München in winter – Rhapsody 8.3!

Muenchen

This week I was in München again. We have lots of customers there so traveling to Munich once and a while is unavoidable.

This time I went there by plane. There are more possible ways to go to Munich, plane, train and car. I let it depend on the starting point (from Home, which is 150km further then from the Office) The weather forecast (not very good, snow and ice) and my own personal feeling at the time (don’t wanted to drive far) So… KLM, do your job…

This time they did, no snow or wind to cancel the flights. And then flying is pretty easy for me. Just hop on the train in the city I live, check in (Yes… the Netherlands have a “public Transport Chipcard”. Just hold it against the check-in pole and it beeps. Check out again 1,5 hours later at Schiphol and you’re done. Eat your heart out, Germany…..

Flying went fast and comfortable. I like flying with KLM. In Munich I took the S-Bahn to the hotel. Always a challenge to find out where to go and which train you need. Giving the right directions in the right dose is an art, Munich does not have that.
But OK, München is OK. I don’t like their football team (at least not “that one”) but the city is cool. So I arrived at the hotel and checked in. # days of AUTOSAR modeling before me, later more about that!

Rhapsody 8.3

Almost in Nikolaus day (December 6) IBM released Rhapsody 8.3. As I already mentioned before: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it….
If you really want to update: please wait until we have tested the release and determined the parts that require special attention.
In a complex world, development environments are becoming more and more complex. Even small changes can have large consequences. Here I will give you a heads-up on the changes and some caveats we (and a helpfull customer!) have already established.

File Format and extensions

To allow a better integration in the Jazz platform, IBM needed to change the format that Rhapsody uses to store its models. until now that format was propriety (but working quite well) IBm changed that to an XML format. To indicate the change they changed the file extension (Like Microsoft did in Word and Excel, the went from .doc and .xls to .docx and .xlsx) Rhapsody files now also have an x behind it (.rpyx, .sbsx, etc)
This seems like a minor issue but is deadly when you want to keep your historical information in your config management files.
Some CM systems allow you to change the name of files but you have to do that by hand. Not a small job if you have large models….

Not new

In fact, the new database format was already there, it was just optional in version 8.2.1. It was there in the release notes but it was not really noticed. To be clear: I like this change. But it is a complex one, it takes time to solve all the pieces of the puzzle.

DiffMerge

OK, a new file format. Does that work with DiffMerge? The good new: Yes it does. The bad news: it only saves as .<file>x. converting old into new.

Save As?

The question that comes up immediately is: Can I still save in the old format. Yes you can! Like all (since 7.4) Rhapsody versions you can do “File”, “Save As” and then go back 2 Database versions. I don’t have an official statement from IBM yet but to me this looks like this option will be gone after 2 more releases.

When to update?

So this does not bother you? And you want to update to 8.3 anyway. Well… don’t do that yet. Certainly not if you use Eclipse (Plugin and Workflow), there have been some issues there.
There has been an iFix already but that did not solve all problems. IBM is working on this with high priority but it takes some time. I’ll keep you posted.
If you also use the RXF you also have to be a little patient, we have to test it first. Check our download portal, we keep you informed.