Release Notes 2.0

What's New

Version 2.0 includes following new features and changes.

Features

• Worker Framework: The worker framework is the basis for using workers in the EDCH stack. Workers are isolated applications that are loosely integrated with GBS.
• Expressions: Expressions allow the dynamic definition of property values. The required Expression Worker utilizes Python based Pandas to evaluate the expressions. Other use cases are the business key and artifacts builders which allow to define keys and artifacts based on expressions.
• Graph Security Layer: The Graph Security Layer allows defining fine-grained rules for data visibility when retrieved via EBS endpoints. The rules are defined in GBS UI and are loaded by EBS. When EBS receives a graph related request it loads the corresponding rules and delegates filtering to a Graph Security specific worker.
• GBS UI: GBS UI got some small updates to be more consistent throughout all pages for example by always having button descriptions and icons. Information texts have been moved to dedicated icons to save space for displaying data.
• Import/Export Entities (Beta): A possibility to import and export target entities was added. It is possible to select which entities and dependent configurations should be exported. Exported entities can then be imported in any EDCH instance.
• Performance & Stability: A lot of changes have been made to increase performance and stability of the whole stack.

Frontend

• Redesign: The most prominent change in the Frontend is the complete UI redesign to have a modern look & feel. It features a new left menu structure and interaction as well as improved menus for searching, adding and filtering nodes. The graph interface was improved and offers additional layout options. The new dashboard allows to easily jump into different modes and open data you recently worked on.
• Label View Layout: Performance improvements and automatic detection of sensitivity for each label view. The latter automatically sets the sensitivity to the nearest where related nodes can be found.
• Personalisation: More customization settings for graph layout were added. It is also possible to set personalized colors for labels.
• Data Lab: Data Lab was redesigned and a new charts library was integrated to further improve UI and interaction possibilities. It is possible to have multiple properties within one correlation and multiple property correlations next to each other. Important correlations can also be saved to the pinboard for later use or comparison.
• Performance & Stability: Overall performance and stability has been improved.

Breaking Changes

Version 2.0 includes following breaking changes.

General

• Naming conventions of Keycloak roles have changed. Therefore the license has to be re-uploaded once version 2.0 is deployed. By doing so, Keycloak roles will be recreated with correct naming.

GBS

• Required roles on endpoints have been reworked and changed. Refer to GBS API's Swagger documentation for more information.

EBS

• Membership related endpoints, which allowed to get and verify access tokens, where removed for security reasons. Applications requiring an access token should get one directly via Keycloak.
• Support for parameters was removed from /api/graph/query/cypher endpoint for security reasons. Since it is not possible to apply the Graph Security Layer to this endpoint it is now additionally protected by xpl-admin-execute role.
• Required roles on endpoints have been reworked and changed. Refer to EBS API's Swagger documentation for more information.

Deployment Changes

Starting with 2.0 it is highly recommended to deploy EDCH on a Kubernetes environment. This is mandatory for automatic scaling of workers. The stack still works with a docker compose deployment but performance will suffer.

Software Updates

3^rd party software was updated to the following versions. A mandatory update indicates that EDCH is not compatible with an older version anymore.

Name	Version	Mandatory
PostgreSQL	15.x
Neo4j	5.x
RabbitMQ	3.11.x
Apache Airflow	2.5.x	✔️
Keycloak	20.x	✔️