Archived what's new 2023

Important new features and enhancements were introduced in the Sterling™ Order Management System Software certified containers in 2023.

13 October 2023 (10.0.2309.1)

Changed Order Service security to use SSL: You can now configure your truststore for Order Service by using SSL inside security that is by configuring security.ssl.trust. The old way of configuring security without SSL (security.trust) is deprecated. For more information about configuring SSL, see Security section of OrderService Custom Resource.

Support for OIDC provider login: IBM® Sterling Order Management System Software certified containers now supports OIDC login through the Operator. For more information about configuring the application to support OIDC login, see Supporting OIDC provider login in Operator.

29 September 2023 (10.0.2309.0)

IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising containerization: The IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising services for Inventory and Promising are now generally available through Sterling Order Management System Software Enterprise Container. With IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Standard Operator, you can deploy and manage your application on any cloud, and any platform, regardless of the provider and without compatibility issues. For more information about IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising containerization, see IBM Certified Containers.

Changes to OMEnvironment initiates pod redeployment: Now, any property changes to OMEnvironment or OMServer automatically redeploys pods for the new changes to take effect.

Resolved agent image failure issue: The agent image no longer fails with the error, /opt/ssfs/runtime/repository/xapi/template/merged/api does not exist.

Fixed invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference error: The invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference error that occurred when an order service is created in a non-integrated mode is fixed.

11 August 2023 (10.0.2306.2)

Custom annotations support: You can now add custom annotations to the deployments or pods by using the newly introduced podAnnotations spec. This spec is added to the common, OMServer, orderService, callCenter, restService, and healthMonitor parameters.

Ability to change time zone for all images: The time zone environment variable (TZ) is now supported for all the Sterling Order Management System Software images (app, agent, and base).

Logs of data management pod are saved to persistent volume: The logs of data management pod are now saved to persistent volume, <pv path>/logs/<data-management-pod-name>.log.

Support to copy pod labels to deployments: Now, the labels in the pod are also available in the deployments.

Resolved generateImages.sh failure issue: The generateImages.sh script no longer fails with status 1, when the RPM packages are latest.

13 July 2023 (10.0.2306.1)

This release only includes changes to consume the latest container images and no enhancements are made to the IBM Sterling Order Management System Software Operator.

16 June 2023 (10.0.2306.0)

Note: This release includes changes relating to IBM Sterling Order Management System Software Operator only. If you are upgrading from 1.0.4 (or earlier) version, you can directly upgrade to version 1.0.6, and skip version 1.0.5. The 1.0.6 upgrade includes all the enhancements from the 9 June 2023 release.

Auto-generated default password for fresh installation: When you install the IBM Sterling Order Management System Software on a fresh database or schema, the default password for user admin is now generated automatically. While running the data management job with create mode, a script is run by the end to reset the password for SYSTEM_USER (admin). The password is fetched from the consoleAdminPassword of spec.Secret. For more information, see configuring dataManagement.

Changes to IBM Sterling Order Management System Software Operator controller

A new label for the webhook service is introduced so that it selects the OMS controller manager pod only. When upgrading to Operator 1.0.5 or later, you must remove the existing cluster service version (CSV) by running the following command. This change does not impact your existing deployments.

kubectl/oc delete csv ibm-oms-<edition>.v<version>

Resolved long agent server names issue that failed Readiness Check

The property yfs.heartbeat.serverid.usegeneratedkey: true that is added by default in the IBM Sterling Order Management System Software Operator 1.0.5 and later, generates server IDs based on a unique random number for each JVM. This may cause the readiness check for the agent servers to fail if the agent server name is long.

Do any of the following actions to fix this issue:

Upgrade to IBM Sterling Order Management System Software Operator version 1.0.6 where there is no dependency on the OMS images.
Set the yfs.heartbeat.serverid.usegeneratedkey to false so that the existing working agent servers continue to function.
Move to the latest OMS images with tag 10.0.0.2306.0-amd64.

9 June 2023 (10.0.2306.0)

Deploying IBM Sterling Call Center in containers

You can now deploy the Sterling Call Center application in containers.

For information about deploying Sterling Call Center in containers that is integrated with Sterling Order Management System Software, see Configuring callCenter parameter.
For information about deploying Sterling Call Center in containers independently, see Call Center (CallCenter) Custom Resource.
For information about building and deploying customization in containers, Customizing IBM Sterling Call Center.

Enhancements in deploying Order Hub in containers

Order Hub routes are now created on the same domain as the appServer with the smcfs contextRoot. It does not have its own domain now. For more information about identifying the backend server, see Preparing for OrderHub deployment.
If you have specified the customDomains for the orderHub server, you must update them to be in the same domain as the smcfs server. For more information about customDomains, see Creating multiple ingress hosts by using customDomains.
Instead of a / route, route is created for each UI module (9 routes).
Option to add environment variables (envVars) in the containers. For more information, see Environment variables (envVars).
Option to disable the SSL is now available for Order Hub. If the SSL is already disabled, you must install the latest Order Hub images.
The URL to access Order Hub is updated. For more information about the login URL, see Preparing for OrderHub deployment.

