Archived what's new in previous years

Order Hub is available on the IBM Sterling Order Management System SaaS legacy platform as version 23.2 rolls out.

Some third-party libraries are upgraded to mitigate high and critical vulnerabilities. For more information about these upgrades, you can contact IBM product support.

Stack upgrades

• IBM JDK - 8.0.8.0 (1.8.0_361)
• IBM Liberty - 23.0.0.3
• IBM MQ - 9.3.0.2

Sterling Order Management System is enhanced to remain unblocked for performing certain operations when infinite loop-detected exception is thrown. You can now successfully view the order in Order Hub or Application Console, cancel the order, and hold the order by using the changeOrder API when infinite loop detected exception is thrown. This enhancement also allows you to automatically hold the order when the same exception is thrown.

All settlement and refund payment transactions are now mapped with order events, even when invoices do not exist. Comprehensive payment audit information for mapping order events and payment transactions is logged in the payment audit database tables.

For more information, see Publishing settlement and refund details.

Environment-specific values can now be deployed or ignored in tables such as PLT_PROPERTY or YFS_COMMON_CODE and are not overridden when CDT is deployed from source to target.

For more information, see Deploying and ignoring selective records while using CDT.

Enhancements in the Database Query tool to tune HADR timeout and the error message that is displayed when the HADR database is down.

Support is provided for orphan custom property record deletion from the manageProperty API even when metadata does not exist.

Performance is enhanced for data-tier that is used for Order Hub metrics and the Store Manager dashboard.

Some third-party libraries are upgraded to mitigate high and critical vulnerabilities. If you need any further information about these upgrades, contact IBM product support.

A new getExportDataDetails API is added to retrieve data from the YFS_EXPORT table. For more information, see Javadoc.

Some third-party libraries with high and critical vulnerabilities are removed as they are not used in the Sterling Order Management System application. If you need any further information, contact IBM product support.

• Enabling data compression for columns

  Sterling Order Management System is enhanced to provide a configuration to compress data of compression supported columns. By using the configuration, you can compress the column data anytime without having to customize, rebuild, and redeploy Sterling Order Management System. For more information, see Guidelines to add support for data compression of columns.

• History data compression support

  A new property is introduced to enable data compression on all the compression supported columns when data is written to history tables. The property ensures that the data that is written in history tables is compressed even if compression is not enabled for the compression supported columns in transaction table. For more information, see history compression properties.

• YFS_IMPORT and YFS_EXPORT tables compression support

  Sterling Order Management System is enhanced to support compression for MESSAGE column of YFS_IMPORT and YFS_EXPORT tables.

• Order Audit Delete Purge agent

  The new Order Audit Delete Purge agent extends the capability of Order Purge agent by deleting the order audit records from Sterling Order Management System before the Order Purge agent purges the order. For more information, see Order audit delete purge.

• Order Purge agent

  The behavior of the Order Purge agent is enhanced to support configuration to delete the order audit data rather than moving it to history table, and publish the order audit data through a user exit. For more information about configuring delete of order audit, see Order purge agent.

For Order Audit Delete Purge and Order Purge agents, the Sterling Order Management System provides YFSBeforeOrderAuditPurgeUE user exit that publishes the order audit records being deleted from the application on purge of an order. Implement the user exit, if you want to store order audit records outside of Sterling Order Management System for future reference. For more information, see Javadoc.

• A new criteria parameter is added to the YFS_EXPORT purge agent to ignore the status value and purge all records. For more information, see Export table purge.
• A new getExportDataList API is added to retrieve data from the YFS_EXPORT table. For more information, see Javadoc.

If the database contains any compressed data, the DB Query Client decompresses the compressed data and displays in the result or exports the data.

• A new property is added to monitor the available free space in the SFTP server that is required to run the data extract agent. For more information, see Configuring the data extract.
• Additional monitoring to verify that the duplicate agent criteria are not running the data extract agent simultaneously. For more information, see Data extract agent.
• All tables in Sterling Order Management System are now valid tables by default and you do not have to add any tables manually as a data extract valid table. For more information, see Data extract configuration service.

The traceable components now come with a time to live configuration and the tracing would no more happen indefinitely. While creating the traceable component configuration, you can pass the time to live (TraceTTL) attribute as part of the modifyTraces API. If this TTL configuration is not passed, it is defaulted to 10 minutes. For more information, see Extending trace expiry time for logs.

When you deploy the 22.3 version of Sterling Order Management System, all your active trace components might stop because the default TTL to retain the trace is 10 minutes. You can enable the trace again. For more information, see Enabling or disabling trace for logs.

The performance of Sterling Order Management System is improved in providing real-time updates to data-tier of the Order Hub metrics and the Store Manager dashboard. This update also improves the upkeep of backend database tables that are used for real-time dashboards in the Sterling Order Management System user interfaces - Order Hub and IBM Sterling Store Engagement.

