Chris Trueman's Blog

#1 Hit Record Analysis

Chris Trueman — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:33:00 GMT

My Son said to me this week that there were fewer #1 hit records in the USA than the UK. I asked him why he thought that was the case and he said that it was because more people lived in the USA. I wasn’t convinced that (a) there was a difference in the number of #1 hit records; and (b) even if there was I don’t think the cause was that there are simply more people.

Anyway, I set out to collect the raw data and analyse it. I pulled the 2000-2009 (incl.) data for the UK from: www.everyhit.com and the 2000-2009 (incl.) data for the USA from Wikipedia.

To my surprise there is a marked difference between the USA and UK charts. The total number of #1 hit records for each country for the past 10 years makes this clear:

The UK has had more than double the number of #1 hit records in the past 10 years. So obviously records stay at #1 longer in the USA than the UK. But how much longer?

The UK profile when broken down by number of weeks at #1 is a nice curve:

The profile for the USA is markedly different:

So my Son was right: there are fewer #1 hit records in the USA than in the UK (well, at least in the last 10 years). There's nothing in this data to prove the link between population size and number of hit reocrds.

What, you may be thinking, has this got to do with SAP lifecycle management? Don’t let pre-conceptions limit your thinking. Analyse the facts. Unlike my web scraping/copy/pasting/Excel jockeying LiveCompare will do all this for you in SAP automatically. You just get to think about what you will do with the results. For me that means admitting to my Son that he was right. Wish me luck.

Support Stack Impact Analysis

Chris Trueman — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:31:00 GMT

This is the fifth in a series of posts counting down to the release of LiveCompare 2.3. So far I’ve covered Extended Enhancement Pack Support, Send Email as Workflow Attachment, Integrating into the Wider Workflow, and Project Management Services. In this post I’m going to look at LiveCompare’s new Support Stack Impact Analysis functionality.

One of the trends we’ve observed in the past 12-18 months is the switch by SAP and customers away from individual support packs to support stacks. The basic idea is that SAP works to stack up compatible changes in a single bundle that customers implement. For LiveCompare, this means longer analysis runtimes.

A test case of 3.5 million objects takes around 4 days to analyze with the Transport Impact Analysis template. The same test case of 3.5m objects takes about 4 hours to analyze with the Support Stack Impact Analysis template. Yes, really. 4 days reduced to 4 hours. This chart shows the improvement very clearly:

The new technology in the Support Stack Impact Analysis template is an action called: Find Object Links. Like Where Used this action is tasked with finding connecting pathways between changing objects and in-use transactions and programs. The key implementation difference – and the one that delivers the significant performance gains – is a change in search strategy. Find Object Links starts with the in-use transactions and looks for pathways to the changing objects. Where Used (used in the Transport Impact Analysis workflow) starts with the changing objects and looks for pathways to the in-use transactions and programs. Put simply, Find Object Links is ‘top-down’ and Where Used is ‘bottom-up’.

The Support Stack Impact Analysis goes further than identifying the impacted in-use transactions and programs. LiveCompare uses its pathway analysis and data about how frequently the transactions and programs are used to reduce to a minimum the recommended transactions and programs to test. This chart helps to explain LiveCompare’s method of automatically assessing the risk of impact:

The most at risk transactions and programs are those that are (a) used the most and (b) will see the greatest impact. LiveCompare measure the degree of impact by looking at how long the pathways are connecting the transactions and programs to the changing objects. Shorter pathways mean greater impact.

So if this new template is so fast why keep the Transport Impact Analysis template?

Each template is optimized for different scenarios. For example, the Transport Impact Analysis template will be faster at analyzing a single SAP support pack or a small number of custom transports against a large set of used transactions and programs. Support Stacks and, for example, the migration of the transports to production at the end of a project are best analysed with the new Support Stack Impact Analysis template.

The quality and speed of the Support Stack Impact Analysis workflow depends on having adequate performance history data. So perhaps another situation where the Transport Impact Analysis workflow would be used is when less than 3 months of data is available. Use the Survey Performance History Data workflow to see how much you have.

Conclusion

In response to the growing trend to implement SAP Support Stacks, LiveCompare 2.3 adds a new analysis template called: Support Stack Impact Analysis. It delivers the same high-quality analysis that results in a 40%-80% reduction in testing effort with a runtime analysis that takes less than a day.