Enhancements in deploying Order Service in containers

Creating multiple ingress hosts for Order Service is now supported. Use the newly introduced parameter named customDomains for Order Service to provide multiple custom domain names over which your application is exposed. For more information, see Configuring orderService parameter.
A new validation is added to only accept createDevInstance or contactPoints but not both.

Activate Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility as a part of Sterling Order Management System Software operator data management: A new annotation apps.oms.ibm.com/activate-iv-integration is added for the user to activate the Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility integration. For more information, see Enabling Sterling Inventory Visibility integration for Sterling Order Management System Software.

Enhanced server.xml file to make unique JSESSIONID in OMServer: The server.xml file for each application server now has unique cookieName in the <httpSession cookieName=<unique cookie name per OMServer> />. The server.xml path is /config/server.xml and the cookieName follows the format of <Upper Case Deployment Name>-JSESSIONID.

Enhancements to generateImages.sh script

For images with tag 10.0.2306.0-amd64 and later, the container image generation is enhanced to accommodate image name conflicts when duplicate WAR files are passed. Now, when there is only one group, the resulted image is always named with the value that is specified in --APP_REPO, and the default is om-app. For more than one group, the images are named with the WAR names and are sorted alphabetically and hyphenated. For more information, see ../customization/c_OMRHOC_customizing_OMS_runtime.html#concept_ytb_vmv_rrb__dupwar.
- image parameter is added to healthMonitor and restService. The fields can be provided to indicate the image name and tag to use. For more information, see Configuring healthMonitor parameter and Configuring restService parameter.
The Liberty profile is now made default in the directory structure for application servers. For more information, see ../customization/c_OMRHOC_customizing_OMS_runtime.html#concept_ytb_vmv_rrb__liberty.

Enhanced heartbeat support

New heartbeat probes are added to support isccs and wscdev.
In the Operator version 1.0.5 (and later), a property yfs.heartbeat.serverid.usegeneratedkey: true is added by default. If the property is set to true, then for each JVM, the server ID is generated based on a unique random number.

12 May 2023 (10.0.2303.2)

New annotations for ActiveMQ and data management

Following annotations are introduced to automatically install and configure the ActiveMQ driver.
- apps.oms.ibm.com/activemq-install-driver
- apps.oms.ibm.com/activemq-driver-url
The apps.oms.ibm.com/skip-ddls annotation is introduced to skip Database Definition Languages (DDLs) from being applied when the data manager is running.
For more information, see Annotations used in Sterling Order Management System Operator.

Support to define servers with 0 replica

You can now create app, agent, and integration servers with 0 replica.

30 March 2023 (10.0.2303.0)

Support for passing customer overrides through configMaps by using additionalMounts

You can now use additionalMounts to pass customer overrides through a configMap. For more information, see Passing customer overrides through configMaps by using additionalMounts.

Support for creating multiple ingress hosts

Use the newly introduced parameter named customDomains to provide multiple custom domain names over which your application is exposed. With this support, the custom domains continue to point to a fixed CNAME (custom domain name) than having to update it on your domain provider, when you use sub-domains that are generated by IBM Sterling Order Management System Software Operator. For more information, see Creating multiple ingress hosts by using customDomains.

Added upgradeStrategy for OMServer, healthMonitor, restService, orderHub, and orderService

You can now specify the upgrade deployment strategy by using the upgradeStrategy parameter that is introduced for OMServer, healthMonitor, restService, orderHub, and orderService. Available upgradeStrategy options are RollingUpdate and Recreate.

Internal prefix for Operator annotations

Annotations that are used internally by the IBM Sterling Order Management System Software Operator are now prefixed as internal. As a consequence of this change, you may observe a few stale deployments of restService and healthMonitor, when upgrading the Sterling Order Management System Software Operator from 1.0.2 to 1.0.3. You can safely delete these stale deployments once the healthy deployments of restService and healthMonitor are started.

Added url parameter for DB2 and PostgreSQL

The url parameter is now added for DB2 and PostgreSQL databases. For more information, see Configuring database parameter.

Added className for common and profile for dataManagement

Added support for ingress className in common and ability to configure profile for dataManagement pods.

Enhanced data management upgrade

Data management upgrade now supports moving from legacy to continuous delivery fix pack.

Enhanced class loader to build app images with WebSphere profile as Liberty

The app image now uses WebSphere profile as Liberty during build, when setting up a fresh database with factory data, and thus improving application utilization. For more information, see example of generating app image with WebSphere profile as Liberty.

Upgraded Order Service to 10.0.2303.0

Order Service is upgraded to work with Elasticsearch server version 7.17.9 since March 2023 (10.0.2303.0). For more information, see Updating to 10.02303.0.

Completed security fixes