This document provides information about Oracle Communications MetaSolv Solution Release (MSS) 6.3.1.

This document consists of the following sections:

Software Compatibility

MetaSolv Solution 6.3.1 supports the following software versions:

  • Oracle Enterprise Linux Server 6.6 (or later) and 7.1 (or later)

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.6 (or later) and 7.1 (or later)

  • AIX 7.1 Update 1

  • HP Itanium 11.31 Update 7

  • Oracle Solaris 11.2 or later

  • Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016

  • Windows 8.1 Professional and Windows 10 Professional (client side)

  • Oracle WebLogic Server (12.2.1.3 and 12.2.1.4)

  • Oracle Database (12cR2, 18c, and 19c)

  • JacORB 3.9

  • Java Development Kit 8

  • Internet Explorer 11

  • Microsoft Edge 40 or later

Refer to MSS Planning Guide and MSS Installation Guide for more information on software versions and compatibility.

New Features

This section describes the new features introduced in this release.

PowerBuilder 2019 Upgrade

This maintenance release incorporates an integrated development environment upgrade to the latest version of PowerBuilder 2019 R2, which MSS uses to present you most of its user interfaces, process some of its application logic, as well as facilitate connectivity to the application server(s) and database, where applicable.

This upgrade provides you a more modern user interface throughout the application, yet it remains familiar to you, so no user training is required.

Upgrading to this version of PowerBuilder allows MSS to continue to support the latest Windows operating systems, Oracle Fusion Middleware WebLogic and Oracle Database releases, as well as take advantage of its improved security. Additionally, it also address the following issues:
  1. Improved internet web browser security with respect to Active X controls. MSS embeds Microsoft Internet Explorer / Microsoft Edge to render all of the web pages within the application such as MyDesktop, ASR, Customer Profile, and EWO, among others.
  2. Removes the dependency on setting the Windows XP compatibility mode for the application’s Windows executable file, which was previously required to work around an existing PowerBuilder version issue which may cause the application to lock up and become unresponsive. Refer to the following My Oracle Support Knowledge Article referencing this previous workaround:

    https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=1639575.1

  3. Improved integrated web browser drop-down experience without being required to modify Windows registry settings. This update removes the requirement for MSS client machines to have registry updates in order to be able to select options within a dropdown on an embedded webpage within MSS with your mouse or other input device, such as within ASR or EWO.
  4. As this upgrade no longer requires you to set the Windows XP Compatibility mode for the application as a workaround for unresponsiveness, this setting will no longer potentially trigger Adobe Acrobat to crash when opening some reports within the application.
  5. Improved overall user experience and usability when running a dual monitor setup. With this release, you are no longer required to run MSS on the primary display, and popup menus will display with the proper placement, with all of the expected menu options available.

Oracle Database 19c Certification

This release certifies MetaSolv Solution to run on Oracle Database 19c, and continues to be certified on Oracle Database 18c, and 12cR2.

Redesigned My Desktop

In this release, the main MetaSolv Solution My Desktop page has been redesigned. In earlier releases, this page was a portal with a default Welcome Page portlet. You had the option to add the pre-configured My Tasks and My Links portlets to the page, and were able to add custom portlets and customize the layout.

From this release forward, My Desktop no longer supports the addition of custom portlets, and presents the Welcome Page, My Tasks, My Service Requests, and My Links content within a static 2x2 layout.

The Welcome Page now supports the ability to provide custom notifications and/or announcements to every user. Controlled via a new Global Preference titled My Desktop Message within the System Information folder, you are given the option to provide text within separate Heading and Message sections. The Heading content is displayed in larger, red text, while the message content is displayed as regular size, black text. You may use this capability to notify users of planned down-times, upgrade schedules, or other notifications.

Note:

Any links that were added by users before upgrading to this release will not be migrated. Users are advised to save the links before upgrade and add them again after upgrading.

Ability to Re-initialize Gateway Events When Task is Rejected

This feature provides the ability to re-initiate gateway events when rejecting a task. If the Force Reopen Ind is not enabled for one or more of the gateway events tied to the tasks being rejected, the Gateway Event Reactivation window opens up where you can choose the gateway events to be re-initialized. When all rejected tasks contain only gateway events having their Force Reopen Indicator enabled, or no gateway events at all, you will not be presented with the Gateway Event Reactivation window.

Events that have the Reopen Ind set to Y are selected by default and you will not be able to deselect these rows. This feature also works for gateway events for tasks across multiple orders.