SAP Enhancement Pack Webinar

Chris Trueman — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:36:00 GMT

I see that Fritz Mosonyi from our partner in Austria - SPP - is presenting a webinar on SAP Enhancement Packs with LiveCompare on March 2, 2010 at 0930 CET / 0830. The webinar will be presented in German. For more details, see Fritz's blog

LiveCompare Project Management Services

Chris Trueman — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:08:00 GMT

This is the fourth in a series of posts counting down to the release of LiveCompare 2.3. In this post I’m going to cover LiveCompare’s new project management services.

LiveCompare 2.3 integrates with Basecamp – an online project management service from 37signals. Basecamp is a mature application (running now for more than 6 years) and counts many of the World’s leading companies as users. What sets Basecamp apart from other project management systems are:

1) It is very easy to use.

2) It supports collaboration.

3) It offers project management support without process overhead

4) It is great value

Basecamp is something we’ve used internally to support the development of LiveCompare 2.3. Basecamp replaced Microsoft Project and the daily chore for our project manager of collecting updates. Now each team member is responsible for updating Basecamp and ticking off the to-do items as they are completed.

We use the built-in message boards as a way to discuss issues and this has become one of the ‘heartbeats’ of the project. If we see a lot of comments (or a lack of comments) we can investigate and see whether the team has a clear understanding of what’s required. We use the built-in writeboards as a way to convey what new functionality is available for testing and to reward the developer that breaks the daily build with the rubber chicken – this is an age old tradition!

Using Basecamp for our own work gives me the confidence to recommend it to LiveCompare customers.

One thing Basecamp doesn’t provide is a project summary or dashboard. This is something we’ve built through a combination of LiveCompare workflow and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) portal reports.

You run a daily ‘Update Dashboard’ workflow to collect the current Basecamp project stats. These stats are stored in the LiveCompare workspace database. The pre-built SSRS reports read the stats and present the summary reports. For example:

This shows the real progress of LiveCompare 2.3 from inception to near completion. The report is accessible by everyone (yes, you can restrict access if you like) and updates automatically as the next day’s stats are collected.

In addition to the new LiveCompare action that reads data from Basecamp, there’s an action that writes data to Basecamp. This is a general purpose action that supports:

· To-do lists

· To-do items

· Resource assignments

The latest LiveCompare SAP upgrade analysis workflows make use of this action to turn the discovered tasks – such as the custom programs that need rework or the standard transactions that should be tested or the required security updates or the impacted interfaces – into Basecamp to-do items. If you’ve set up a resource pool, LiveCompare will pick from the pool when creating the to-do items.

But this action is not limited to just upgrade analysis. You can use it with any and every LiveCompare analysis from which you derive a set of tasks. Equally you can use the Basecamp dashboard stats collector and reports with any and every kind of Basecamp project.

One other change was needed to support the integration with Basecamp – how to connect to a specific Basecamp project. To do that we added a new Basecamp object to the administration hierarchy:

I’ve configured three Basecamp projects in LiveCompare. Only LiveCompare administrators may configure Basecamp project objects.

Working with the Read Basecamp and Write Basecamp actions I select from one of the configured projects using the special property editor:

Summary

LiveCompare 2.3 introduces new project management services through integration with a leading online project management solution – Basecamp. Basecamp provides the right amount of project management support without any process overhead. Collaboration is at the heart of Basecamp: online access, message boards, writeboards, etc. LiveCompare adds workflow actions for writing data (to-do lists, to-do items, resource assignment, etc.) to Basecamp and reading project stats that are then surfaced in SSRS summary reports. The LiveCompare upgrade templates use these actions to turn the discovered tasks into to-do items. The LiveCompare/Basecamp actions and dashboard can be used with any type of SAP lifecycle activity.

iPad

Chris Trueman — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:53:00 GMT

Is it just me or has Apple missed a trick by not including the words "Don't Panic" in large friendly letters on their new iPad?

Integrating into the Wider Workflow: Web Services

Chris Trueman — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:35:00 GMT

This is the third in a series of posts counting down to the release of LiveCompare 2.3. So far I’ve covered one big new feature: extended enhancement pack support – and one little feature: send workflow as email attachment. This time it’s back to big features.

