Cascade Version 7.12.5

Cascade Server 7.12.3

Cascade Server version 7.12.3 contains improvements to access checks as well as a system health monitoring tool. A new link checking preference has also been added which allows administrators to disable external link checks during publishing. A handful of other bugs have also been addressed.

• Speeding Up Access Checks
• System Health Monitoring
• Long Publish Times Due to External Link Checking

Speeding Up Access Checks

On any screen in the system, many access checks must be performed to determine whether or not the current user can see certain assets or links to those assets.  As more assets and users are added to the system, these checks can lead to performance degradation.  In Cascade 7.12.3, we have taken steps to cut down on the amount of time that is dedicated to doing these access checks.  This improves the responsiveness of the application in general but also improves things like page rendering times and load times of certain dashboard widgets. 

System Health Monitoring

Included in Cascade 7.12.3 is a performance monitoring tool called Java Melody.  This tool allows administrators to keep a close eye on many key system performance metrics in the system.  These include memory statistics, page load statistic, database query statistics and more.  See the support knowledgebase for instructions on how to enable Java Melody. 

Long Publish Times Due to External Link Checking

With the release of the Broken Link Report in Cascade 7.12, external link checking was added during publishing to make link checking consistent everywhere: on publish, on submit, and during the broken link report. This had the side effect of increasing publish times -- minimally in most cases but dramatically in others.

7.12.3 adds a new preference for both the Global area and individual Sites that allows site managers to set whether or not external links should be checked during publish. By default, this preference is set to not check external links on publish. Users can then rely on the Broken Link Report for external link checks.

In a future release, we will introduce a new external link checking system that reduces the impact of external link checking during publishing substantially.