Spider 6.4.5 - Release Date: 31th March 2021

[jborchers]

Spider 6.4.5 version is available!

Release Date: 2021-03-31

A new update has been released for Spider. Please see the included improvements and corrections below. 

To be notified of these kinds of product updates, please ensure that you have subscribed to the Spider Release blog.

Highlights

• Spider 6.4.5 introduces installation trends in Spider. An installation trend provides information about the number of installations of a recognized software product in the past 60 days. If the current number deviates from the average of the installations over the period by at least 3%, the change is interpreted as an increase or decrease. This helps the user to quickly recognize and understand, in particular, recent changes. Furthermore, the detail page for recognized products has been expanded to include trend images. In addition, a line diagram provides information on the number of installations over the past 180 days.
  
  
• On recognized software products it is now possible to mark individual software products with a flag of different colors. These flags can be found in the search pages for recognized software products (above all products and below an asset) so that they can be used as filters for software products. Thus, the extension enables the categorization, identification, and tracking of software products. Use cases are, for example, the identification of software to be updated in the company network or the blacklisting of software products.
  
  
• The display concept of metering data in Spider has been fundamentally revised. With this version, a greater focus is placed on the detection of potentially unused installations. To this end, the metering dashboard, the subordinate pages, and metering search views have been fundamentally revised. The number fields "Installations", "Used", "Unused" and "No data" are in the new focus. These enable a significantly simplified identification of unused installations. Fields that publish usage data per user have been widely removed. For example, the "average runtime" display is only visible below a software assignment. If this data is to be suppressed completely, the form can be hidden using the form authorization.
  
  
• The current release enables the display and filtering of cloud providers on virtual servers and virtual clients. Cloud providers can be identified while systems are being scanned and imported into Spider Asset via the recognition module with the Datacenter Inventory agent. This enables the setting and display of the cloud provider on an asset as well as the corresponding filtering in the asset search page. The form definitions of virtual servers and virtual clients have been expanded to include the fields "Cloud provider (inventory)" and "Cloud provider (manual)". The "Cloud Provider (inventory)" field shows the cloud provider found and is read-only, the "Cloud Provider (manual)" field allows the provider found to be overwritten. The provider found is displayed in the search, provided it has not been overwritten (otherwise the provider selected by the user). The configuration is automatically supplemented by the setup on systems with full update capability. On systems without full update capability, the missing fields must be added to the form definitions manually.
  
  
• From Spider 6.4.5, decisions on recognized software products are logged. In this way, the user gains transparency about the decisions made, which enables a better understanding. Decisions can be commented on in the standard setting, the requirement to comment can be forced using the configuration key
  SoftwareRecogntion.RecognizedProducts.RequireCommentOnDecision.
  
  
• The new Coverage Rules function enables the user to add individual suite definitions which are then taken into account in the compliance calculation. This allows the user to create his own rules that are not included in the product catalog.

Improvements

Software Services

• Starting and monitoring the normalization process for recognized software products has been added to the start page of the Software Services - Info & Settings area. This enables the user to provide up-to-date and consistent data on the software products.
  
  
• In the Software Services - Info & Settings area, a new ribbon button has been added that enables the download of unclassified signatures. The generated .swrd file can be handed over to Spider Support so that the signatures are included in the recognition process. The file does not contain any user-related information.
  
  
• The detail page for recognized software products introduced with Spider 6.4.4 now also shows possible errors from the compliance calculation.
  
  
• The page for displaying program installations has been fundamentally revised. Multiple filters and groupings were made possible. The columns "Operating System", "Scan Date", "Source System" and "Business Unit" have been added. This simplifies the identification and qualification of program installations.
  
  
• The page for displaying recognized software products on an asset has been fundamentally revised. Multiple filters and groupings were made possible. The columns "Manufacturer" and "Flag" (of the recognized software product) enable new filter functions.
  
  
• The search form for unclassified programs now saves the defined search filters.

License Metrics Procedures (LMP)

• The license metrics procedure for Linux servers now takes SuSE AddOns into account.

Common

• Resubmissions are no longer sent for archived Spider objects.
  
  
• The list titles in emails from the alert & report system are now sent translated.

Asset Management

• The dialog view of the device tile for Asset now also shows the type of the inventoried device. Furthermore, a message is displayed in the edit form of the asset if the type of the inventoried device does not correspond to the type of the asset. The comparison takes place via the AssetTypeMapping setting.

Corrections

License Management

• If product versions were moved in the product catalog, the changes were not correctly adopted in customer systems. This behavior has been corrected.
  
  
• In the license creation process (article catalog), an error could occur under certain conditions when an attempt was made to create a license that contains an unlimited number of usage rights. This behavior has been corrected.
  
  
• The manufacturer filter was not displayed correctly if the translation for "Select manufacturer" contained an apostrophe. This behavior has been corrected.
  
  
• An error could occur in the Spider Service if an outdated product version could not be deleted. This bug has been fixed.
  
  
• Under certain circumstances, an error could occur in the license splitting process that prevented the license from being split. This behavior has been corrected.

License Metric Procedures (LMP)

• By using the Spider Oracle Database Suite, improved messages are displayed for Oracle databases.
  
  
• Under certain circumstances, the license metrics procedure for inactive states could not consider individual archived items. This behavior has been corrected.

Common

• In the Spider Admin Tool, when a new password was set for a user, the date for the last password change was not set. This resulted in a further expired password. The behavior has been corrected.
  
  
• The deletion of contract types via the admin tool has been corrected.
  
  
• Special filters in searches that display images could not be used to filter "unequal". This has now been made possible again.
  
  
• The deletion of clients was wrongly suppressed in certain constellations. This behavior has been corrected.
  
  
• The creation of licenses was not possible if the dialog for selecting a business unit was previously exited via "Remove selection". This behavior has been corrected.
  
  
• Configuration keys could not be stored encrypted in the database with the Spider Admin Tool. This behavior has been corrected.
  
  
• The format of a standard filter in the alert & report system has been changed so that it can be used independently of the standard language set by the SQL user.
  
  
• In customer configurations, the number of parameter columns on the employee object was not sufficient to store all required fields in the system. The Employee object was therefore extended by 15 more string columns. The associated system views in the database provide the columns.
  
  
• Due to a missing condition in the database structure, users could not be deleted under certain circumstances. The behavior has been corrected.
  
  
• The database views for advanced searches have been extended so that they contain all fields for object searches.

Asset Management

• The synchronization process between the Software Recognition Module and Spider Asset could abort if two fields refer to the same target field in the parameter mapping. This behavior has been corrected.
  
  
• Under certain circumstances, the synchronization process between Spider Asset and the Recognition Module could not determine the AssetNo and resulted in an error. This behavior has been corrected.

Oracle Database Services

• The operating figures in the Oracle licensing dashboard have been revised.

Contract Management

• Due to a misconfiguration, the contract search could run into an error if the department field was displayed in the search. The configuration has been corrected.