2009-05-15

Kodiak 0.0.3 Released

I received an email this morning that Bluebear have released a new version of the management.

Here are the changes from the release notes

Kodiak 0.0.3 Release Notes:
Thanks for downloading Kodiak!

This version of Kodiak represents a significant change in our server-communication architecture.

  1. We've added a schema-compliant request/argument builder engine that populates requests based on known information. This makes building requests much easier.
  2. A lua scripting engine. Each server connection gets its own independent Lua script.
  3. Independent object pools.
  4. Improved mapping response and control.
  5. Map connection node & link display control.
  6. We've created a "plugin api" where a user may build a plugin to communicate with any kind
    of data service. We'll be publishing information on this on our wiki.
  7. We've added a number of "boilerplate" features that will become more apparent in the next
    few releases as we push Kodiak towards our goal of creating an "IT IDE".
  8. Access for users to create their own scripts. Kodiak's UI/inspector controls are driven by a "global schema" that allows a user to create their own customized scripts for management. Please visit the bluebear wiki for further information regarding customizing the script engine. As yet, we don't have a full UI for managing user scripts, but we will shortly.
  9. The remote event log has been removed for this release.
  10. For Windows users who experience the dreaded "SSL certificate bug", we've added a preferences option to bypass the windows SSL stack. This option is accessible from the Preferences menu.
  11. Password vault & credentials storage. Kodiak now has the ability to save username/password pairs in an encrypted password vault, locked with a master password.
  12. Server object creation is disabled while we migrate the control components into the VMWare plugin, we will re-enable these in a couple of days.

I have tried the previous releases of the product out, and find it to be an interesting idea. I personally had severe issues with it running on a windows machine because of SSL certificate issues (which it seems they have addressed), so I moved to running from a Ubuntu host instead.

One of the better changes that I see now is the documentation page, which I found was non-existent till now, so I hope this will improve  my experience with the product and enable better use.

I have a few invitations that I can give out so if you would like one, leave a comment on this post

A proper review of the release will come out soon.