modules
Risk Management
Risk management is an activity undertaken, to a greater or lesser extent, by almost every organisation. It is fundamentally concerned with identifying events which, if they occur, would have a positive or negative effect on an organisation or project.
Test Execution
Test execution and recording is generic testing of a system by people who are prompted to perform a series of steps and indicate the result of each of these steps, together with some text and image notes.
New Features
Linux Installer
Install process enhanced to improve installation experience and application launching shortcuts added to improve Cradle integration
Project Setup
Ability to hide unused item types from the WorkBench and Web Access user interfaces
User Preferences
New text size options now available
Quick Access Bar
Add Project queries to Quick Access Bar
Configuration Management
Ability to Approve All and Reject All from the Review tab
Ability to Register All from the Review tab
Systems Modelling
Categories can be chosen in Project Setup to colour item type symbols on a diagram
Option to initialise Project Setup with SysML related elements. There is also an option to clear SysML related elements.
External Commands
Two external commands added for item re-versioned and cross reference baselined.
Performance Enhancements
We have made a number of low-level, internal, changes deep inside the Cradle code that reduce the number of interactions between Cradle clients and the database. This will reduce the time that Cradle takes to perform a variety of common operations. The effect will be more noticeable the longer the time between your Cradle clients and the Cradle Database Server (CDS). Separately, we have made some fundamental improvements in the way that Cradle interacts with Oracle and MySQL RDBMSs so that those customers who store their Cradle databases in either Oracle or MySQL will see a particularly dramatic performance improvement.
Operations that will be noticeably faster include:
Displaying sets of top-level items or bottom-level items in the Project and Phase sidebars
Querying using levels
Handling cross references
Importing information
Indexing and frame handling in ODBC
Reduced PDB access when sending alerts
Download
You must contact 3SL for new Security Code(s) for Cradle-7.6. Cradle-7.6 will not accept Security Codes from Cradle-7.5 or any previous release.
Cradle clients (WorkBench, Web Access, Document Publisher for instance) and server (Cradle CDS) versions can not be mixed. Therefore, you must upgrade all Cradle installations to 7.6.
Cradle-7.6 databases do not have the same format as Cradle-7.5 databases. Hence the Cradle-7.6 release includes a database converter for the transition from Cradle-7.5 to Cradle-7.6. Full details are available in the 7.6 release notes, and updated manuals in addition you can always contact support@threesl.com .
Single User Products
Please note that there are no maintenance services for single-user Cradle products. Therefore, if you have purchased any of the single-user Cradle-7.5 products:
Cradle-RM Desktop
Cradle-RM Pro
Cradle-SE Desktop
Cradle-SE Pro
then you will not be able to request a new Cradle-7.6 Security Code. If you want to update your single-user Cradle system to the new Cradle-7.6 release, then you must buy the new Cradle-7.6 release.
Help with Cradle-7.6
In conclusion, we’re pleased with the new capabilities in Cradle-7.6 most importantly hope you will benefit by upgrading. If you are not already a customer and would like more information about Cradle, you can download the software and a free evaluation licence, find more on our website, or request a webinar. If you would like to read some independent reviews feel free to use your favourite search engine or take a look at Capterra.
Article Updated
02/01/2021 – Additional information regarding changes and clarification for single user products.
08/02/2021 – Typo. Added link to special discount offer 7.5 – 7.6 Single user products
Whatever promises and resolutions you make we hope you manage to keep some of them. However, rather than some grand gesture of promising to give up chocolate bars and to do more exercise, we should also look at process habits that need to change. We’ve all got into the good habit of hand sanitising every time we enter a shop. The problem is when this habit / muscle memory becomes so engrained, we do it without thinking, a bit of disaster when you realise you are still wearing your winter mittens.
The same is true for business processes. It’s great when they become second nature, endemic, without having to refer to the policy again and again, but this can also be a hazard. If the situation, requirement or supply chain alters in some way, indoctrinated processes and solutions can be implemented without sufficient thought or review. So this new year make a note to ensure you check the mitigation still matches the hazard, the process is still suitable for the new requirements. If necessary plan and record exceptions and variations. Of course, use Cradle to record and track.
Training Courses
Cradle Online Training
We are offering a number of public training courses. These are ideal for companies who don’t need a tailored course or have only one or two staff members requiring instruction. They are run on-line with a member of 3SL instructing. This year we will cover Requirements Management, Document Publisher and System Administration. The full calendar, and any updates, are available here.
Brexit
BREXIT [1]3SL is fully committed to a continuation of supply of software, training and consultancy. We continue to work with our worldwide distributors and expect there to be little change as far as the end Cradle user is concerned. In the EU your data will either be handled by an EU distributor or by 3SL in the UK. At present all protections and EU data laws have UK equivalents. We will inform you of any changes where necessary should these laws and rules diverge in the future.
Cradle Release
Teaser
Now in the final testing stages the new release (7.6) will be out soon – Watch for news. Those under maintenance will receive general updates and features for free. Those without maintenance or using single user products will need to purchase an upgrade to 7.6 from earlier point releases. We are also adding two new modules. You’ll be able to download an evaluation copy if you want to look at the Risk Management and Test Execution and Recording features before purchasing a licence.
Social Media
Twitter
PNNL Dec 2020 Tweet
We liked the way researchers were overcoming difficulties to monitor underwater impact of renewable energy sources.
We reminded readers to think holistically, where your bubble boundary ends is your context. However, there are often other or greater systems in the whole scheme. That’s all for the January 2021 Newsletter, but if there are any topics you would like to see discussed drop us a line at social-customer@threesl.com