LivCompare 2.3 supports web services both as a client and server. In client mode, you use the Run Web Service action to invoke a web service and consume the results in your workflow. For example, you might take advantage of some cross-customer benchmark analyses that IntelliCorp is offering where LiveCompare sends some anonymous usage statistics to our server and in return you get a report comparing your SAP system with peer organizations. In server mode, you register a workflow as a web service to be consumed by some other external process. For example, you might want to trigger a LiveCompare SAP analysis from a change management environment.

Client Mode – Consume a Web Service

The palette contains a new action: Run Web Service. You first have to configure the action using a Wizard. The Wizard prompts you for the URL of a special file that describes the web service you want to call. These files go by the name of WSDL (which stands for web service description language) and then guides you through setting up the input and output parameters. Often you can simply click Next to skip through the pages and LiveCompare will do the right thing – creating input parameters and an output parameter of the correct type.

Once the action is configured you can run it. The input parameters will be sent to the web service and LiveCompare will transform the output into LiveCompare datasets of the right type.

What web services might you want to consume? We have one example of a customer that wants to combine data from SAP with a third-party application. The third-party application exposes a series of web service functions that provide access to the data. Using the Run Web Service action means the data can be accessed directly without messing about with exporting it to, say, a CSV file and importing it as a LiveCompare External Data Source. In this example, the web services functionality makes it simpler to integrate LiveCompare into the wider information systems available for analysis.

Example

In this example I am using a .NET Fact of the Day development web service. First I drop a Run Web Service action on the workflow design surface. From the context menu I choose Configure Web Service to start the wizard.

Click Next.

Enter the URL of the WSDL file that describes the web service:

Click Next.

Web services can often be invoked in different ways. LiveCompare displays the methods it supports. Pick one:

Click Next.

Pick from the available service methods. Just one in this case:

Click Next.

LiveCompare gives you the chance to ‘tweak’ how the response from the web service method is configured. In most cases you can simply click Next and LiveCompare will do the right thing.

Click Next.

LiveCompare displays the output types that it finds. The types you choose become LiveCompare datasets. Usually you just click Next.

Click Next.

The wizard is finished. The Run Web Service action is configured.

The workflow looks like this once I’ve created datasets for each of the configured output parameters:

Why are there three when we only picked one in the wizard?

The Raw Results Xml is always generated. This provides access to the low-level XML response that LiveCompare got from the service method. Some special case may exist where you want to work directly with the XML, perhaps using the Convert Data action to transform the XML into a report output via an XSL transformation (new 2.3 feature that I’ll cover in another post).

The Processed Results Table is always generated. Table datasets are often the most useful and convenient datasets – in part because you can use the ExecuteSQL action to manipulate the data. The Run Web Service action looks at the output parameters and tries to convert it into a table automatically for you.

The GotDOtnetDailyFact Result is LiveCompare’s native data type view of the web services response. In this case the dataset is a string containing:

“A C# System.InvalidCastException is thrown when a requested conversion from an interface or base type to a derived type fails at run time.”

I’ve expanded this workflow to look like:

The other actions turns the web service result into a Twitter compatible message that is then posted to LiveCompare’s Twitter account. The final result looks like:

Server Mode – Register Workflow as a Web Service

Registering a workflow as a web service is as simple as right-clicking on the workflow object in the hierarchy and choosing Register as Web Service. A Wizard will guide you through setting up the input parameters and output parameter.

The main Administration page has a link to all the registered web services. You can use this page to grab the WSDL URL for consumption in the ‘client’ program.

I’ve written here about our plans to work with Revelation Software Concepts on the integration of LiveCompare and Rev-Trac. Web services provides the the technical foundation for the integration. To enable the integration I simply register the special Rev-Trac workflow as a web service (it will ship in the LiveCompare templates package). In Rev-Trac I configure my change management strategy to require a LiveCompare impact analysis and under the covers Rev-Trac will run the web service-registered workflow to perform the impact analysis and collect the report as part of the permanent change record.

Cross-customer Analyses

One use that we’re exploring for this functionality is to offer customers a series of benchmarking services that compare and contrast their SAP implementation with peer SAP users. We already have a basic system called SOLO – http://solo.intellicorp.com/. The implementation of web services makes it easier for us to deploy the ‘client’ – it’s your installation of LiveCompare with an appropriate workflow – and extend the services overtime – we just add more workflows to our LiveCompare server.

