openEQUELLA 2022.1 Features Guide

Table of Contents

Consolidate logging layer (log4j/slf4j)

Log4J has been updated to v2.17.1.As part of the update the upgrader will attempt to migrate the old Log4j configuration files (e.g. learningedge-log4j.properties) to use the new YAML configuration syntax by generating new YAML files to replace the properties files. If this is unable to do a complete job (or if you find issues afterwards) then the old configuration files won’t be deleted and can be referred to.

MS SQL Server JDBC driver update

The MS SQL Server JDBD driver has been updated to the latest version (9.4).

For institutions upgrading to openEQUELLA 2022.1 who currently use SQL Server with a self signed certificate (or a certificate signed by a CA not in their Java’s trust store), a modification will need to be made to their hibernate properties to add the trustServerCertificate to their hibernate.connection.url value.

For example, currently the hibernate properties might look something like:

   hibernate.connection.url = jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=equella

Whereas now it would need:

   hibernate.connection.url = jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=equella;trustServerCertificate=true

If the file is not updated with trust certificate reference, on server restart a stack trace with messages around PKIX path building failed will display: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target.

New Search UI performance updates

There has been a significant update made to the New Search UI to reduce the time it takes to execute a search (in ‘list’ mode - not gallery) and then the display of the results. This is most noticeable for institutions which have items with large numbers of attachments, and also comes into effect for Advanced Searches.

For the most part the user experience is unchanged. However the one area where a change may be noted - especially on slower connections - is that when a user expands the list of attachments for an item they first have to be retrieved. While this is done a ‘skeleton’ component is displayed.

This change performance update was made possible via the following technical details:

  • The search2 API has a new parameter (includeAttachments) which controls whether attachment details for all items should be returned with the search results;

  • The addition of a ‘thumbnailDetails’ property in the search2 response to provide details for displaying thumbnails;

  • Various server side code enhancements; and

  • Updated UI code to tie all the parts together.

Dependency upgrades

The following openEQUELLA dependencies have been upgraded. These have been updated to address published security vulnerabilities and to improve the performance and stability of the platform. In all cases, the user experience has not been modified.

  • kalturaClient - This was a major upgrade as openEQUELLA was several major versions behind on this dependency. As a result, after upgrading several areas of the codebase also had to be updated.

  • XStream - A key dependency in the reading and storage of XML data. This has undergone a significant change in its security philosophy and as a result was a very important upgrade.

  • Axis - Responsible for the interactions over SOAP APIs.

  • Jackson - Use for both processing of JSON and some XML data. In some cases a major upgrade.

  • MS SQL JDBC driver - Provides the low level communications for openEQUELLA to communicate with MS SQL servers. A major upgrade with the previous version being significantly older and also had dependencies on other libraries with published security vulnerabilities.

Deprecation notices

The legacy Cloud search functionality that was introduced prior to openEQUELLA becoming an open source product is no longer supported and has been removed in openEQUELLA 2022.1. The external server providing this functionality is not controlled with any entity directly involved in openEQUELLA and basic testing has highlighted that its content has not been updated for several years.

Zookeeper

openEQUELLA 2022.1 sees the deprecation of support for Zookeeper versions earlier than 3.5.x. Institutions on versions earlier than 3.5.x need to upgrade prior to moving to openEQUELLA 2022.1.

SRW

Support for the SRW search protocol will be removed from openEQUELLA from 2022.2.