Network Grooming Support for Group Connections

The Network Grooming capability now supports grooming child connections to and from group connections. You may groom a child connection from an existing group connection to another group or bandwidth connection, as well as groom a child connection from an existing bandwidth connection to a group connection. Special circuits allocated to parent connections via circuit emulation are also supported.

Enhanced Connection Hierarchy to Traverse Through Group/Member Connection Hierarchies

This enhancement provides the capability to traverse through Group/Member connection hierarchies within Connection Hierarchy and the hierarchical views within Network Systems. Within these views, you may now traverse from an Optical transport layer all the way down to the virtual connections assigned to Group connections through the group's provisioned members, as well as all the way up the hierarchy from the provisioned virtual connections.

Enhanced Path Analysis Within Virtual Connection Design

The existing capability to design a virtual connection via Path Analysis by Hops within Connection Design, driven by Prioritized Paths, now supports paths having soft connections between components. When traversing a network, soft connections are typically assigned between components having unassignable connection specifications between them, and have been supported within manual Connection Design for many years. To support this advanced capability, a new Ingress/Egress Node checkbox is now available within the Managing a Component/Element window within Network Systems, which you must enable for each component you would like to make eligible for a soft connection to be passed to the Path Analysis engine. For the Path Analysis Results to return a path containing a soft connection between two components, each component must have its Ingress/Egress Node checkbox enabled.

By default, soft connections will only be returned between Ingress/Egress Nodes within the same network system, but you may enable soft connections between components belonging to separate network systems by configuring a new Network custom attribute for each component. To support this capability, the new custom attribute must be associated to the component type of each desired component, and then populated with the same customer-defined, alphanumeric value. When the Network custom attribute is populated for an Ingress/Egress component, the Path Analysis logic will only build a soft connection between it and other Ingress/Egress components having the same custom attribute value, regardless of which network system the component belongs, and will not build soft connections to other Ingress/Egress components within the same network system whose Network custom attribute is either not populated, or does not contain the same value.

When displaying a path containing one or more soft connections, the Path Analysis Results window designates each soft connection as “SOFT: “ within the Connection ID column. This is then followed by the value within the Network custom attribute when populated; otherwise it will display the Short Name of the associated Network System. Once you select the desired path for your design, the schematic design will be automatically generated, and each soft connection is labeled with the same value displayed within the Path Analysis Results window.

Obsolete Features

Because of the enhanced platform support added in MSS 6.3.1, some features are obsolete. This section describes the items that are obsolete in this release.

OCI Mode Support

The DST_Provision client will support only the THIN client mode and will no longer support the OCI mode for connecting to the database. If in case, you have the configuration set to OCI=Y, THIN=N, then you will receive the following error:

Logging not started.
Exception in thread "main" …

Known Problems in This Release

Table 1-1 lists the known problems in this release.

Table 1-1 Known Problems

Bug Number Description
-

Problem

The configuration ini files - tbs_util.ini, lerg.ini, jmaster.ini, npasplit.ini files requires the DBMS parameter to be set to ORA. When connecting to the corresponding application, you may encounter the following error message:

DBMS O84 is not supported in your current installation.

Workaround

Set the DBMS parameter to ORA.

31629552

Problem

When there are a large number of similar components with assignable specifications between those in a network system, path analysis during provisioning might be slower when soft connections are involved.

Workaround

You can design virtual connections manually.

31635996

Problem

In certain scenarios during provisioning a connection where soft connections are involved, you might encounter a No Path Found error for some network configurations with different component types and prioritized path setup.

Workaround

You can design virtual connections manually.

Fixes in This Release

Table 1-2 lists the customer-reported bugs that have been fixed in this release.

Table 1-2 Bugs Fixed

Bug Number Description
31167535

Issue

In the Equipment Maintenance window’s Port Address tab, when users modify the override option twice, one of the equipment port gets deleted.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now when the override option is modified twice, the application will not delete any port.

31167533

Issue

In the Equipment Inventory window, when users Install an equipment using Equipment Specs View with a spec having additional rate codes, the application incorrectly adds the additional rate codes as actual ports to the installed equipment instead of displaying them as additional rate codes for the same port.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now when the Equipment Specs View is used to install an equipment, the application correctly installs the equipment with only the primary rate code for the actual ports.

In the Equipment spec view, the primary rate code displays within parenthesis first, followed by a space, and then followed by the additional rate codes in brackets separated by slash (/).

E.g. (DS3) [DS0/STS1].

31097782

Issue

In the Product Service Request window, when a user Supplement Cancels an order, clicks OK in Task Generation window and changes focus to another application using Alt+Tab before the progress window pops up, the application closes with the below error message:

Error Number 2.

Error text = Null object reference.

Window/Menu/Object = w_progress.