The first benchmarking service will compare and contrast your level of SAP customization. From SOLO I see that the current average level of customization is 30%. The implementation of this service will mean a workflow on your LiveCompare server waking up every month and sending us your anonymous usage stats. In return you’ll get a dataset containing your current customization usage level and the average customization usage level.

The web services functionality in LiveCompare was driven by the need to integrate LiveCompare into the wider workflows that customers use to manage their SAP lifecycle. The technology provides the foundation for integrating with partner products, such as Rev-Trac, customer systems and information services available on the web.

Special thanks to Kevin Collins and the team at seanco.com for their permission to use the DailyDotNetWebService.

Send Workflow as Email Attachment

Chris Trueman — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:17:00 GMT

This is the second in a series of posts counting down to the release of LiveCompare 2.3. In this post I’m going to cover a little feature that makes it much easier to send workflows as email attachments. This is how to do it today with 2.2:

· Copy workflow to clipboard

· Start NOTEPAD

· Paste the workflow into NOTEPAD

· Save to disk

· Create new email

· Attach workflow file

In 2.3 you can use the Send Workflow as Email Attachment command from the workflow’s context menu:

The result is a new email window:

The workflow is automatically attached and the subject line is filled in.

It’s a little feature that makes working with a part of LiveCompare much easier.

LiveCompare: Extended Enhancement Pack Support

Chris Trueman — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:31:00 GMT

This is the first in a series of posts looking at the new functionality of LiveCompare 2.3. Today I’m going to cover the extended Enhancement Pack (EP) support. You can read about LiveCompare's existing support for Enhancement Packs here.

LiveCompare 2.3 compares two new object types:

· Enhancement Object (ENHO)

· Enhancement Spot (ENHS)

The Quick Compare Wizard, tier 1 hierarchy, tier 2 details and report options have all been upgraded to work with ENHO and ENHS objects. This brings enhancement object support up to the level of other SAP object types such as Programs, Function Modules, Tables, and Screens.

Enhancement Object

Here's the standard SAP display for an ENHO object:

In LiveCompare this becomes:

Each tab in the SAP display becomes an item in the tier 2 LiveCompare hierarchy. This provides convenient access to the important comparable characteristics. The usual LiveCompare comparison status icons: same, different, in1 and in2 are displayed to the right of the hierarchy item.

Enhancement Spot

Here's the standard SAP display for an ENHS object:

And this is the result of comparing an ENHS object in LiveCompare:

LiveCompare will process ENHO and ENHS objects if it is given a container such as a transport. This means you can use the standard Compare Objects template to discovery and compare enhancement objects automatically. As these examples show, comparison of ENHO/ENHS objects isn't limited to SAP standard objects. You can use it with your custom enhancements too.

Summary

LiveCompare 2.3 adds support for discovering and comparing ENHO and ENHS objects. With LiveCompare 2.3 you can see how enhancements are changing and what the impact will be.

SharePoint Document Access in LiveModel

Chris Trueman — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:20:00 GMT

LiveModel's Microsoft SharePoint integration is expanding to enable SharePoint documents links to be accessed directly from within LiveModel. This feature works as an extension to the 'Export SharePoint Document Workspace' command that turns a LiveModel business process hierarchy into a SharePoint document workspace hierarchy. As you add documents to the SharePoint workspace, LiveModel will synchronize its view of the documents.

The first screenshot shows our current view of a business process object in LiveModel. Note that there are two SharePoint document links:

In this next screenshot I've added another document to the corresponding SharePoint folder:

LiveModel synchronizes its view of the SharePoint documents periodically:

The synchronization is managed by the LiveModel SPISDRIVER program. You configure the program to run periodically using the Windows Scheduled Tasks program.

This video shows the new feature in action:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

SAP UK & Ireland Users Group Conference 2009

Chris Trueman — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:19:00 GMT

This week I was at the SAP UK & Ireland Users Group Conference in Manchester with Emma and Rich from our UK team. This year's event was the biggest yet with more delegates, more sessions and more exhibitors. Continuing our "vortex" theme first shown at the USA TechEd conference our booth looked like:

The show provided a good opportunity to meet up with existing customers, chat with partners and talk with new organizations about our products. Revelation Software were at the show and we had good cross-traffic talking about the integration between LiveCompare and Rev-Trac.

Our prize-draw giveaway was a Sky Watcher 130EM telescope won by a very enthusiastic Tim Chamberlain:

Congratulations Tim!

