panagenda is proud to announce this new release of ApplicationInsights, your guide through infrastructure transformation, IBM Notes database usage, source code and design analysis.
This new version is a major release which includes a ton of new features, bug fixes and improvements big and small! The most notable ones are listed below.
Highlights
Design Complexity Reinvented
Understanding the complexity of database design is a big piece of the puzzle during a transformation process. What is the cost of modernization or migration vs. the risk and effort of operating databases that no developer has touched for years and years? Not only quantifying the complexity of an application, but being able to compare it to other databases is key. Some of those databases might already have been processed and can give a benchmark for calculating effort or cost.
New Design Complexity Information
In this light, the calculation of design complexity undergone a substantial rework:
- Complexity categories are now determined by the design complexity of reference templates.
As starting point, special IBM standard templates act as reference points, but work has already
started on allowing customers to specify their own reference templates.
- It is now possible to adjust the factors which complexity calculation is based on.
Configuration is available in the settings menu under [Design complexity calculation options]
- The [Design] → [Complexity] page has received substantial improvements in performance and content.
Some of its original content is now shown on the page [Design] → [Source Code]
- The term "Impact" is gone and has been replaced by "Complexity". Wherever the numeric value behind
complexity categories (e.g. High, Medium, Low) is displayed, it's called complexity index or score.
Business Intelligence Enablement
ApplicationInsights provides access to its extensive data warehouse through industry standard APIs by using panagenda's DataMiner solution. This interface allows tools like Excel as well as business intelligence solutions such as Tableau or Power BI not only read the data, but integrate them on a continuous basis. In this new version the integration with DataMiner has been intensified yet again. Not only is accessible directly from within the ApplicationInsights' user interface, but the service will now be installed automatically when upgrading and additional data sources have been made available to DataMiner.
Database schema viewer in DataMiner
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
panagenda prides itself on listening to their customers and partners. This brilliant group of people speaks many different languages and hails from all over the world. Thus, we are proud to introduce a multilingual user interface with this new version.
Login dialog with language selection
The first additional language available will be German, since panagenda is headquartered Austria and Germany. An additional four or five languages are planned to be added soon. Among those will be European and Asian languages. Follow the panagenda blog for more details on this topic!
New Features / Improvements
- Database Catalog: the list of DB instances has been redesigned and now utilizes and interactive ag-grid component. This brings a lot of usability improvements with it. Among others client-side filtering, which in turn removes paging.
- Data Retention: a configuration option has been introduced that allows periodic cleanup of already processed historical raw data. This purging of raw data does not affect the historical data used for displaying the user interface.
- Design Collection: it is now possible to specify that re-collecting of database design should not happen immediately after a change was detected. Options are available to re-scan weekly, monthly or at a custom schedule.
- Design Collection: design of template candidates (both custom and IBM standard) are now being scanned automatically for complexity and similarity calculation purposes. Templates categorized as System Database do not count against the amount of licensed databases. While great care has been taken that very similar templates are not scanned multiple times, this will slightly increase the overall number of DBs processed.
- Design Collection: a re-prioritization in collection and scanning of database design has been performed, to ensure the most relevant data is available as quickly as possible.
- Design Insights: in close cooperation with the IBM Domino Applications on Cloud (DAC) team, a new rule-set has been created that will support customers who are evaluating DAC's brilliant SaaS offerings.
- Overall Design: the header menu bar has been improved for simplicity, responsiveness and to give an entry point to reach some of the new functionality introduced in this version.
- Server Overview: the list of servers in scope of AI is now available in the user interface. Information can be found collection status, OS as well as platform details and many more. This new component also allows exporting to CSV or Excel.
- System Notifications: the system will now send email notifications for system critical events like license expiry, disk utilization or collection status. After setting up the new version, the administrator will be prompted to create an SMTP profile.
Bug Fixes
- Data Collection: optimized measures that disable data collection upon reaching a certain disk usage threshold.
- Design Collection: the purging process for Notes crash dumps has been improved to prevent excessive disk usage.
- Design Collection: an issue has been resolved that prevented embedded Java files from being analyzed.
- Design Collection: an bug was fixed that could in rare situations lead stack overflow during design parsing.
- Environment Overview: the number for discovered servers now matches the number of servers available in system config.
- Insights: an issue has been resolved where rare combinations of regular expressions would not be evaluated correctly.
- Insights: a bug was fixed that would allow the creation of Insights with the same name by cloning multiple times.
- Insights: the nightly calculation of Insights matches has been reworked so it does not process disabled entries.
- Responsiveness: responsiveness has been optimized on several pages, including the Status Dashboard.
- View Design: a bug was fixed that lead to view design not being analyzed properly in certain situations.
Structural Changes / Upgrade Path
New Upgrade Procedure: Container Installer
Installation packages are no longer delivered via DEBZ files.The whole update process changes towards a more container oriented methodology in preparation for a potential integration with Kubernetes.
Two types of installer files are available:
- Online Installer: 35 MB download (requires Internet connection on the virtual appliance)
- Offline Installer: 750 MB download
Data Warehouse Rebuild Required
This version of ApplicationInsights brings wide-ranging improvements in performance and usability. Various changes in the data warehouse structure were necessary to make that possible. After installing the update, the application will not be usable until the DWH is rebuilt. This process runs nightly, but can be triggered manually after the update.
Knowledge Base
We are proud to introduce the ApplicationInsights knowledge base! In it you will find documentation, technical articles, release notes and downloads around the solution.