You can now configure the application to support OIDC provider login from the developer toolkit environment. For more information, see Supporting OIDC provider login in developer toolkit environment.

Some third-party libraries are upgraded to mitigate high and critical vulnerabilities. If you need any further information about these upgrades, contact IBM product support.

The workload segregation feature is now available for task queue agents to segregate workload by creating jobs with different segregation patterns. You can configure segregation patterns in the agent criteria of the task queue agents to process matching jobs.

The workflow segregation feature helps you process jobs with different workload and separate business flows in separate agent servers. You also have a flexibility to prioritize and run a particular type of workload with required resources to scale up the agent processing.

For more information, see Workload segregation for task queue agents.

New attributes are made available to apply different business flows for order processing.

These indicators are also available as condition builder attributes so that you can easily add conditions in your order processing model. For more information about these attributes, see Condition builder attributes.

When Sterling Order Management System APIs are called through the REST framework, if the input is in the JSON format, the output is automatically converted to JSON. In some such scenarios, it cannot be determined whether a child element in the XML is an array item or a child object. To avoid these inconsistencies, the REST framework is enhanced so that you can now enforce an XPath in the XML to define whether the child element is an array item or a child object.

For more information, see Specifying output format for JSON.

• Occurs within first 30 minutes of upgrade in Development, QA, MC, and Pre-production environments
• No outage in Production

• Occurs within first 30 minutes of upgrade
• No outage in other environments such as Development, QA, MC, and Production

The application uses the log4j2 (2.17.1) utility for logging. The log4j2 utility writes trace and debug information to a log file. You can modify the logging parameters in the log4j2 configuration file to control the location and level of the log files. For more information, see Migrating to log4j2 and Customizing log4j2 configuration.

Sterling Order Management System is the master for ship nodes, which includes distribution centers, warehouses, stores, and drop ship nodes. To manage the inventory in Adobe Commerce as part of the integration, ship nodes in Sterling Order Management System must be synced with Adobe Commerce. For more information, see Synchronizing ship nodes.

Improved the data extract for handling backup database while syncing data during the database maintenance and long running reorganizations.

Orders that placed in Adobe Commerce are created in Sterling Order Management System. For orders that are marked as pickup from store, Adobe Commerce notifies the customer when the order is ready for pickup. When the order is picked by customer and the order is fulfilled by IBM Sterling Store Engagement, the order is marked as shipped in Sterling Order Management System. A notification is sent to Adobe Commerce, which marks the order as complete and an invoice is triggered in Adobe Commerce. For more information, see In-store order pickup update.

Orders that are returned by the Adobe Commerce customers are authorized in Adobe Commerce. The return order authorization in Adobe Commerce is called Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA). The authorized returns are sent from Adobe Commerce to Sterling Order Management System over a synchronous call. For more information, see Returning orders.

The inventory synchronization is enhanced to support Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility events for enabling more frequent inventory updates to Adobe Commerce. For more information, see Activity-based sync mode.

Use the developer toolkit to easily customize Order Hub by creating new applications or modifying existing applications. The toolkit provides all the source code that renders the Order Hub application menus and scripts to automate processes for a quick set up. You can use the source code as a starting point for your customizations. For more information about how to set up Order Hub in the toolkit, see Overriding the default docker compose properties. For more information about customization, see Customizing Order Hub.

Adobe Commerce receives the inventory updates such as full sync and threshold from IBM Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility, which is a hyper scaling, multi-active microservice and inventory controller for the Adobe Commerce integration with IBM Sterling Order Management System. For more information, see Publish inventory availability details.

When an order from Adobe Commerce is created in IBM Sterling Order Management System, but cannot be fulfilled because of various reasons such as damage, pilferage, or inventory mismatch, a back order update is sent from Sterling Order Management System to Adobe Commerce. For more information, see Back order update.

The developer toolkit on Windows 10 by using Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2 (WSL 2) is out of the beta phase and is now available with complete support. For more information about how to get started with setting up developer toolkit in a Windows 10 with WSL 2 environment, see Prerequisites for setting up containerized developer toolkit on a Windows environment.

Upgrade impact: No.

If you are an existing Sterling Order Management System customer, you will see additional sample pipelines with the 10.0 version. However, your existing pipelines with the 9.5 version and your pipeline determination rule does not change and continues to point to your existing pipelines.

Upgrade impact: No.

Synchronizing inventory data from Global Inventory Visibility to Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility (phase 1) is enhanced to remove environment specific dependencies and support CDT.

For more information about this enhancement, see Synchronizing inventory data from Global Inventory Visibility to Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility (phase 1).

Integration with Adobe Commerce

Default services are provided to integrate Sterling Order Management System with Adobe Commerce.