During Monday night's Cocktail Hour we ran a Mario Kart racing competition which was won by David Freeman:

David's winning time was 1:26.389. If you're thinking that David looks familiar, you'd be right. Last year he came second in the racing competition but went on to win our prize draw! Congratulations David.

Emma - in attempt to improve on her "80" Wii Fitness Age from last year - tried to connect with the Force through Yoda. Not a bad effort. But there's still room for improvement:

Next year we're heading back to Birmingham. See you there.

Announcing LiveCompare 2.2 Update - Now With SAP Enhancement Pack Support

Chris Trueman — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:08:00 GMT

I'm pleased to announce a refresh of the LiveCompare 2.2 GA release. This new release incorporates our latest work on SAP Enhancement Pack impact analysis. Existing customers will be getting shipment notices shortly and all new POCs, evaluations and orders are being sent the latest release.

There are two new templates in this release designed to work specifically with SAP Enhancement Packs:

Business Function Expansion
Business Function Impact Analysis

You'll find both of them in the 'Support Pack Analysis' folder. I'm thinking about re-organizing the templates in the 2.3 release.

The first template is designed to identify all the low-level SAP implementation objects that would be activated if a selected business function is switched on.

The second template takes all those low-level objects and does a full-system impact analysis to find all the standard and custom programs/transactions that would be impacted. LiveCompare's built-in "risk analysis" algorithm works here too just like it does for Support Packs and your own Custom transports. The result is the minimum set of most-at-risk standard and custom programs and transactions that should be validated once the business function has been switched on.

As with the Support Pack and Custom transport impact analysis, you can use these templates before you make a real change to the system.

Business Functions form the top of a large pyramid that ends with what we call the SAP "DNA" - the real objects (programs, functions, screens, tables, etc.) that make up our SAP implementation. The first template implements this expansion from Business Function through Switch Object through Packs to SAP DNA.

Having explored several business functions from Enhancement Pack 4 my rule of thumb is that 1 business function leads to 10 switch objects that lead to 100 packages that lead to 10000 SAP DNA objects.

Once we have the DNA objects we can flip the direction of analysis and instead go back up through the system to find the programs, transactions and ultimately business processes that will be impacted. The second template implements this picture:

Note: LiveCompare reports the impact as far up as transactions and programs. You need LiveModel in order to visualize the impact of SAP DNA changes on your business processes.

I wrote here when introducing the plan for LiveCompare 2.3 that Enhancement Packs would be one of the central themes. The feedback we got from the first customers to see these templates was such that we wanted to get it out there sooner than the 2.3 release, hence this refresh of the 2.2 GA version.

SAP TechEd 2009 - In Review

Chris Trueman — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:39:00 GMT

Well, that's it for another year. TechEd 2009 in Phoenix ended very well for us with plenty of booth traffic and many great discussions about our products' capabilities and benefits.

This is how it started Monday morning with Jerry and me (mostly Jerry) fixing up the booth:

With all the boxes and rubbish cleared away it looked the finished article. I'm biased but I really liked the new graphics theme.

I like how TechEd compresses the booth hours to co-incide with a long lunch for the attendees. This gives us time in the morning and afternoon to meet one-two-one with customers, partners and prospects away from the hustle and bustle of the booth.

But it does mean there's a bit of a rush on over lunch.

In terms of new stuff I was able to show the Enhancement Pack impact analysis templates that we'll be shipping in a week or so. There are two new templates that support impact analysis of Business Functions before they are switched on. The first template drills-down from the chosen business function to find all the SAP "DNA" that will be affected, including the new Enhancement Objects. The second template drills-up to find the total impact across the whole system and then reduces this to the recommended minimum required to exercise the proposed change.

We did a good number of LiveCompare demonstrations showing how customers use it to keep landscapes synchronized. Whether it's a standard DEV, QAS and PRD landscape or one featuring production support and multiple project servers, LiveCompare comes with pre-built templates to identify every difference, every unique object, helping you keep production safe and verified.

LiveModel 2.2 is now available. We used TechEd as an opportunity to introduce people to the new functionality. Customers on maintenance will receive their upgrade notice shortly.

We were joined on our booth by Albrecht Gass, CTO of smartShift. Albrecht was demonstrating smartShift's automatic code remediation technology to help customers upgrade their custom ABAP code. IntelliCorp and smartShift announced a technology partnership at TechEd. You can read all about it here.

