RELEASE NOTES
brXM version V12.6
brXM Developer Edition (Hippo CMS) V12.6
Highlights for V12.6
Hello all, happy to announce that we have released a new version of brXM (BloomReach Experience Manager), the new name we use for our BloomReach experience product. This minor release introduces new functionality and improvements. In this document we will give a brief overview of the highlights of this release.
Please note that due to our security release policy the availability of the open source code for all active releases will follow in about six weeks.
What’s new for end-users
Campaigns (Enterprise feature)
As follow up to our Project feature that was introduced earlier in Version 12, we now introduce the campaigns feature, which builds on top of the Projects architecture. A campaign is a project that is ‘live’ without being merged to core. Starting a campaign publishes all channel and content changes in the project. A running campaign can either be stopped, reverting the channels and content back to core, or merged to core.
This means that you can run a set of changes in a project as a campaign, swapping these into or out of production whenever you decide you want to. If the campaign is ended, the site is fully reverted to the state it was before the campaign was started. It is now even possible to edit and publish the core version of a document even while (a branched-off version of) that document is being part of a project. For example, you can use a project to work on larger or long term changes and still fix a typo in production instantly.
Furthermore, the existing review/approval processes remain in place as always; only if a campaign is ‘Approved’ it will be possible to run it.
Move content blocks, compounds and fields fast (community feature)
Content blocks, multiple orderable compounds and fields now have 2 extra arrows controls: to move an item directly to the top or bottom.
LDAP performance (Enterprise feature)
The Channel Manager now has increased performance for customers with slow LDAP servers.
Improved real time visitor view (Enterprise feature)
The Audience perspective Real Time visitor view now shows the query string from web requests. This is useful for customers linking in via email campaigns. This data can also be used by developers in custom Collectors for the Relevance feature.
What’s new for developers
New cache settings
When you use version bundles we have devised improved settings for the cache. We documented this best practice at our website.
Improved real time visitor view (Enterprise feature)
The Audience perspective Real Time visitor view now shows the query string from web requests. This data can be used by developers in custom Collectors for the Relevance feature. This is also useful for customers linking in via email campaigns.
Minor deprecations
- The ‘@Color’ annotation for component parameters is deprecated.
- The document type editor ‘label field’ is deprecated. The document type editor previously offered the option to add a field of the type Label. This did not offer more functionality than a regular String field. It was once created to support translatable strings, but that functionality is now offered through Resource Bundles.
- The ‘AbstractJCRService’ is deprecated and will be removed in V13.0.
- The ‘templateQuery’ attribute of the HstManageContent tag is deprecated.
Minor release
V12.6 is a minor release so it is backwards compatible with the previous minor release. Also, updating to this version from the previous minor version should be of little effort. Please see the update documentation (https://www.onehippo.org/library/upgrade-minor-versions/upgrade-12.5-to-12.6.html ) for details.
V12.6 is also a final minor release, which means that it will be maintained and supported longer compared to a normal minor release. Depending on your support contracts, you can have access to, and support on, this version for up to two coming major releases. With our current release cadence, this will be for about two years.
System support and requirements
The full system requirements and third party system support calendar can be found here: https://www.onehippo.org/library/about/system-requirements.html.
Highlights
- Usage of OpenJDK 8 is now supported as of v12.6 and all current supported maintenance releases. This applies to all OpenJDK 8 distributions, provided it is based on the current (latest CPU: Critical Path Update) version, and using Hotspot. Customers may use the OpenJDK 8 distribution provided by their OS vendor or one of the independent distributions like from AdaptOpenJDK.
- Usage of Apache Tomcat 9.0 is now supported as of v12.6 and all current supported maintenance releases
- We dropped system support for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 as these products are end-of-life (mainstream support). We included Windows Server 2016 in our system requirements.
Pre-announcements
- As of V13.0, Essentials will no longer provide JSP rendering templates, and always use Freemarker instead.
- Adding system support for using Java 11 is planned for a future major release, next year.
End-of-life, support and maintained code
On popular demand we improved the formulation of our EOL policy (https://www.onehippo.org/about/eol-policy.html) to provide more clarity in the nomenclature we use. This was somewhat confusing sometimes. The policy itself did not change.
Nomenclature
Supported product version
When a product is supported, this means that the customer will get help from the helpdesk when issues arise as described in the service level agreement that the customer has with BloomReach. There are several service levels available.
Please note that if a bug is acknowledged in a supported, but not-maintained version, and a fix is needed, this fix will only be applied in the maintained product versions. This means the customer will need to move to a maintained version to receive the fix.
Maintained product version
When a product is maintained, the product code is updated and security- and bug fixes are made to the code. For maintained products, the system requirements for third party libraries and components is kept updated as well. Please note that we do not provide support for system requirement providers (e.g. databases, java, etc…), but we only support the usage for mentioned certified system requirement providers.
If a product is non-maintained, this means that the code is not touched anymore and therefore might contain bugs and/or security vulnerabilities due to newly discovered issues in our code or the libraries used.
End-of-life product version
Products that are not maintained and not supported are end-of-life. These might be available from our archives but could be removed without notice.
What does this mean for the current release?
Please note that this release changes the maintenance mode of V12.4. This version will not be maintained anymore as from today.
In the table below you can find the support status of your product and when support will end; this is dependent on the version currently being used and license level. Please note that versions that are not listed are not maintained and not supported, and therefore end-of-life.
Availability
brXM 12.6 is available as from October 23, 2018 onwards. Please note that due to our release policy the release of the open source CMS will follow in about six weeks.