For more information, see Integrating with Adobe Commerce.

Sterling Order Management System is now integrated with Adobe Commerce to fulfill the orders that are placed in the Adobe Commerce web store.

You can use the XSLT files and IACValueMaps.xml to create your services and integrate the two systems.

For more information, see Integrating with Adobe Commerce.

Synchronize your supply and demand data to Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility and start using Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility as your inventory management system for Sterling Order Management System.

For more information about using Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility as your inventory management system, see Migrating from Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility integration phase 1 to phase 2.

The IBM WebSphere Liberty application server version on all Sterling Order Management System cloud environments is upgraded to the latest version. Customer deployments can now take advantage of all the security fixes and the new enhancements that are part of this release. The developer toolkit version 21.2 also uses the latest version of IBM WebSphere Liberty application server.

Upgrade impact: No.

Java is upgraded with a minor version to mitigate security vulnerabilities.

Upgrade Impact: No.

For procurement and multi-hop transfers, when node transfer schedule is defined between two Ship Nodes, the transit time is read from the transfer schedule. To override the transit time for procurements, the application is enhanced to read the overridden information from the getDeliveryLeadTimeUE user exit, and the OverrideTransferSchedule attribute is passed with the DeliveryLeadTime information. For more information, see the API Javadoc for the getDeliveryLeadTimeUE user exit.

Upgrade Impact: No.

When Minimize shipments to customer through transfer is enabled in Sterling Order Management System, if a ship node is expected to procure inventory, cost calculation during the fulfillment optimization is enhanced to consider cost of required procurements during the assignment comparison. This enhancement helps in early determination of the optimal solution. Also, the NodePriorityCost is considered for procurement assignment if it is returned from the getExternalCostForOptionsUE user exit in assignment and solution comparison.

Upgrade Impact: No.

Milestone entries were added in the YFS_STATUS_MILESTONE table to use as status options when creating Creating alert rules. As a result, the Sterling Order Management System created applicable entries in the YFS_ORDER_DATE table for all orders and entries in the YFS_ADDITIONAL_DATE table for all shipments. If you do not intend to use the Creating alert rules feature, consider removing the milestones. For more information, see Unexpectedly high number of rows in the YFS_ORDER_DATE or YFS_ADDITIONAL_DATE database tables.

IBMid authentication support is implemented for stand-alone Applications Manager. For more information, see Launching stand-alone Applications Manager to connect to cloud environment.

Upgrade impact: No.

Standardized interface to access the identity data (ID token) for the currently logged in user that can be used for further customizations as part of post-authentication implementations. For more information, see Accessing ID tokens that are sent by IBMid servers.

Upgrade impact: No.

Support for developer toolkit on Windows 10 by using Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2 (WSL 2). For more information about how to get started with setting up developer toolkit in a Windows 10 with WSL 2 environment, see Prerequisites for setting up containerized developer toolkit on a Windows environment.

Upgrade impact: No.

The IBM WebSphere Liberty application server version on all Sterling Order Management System cloud environments is upgraded to the latest version. Customer deployments can now take advantage of all the security fixes and the new enhancements that are part of this release. The developer toolkit version 21.1 also uses the latest version of IBM WebSphere Liberty application server.

Upgrade impact: No.

• Enhancements to introduce better error handling and resiliency to automatically recover from Sterling Order Management System and Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility integration failures.
• Enhancements in the Sterling Order Management System agent framework for better error handling during MQ connection failures to prevent cascading effect on applications that interact with MQ.

Upgrade Impact: No.

The New Relic component is enhanced to retain all the required set of key metrics that are critical for proactive monitoring of the overall health of Sterling Order Management System environments.

Upgrade Impact: No.

Improvements in application server start-up process to speed up the time taken to start the applications.

Upgrade Impact: No.

• DISTINCT query

  The DISTINCT query is enhanced to display distinct values for the specified column in a table. For example, select distinct <organization_code> from yfs_item where 1=1;

  For more information about the DISTINCT query, see Running SQL queries with the DB Query Client.

  Upgrade Impact: No.

• View query results in Microsoft Excel

  The Export query results are enhanced such that the query results can be exported to a read-only CSV file and can be opened only in Microsoft Excel. Also, for numbers that are greater than 11 digits an apostrophe (') is added to ensure that the whole numbers are displayed as text in the CSV file.

  For more information about enhanced Export exporting the query results, see Running SQL queries with the DB Query Client.

  Upgrade Impact: No.

• Column Aliases query for reporting

  The Column Aliases query is enhanced to make the column names in a table more readable. For example, select order_no as Docket from yfs_order_header;.

  For more information about the column aliases query, see Running SQL queries with the DB Query Client.

  Upgrade Impact: No.