The Sunday before TechEd I rented a Harley Davidson Road King and rode to Flagstaff via Payson, Camp Verde and Sedona. It was a long day but as this picture from just outside Sedona shows, it was worth it!

Update: I was asked where I rented my bike. Answer: Buddy Stubbs.

Finally, our Orion Telescope draw was won by Mike Burstein. Last I checked it was in the back of a FedEx truck somewhere near Lenexa, Kansas.

Update: the telescope has been delivered.

Update: TechEd Vienna

At the last minute Emma from our UK office jumped on a plane to Vienna to support our good friends at Revelation Software. As announced previously we're working with Revelation Software to integrate LiveCompare with Rev-Trac.

Integrating LiveCompare with Rev-Trac

Chris Trueman — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:37:00 GMT

In the September issue of Revelation Software Concept's newsletter, CEO and Founder David Drake discusses the benefits of enforced impact analysis as part of Rev-Trac - Revelations' change control technology:

"By fully integrating change control technology and impact analysis solutions, an IT organization can be confident that an impact analysis has been considered and/or taken place and that the results are recorded against the change."

Read the newsletter here.

SAP TechEd 2009

Chris Trueman — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:02:00 GMT

The North American TechEd conference is just around the corner and IntelliCorp will be there as an exhibitor (booth #406). This year we're going with a new theme:

No doubt you'll have recognized the concept of a black hole sucking in all the data with only IntelliCorp helping the information to escape! Well, that's the theory! We have a really cool giveaway this year - an Orion telescope:

To enter all you'll need to do is stop by the booth and have your badge scanned.

We'll have all the products available for demonstration including the latest LiveModel 2.2 release. We'll also have previews of some of the new functionality planned for LiveCompare 2.3. I'm especially looking forward to discussing our ideas and capturing feedback.

We will also be highlighting our new partnership with smartShift. More details on that as we get closer to the show.

Jerry and I will be in Phoenix with all our US-based product specialists: Allison, Michael, Tim C and Tim G. Feel free to stop by anytime for a chat or if your'd prefer you can make an appointment (I know, that sounds terribly grand) by sending me an email (ctrueman at intellicorp dot com).

Hope to see you there.

What's New in LiveModel 2.2?

Chris Trueman — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:17:00 GMT

What's New in LiveModel 2.2?

LiveModel 2.2 is nearly ready for general release. Many new features are included in 2.2. In this post I'll cover some of the most visible changes.

Platforms/Installation/Configuration

LiveModel 2.2 supports:

Windows XP
Windows 2003 Server
Windows Vista (Business Edition or Better)
Windows 2008 Server

For the database we support:

SQL Server 2000
SQL Server 2005
SQL Server 2008

With Windows 7 just around the corner we've used the latest release candidate to verify that LiveModel runs on Windows 7 in both client and server configurations. However, until Windows 7 is made generally available, official support for it will have to wait.

User Experience

We've added a page change/browser close confirmation dialog that looks like:

The prompt to save an unchanged diagram has been simplified. You'll now see:

The choices follow those that you get with desktop application such as Word and Excel. Yes, saves the diagram and continues your action. No just continues your action and Cancel aborts the action leaving you in the diagram.

You can now get a report of the model changes made when saving a diagram:

The report is activated for all users via a administration configuration setting.

Modeling Tools

The 'Object Management Workbench' (OMW) is a modeling tool that can be used from inside a diagram to set the properties and relations of objects:

The OMW tool is a combines the details property editor (standard + custom) and the Object Linking Wizard. I find it most useful when working in a 'BDL Cross-functional Flow' diagram. This diagram combines Roles, Tasks and Applications into single view. I can use the OMW to, for example, assign applications to tasks during a review workshop. The OMW makes this simpler and faster. Without it I'd have to exit the diagram (saving changes) and either open the Object Linking Wizard or use the drag/relate feature of the ModelExplorer to relate the task with the application.

Text orientation can now be controlled via the meta model:

Page footers can be defined in the meta model and are drawn (along with the page header) in the print preview:

Print preview adds a 'Fit to Page' option that automatically scales the dagram to ... er ... fit on a single page:

The screenshot shows another feature of LiveModel 2.2 - extended header. You can configure LiveCompare to show upto four levels of the hierarchy as part of the diagram header.