Error Object/Control = w_progress.

Script = open.

Line in Script = 37.

The supplement cancel process is not processed completely.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now the application will cancel the PSR order even if the user moves away to another application after clicking on OK in the Task Generation window.

31075109

Issue

When attempting to make an equipment assignment on some circuits, the Equipment Assignment window displays the Z location on the left and the A location on the right.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now the A and Z location will be displayed in the appropriate positions in the equipment assignment window.

31044470

Issue

In the Connection Design window, when changing the network location in the equipment inventory window to a location with the building location CLLI that is same as the circuit's A or Z 11 byte CLLI, the application maps the assignment to Other location instead of the A or Z location.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now the application maps the assignment to A or Z location as appropriate.

30974925

Issue

In an EWO order, when opening a virtual circuit where the service type code of the circuit is not defined in the Service Application window, the application terminates with the below error:

Error Number 39.

Error text = Error accessing external object property nst_cont_type.

Window/Menu/Object = n_cst_cd_dbcommon.

Error Object/Control = n_cst_cd_dbcommon.

Script = of_get_nst_con_type.

Line in Script = 3.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now the virtual circuit will open successfully even if the service type code is not defined in the Service Application window.

30916971

Issue

In the Equipment Inventory and Network Area window, users are able to use expired 11 byte network locations.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now users will not be able to add/copy to an equipment, if any equipment in its hierarchy has an expired location. Moving an equipment from a non-expired location to an expired location is not permitted. However, move of an equipment would be permitted if moving within the equipment's hierarchy under an expired location.

Also, users cannot associate expired network location (11 byte) to a Network area.

30906702

Issue

In the End user location window, the application accepts latitude and longitude values outside the permissible range of -90 to 90 and -180 to 180 respectively.

For longitude, the values entered outside the permissible range “rolls over” into the next hemisphere. For latitude, this “rolling over” was wrongly done using 180 degrees as a reference.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now the application will give the below error message when a value outside the permissible range of -90 to 90 and -180 to 180 for latitude and longitude respectively.

When entering in decimal format, the below errors are returned for invalid values:

Latitude

Specified argument was out of the range of valid values.

Please enter a value between -90.0 and 90.0.

Longitude

Specified argument was out of the range of valid values.

Please enter a value between -180.0 and 180.0.

When entering in DMS format, the below errors are returned for invalid values:

For latitude degrees

Specified degrees is out of range. Please enter a value between -90 and 90.

For longitude degrees

Specified degrees is out of range. Please enter a value between -180 and 180.

For latitude/longitude minutes

Specified minutes is out of range. Please enter a value between 0 and 60.

For latitude/longitude seconds

Specified seconds is out of range. Please enter a value between 0 and 60.

30466469

Issue

The Background Processor creates an overridden design issue on top of Pending design issue when two consecutive reconciliations triggered by editing the same equipment is sent to Background Processor in quick succession.

This prevents the user from performing any changes on the overridden design issue.

Resolution

Code has been modified in reconciliation process. Now the background processor will not create an overridden issue on top of pending issue when two reconciliation processes triggered by changing the same equipment are sent to background processor in quick succession.

30266173

Issue

In Network system, auto population of Facility designation field is not working for CLF circuit formats when creating a new group connection.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now Facility designation field will be auto populated for CLF circuit formats when creating a new group connection.

31045140

Issue

Executing getDLR Web Service does not bring all the fields.

ISS, OLDECCKT, EQPTYPE, FACDESG, RELAY RACK, FACTYPE, UNIT, CHANNEL fields are missing in the output. The ECIA field gives a boolean output instead of valid values of Y, X or blank.

Resolution

Code has been modified and the getDLR Web Service API brings all the missing fields and also shows the proper valid values for the ECIA field.

31444560

Issue

When we navigate to the Connection Hierarchy Search window from Bandwidth link of CLR/DLR Design in the Connection Design of a facility, the virtual check box is disabled and hence users are not able to retrieve virtual circuits.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now the virtual checkbox is enabled allowing users to search and retrieve virtual circuits. So a facility can be assigned on a virtual circuit and can be seen as a Bandwidth block in CLR/DLR Design window.

31507863

Issue

In Equipment Maintenance window's port address tab, when users edit the port address using the edit button option, application closes with the below error:

Error Number 2.

Error text = Null object reference at line 16 in itemchanged event of object dw_portaddresses of w_equipment_maint..

Window/Menu/Object = w_equipment_maint.

Error Object/Control = dw_portaddresses.

Script = itemchanged.

Line in Script = 16.

Resolution

Code has been modified and now users would be able to edit the port address using the edit button option.

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