• SYSCAT schema query support in DB Query tool

  SYSCAT schema query is now supported in the DB Query Client to query on select tables from the SYSCAT schema and retrieve the meta information on regular IBM Sterling Order Management System tables. For the list of tables that can be queried from the SYSCAT schema, see Running SQL queries with the DB Query Client.

  Upgrade Impact: No.

• Improved handling of errors during data deployment as part of CDT Import process.
• Improvements in import CDT process to better handle Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility and Order Hub integrations.

For more information, see Importing configurations by using Configuration Deployment Tool (CDT).

Upgrade Impact: No.

You can now clean up data extract job records that are older than 120 days. This helps to improve the performance of queries on the data extract jobs table. To enable this, a new property, yfs.yfs.coc.dataextract.jobpurge.leadDays, is introduced.

For more information, see Data extract agent.

Upgrade Impact: No.

• You can now download the latest containerized developer toolkit from Self Service. This developer toolkit corresponds to the latest minor or major version of the runtime image that is released. For more information, see Downloading the containerized developer toolkit on the legacy platform.
• Option to clean up containers as part of update process and use new customizations afresh is introduced. To always recreate your runtime container as part of update-extn command, enable the following property in your om-compose.properties file: REM_RT_CONT_ON_UPD=true

  For more information, see Update custom extensions in containerized developer toolkit environment.

• You can now install and integrate Sterling Intelligent Promising Inventory Visibility phase 1 adapter along with your developer toolkit. For more information, see Installing developer toolkit with Sterling Inventory Visibility phase 1 adapter.
• New developer toolkit commands are introduced to enable remote debugging for agent and integration servers. For more information about these commands, see Docker Compose commands reference.

Upgrade Impact: No.

For more information about developer toolkit, see Setting up a developer toolkit environment.

The following flag and properties are introduced to provide new capabilities in the data extract feature:

• IsInactive - Flag to disable a table configuration from getting extracted.
• yfs.yfs.coc.dataextract.sftp.removefailedfiles - Property to remotely clean up stale extract files that are part of failed extracts.
• yfs.yfs.coc.dataextract.csv.escapedoublequote - Property to escape a double quotation mark in the extracted data with a custom string.
• yfs.yfs.coc.dataextract.fetch.maxminsold - Property to reduce the end extract time from present configuration of 1 hour earlier than current time.
• yfs.yfs.coc.dataextract.fetch.maxdaysextractatonce - Property to optimize data extraction of a long span in chunks of days.

For more information about the properties, see Configuring the data extract .

For more information about using the data extract feature, see Data extract overview.

Customization support for adding non-US Zip code and/or Region records is provided, and validations are added to ensure that only the right SQLs related to these tables are uploaded.

Upgrade Impact: No.

For more information, see Adding custom optional SQL data.

Use the manageCarrierServiceSchedule and manageCarrierServiceOverride APIs to create, modify, or delete a carrier service schedule or carrier service override. For more information about the newly added APIs, see the Javadoc.

Upgrade Impact: No.

The IBM WebSphere Liberty application server version on all Sterling Order Management System cloud environments is upgraded to v19.0.0.12. Customer deployments can now take advantage of all the security fixes and the new enhancements that are part of this release.

Upgrade Impact: No. IBM has certified the out-of-the-box applications and implementations with Liberty v19.0.0.12. You can test your customizations on developer toolkit or in their lower environments after the upgrade.

IBM MQ version on all Sterling Order Management System cloud environments is upgraded to v9.1.4 to address vulnerabilities reported by IBM Security team.

Upgrade Impact: No impact on functionality. Upgrade will be done with zero downtime. But, it is recommended that the integrations that push/pull data from IBM MQ are stopped during the upgrade window. This is to ensure that there is no loss of data in case of any unforeseen issue with IBM MQ upgrade. Agent/Integration servers will be restarted as part of IBM MQ upgrade.

The middleware that is leveraged in setting up an Sterling Order Management System developer environment through developer toolkit are updated. The middleware that is upgraded are IBM MQ, IBM WebSphere Liberty application server, and Db2.

Upgrade Impact: Yes. SI developers will need to set up a new 20.1 developer toolkit environment. They will not be able to upgrade their 19.3 developer toolkit setup to 20.1 developer toolkit because it involves middleware version upgrades. However, Db2 data migration from earlier developer toolkit to 20.1 developer toolkit is supported as part of the fresh setup. This might take half an hour to 1 hour more than the regular upgrade process, mainly because of the data export and import.

SI users can now use the new Java Client tool to connect to and test queues on their cloud MQ instance over SSL. For more information about the Java Client tool, see Using Java Client tool to test MQ queues over SSL.

You can now access the Sterling Configure, Price, Quote application by using JWT authentication.

For more information about JWT authentication, see JWT authentication.