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JTS 6.0.3: new restriction (invalid characters & " ' /) for Team Area names?


Miguel Tomico (5001323) | asked Oct 07 '16, 9:03 a.m.

The current milestone of JTS 6.0.3 comes with a new limitation on the characters allowed in the Team Area name field.

I'm getting this error when creating or modifying a Team Area:

The area cannot be created because its name includes one or more of these invalid characters: & < > " ' /ID CRJAZ6043E

Except the forward slash, the rest were valid characters in previous versions.

To reproduce the problem, simply attempt to modify the following Team Area from one of the Jazz.net sandboxes (just remove an s at the end of the Team Area name and click Save):

https://jazz.net/jazz03/admin#action=com.ibm.team.process.editTeamArea&itemId=_QxoE8OtOEeCjF_62kkTdSA&projectAreaItemId=_s_M8MMFIEdumDPUtna_vLA

My concern is,

We have loads of existing Team Areas across all our Project Areas with these characters in our environments.

Once we upgrade, we won't even be able to assign members to Team Areas having these characters. We first need to remove those invalid ones!

Furthermore, we can't create Project Areas out of our custom template because, as part of the Project Area initialisation, we use the 'Create Team Areas' follow-up action, and that fails because of these invalid characters.

I am wondering if we'll need to analyse the impact and remove invalid characters everywhere: Process Templates, Java API scripts, existing Team Areas across all Project Areas... and who knows what else.

Unfortunately, with the volume of data we have, it will take days, if not weeks.

Am I just being paranoid? or is there someone else out there with similar concerns?


Comments
Matt Muller commented Oct 07 '16, 9:45 a.m. | edited Aug 03 '17, 6:38 p.m.

Miguel,

I've just tested my sandbox at Version: 6.0.3 M5  this is for a Team Rename in RTC:

for Team Name : "Team 1 & < > " '/ ID" 

Save and got the error : A team area name can NOT contain a '/'

I was able to save Team name: "Team 1 & < > " ' ID
Are you talking RTC? or RQM?
Regards
Matt

Miguel Tomico commented Oct 07 '16, 10:04 a.m.

It seems to affect all Jazz-based products (RTC, RQM, DNG, Design Manager). According to IBM support, this change was implemented following a security issue. See

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21991478

Actually, we found it when installing the iFix 018 for RTCv5.0.2.

The error message you are getting "A team area name can NOT contain a '/' " is the old one. The forward slash was the only invalid character for Team Area names... till now.

Maybe it's 6.0.3 M6 the first version including this change, I can't be sure. The readme.txt files won't contain any information related to security issues.

Something is telling me that when v6.0.3 is released, I'm not going to be only one moaning about this.

Accepted answer


permanent link
Alison Chambers (611) | answered Dec 05 '16, 6:05 a.m.
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21993070

THis technote describes the cause, versions affected and workaround
Ralph Schoon selected this answer as the correct answer

Comments
Miguel Tomico commented Dec 05 '16, 8:21 a.m. | edited Dec 05 '16, 8:22 a.m.

Thanks for the technote.

The 'iFixes affected' section is the only useful information there.

No real remedial action, no mention about Project Area names (which are also affected)...

Sorry to say, but the whole way this issue has been fixed and handled along the way is not very professional to me.


Maria Victoria Martinez Torino commented Aug 02 '17, 2:17 p.m.

What about projects being upgraded from jazz 6.0.1 to 6.0.4? Would they be affected by this issue?

Please advise.

Thank you!
Victoria.


Natarajan Thirumeni commented Aug 23 '17, 4:16 a.m.

>>What about projects being upgraded from jazz 6.0.1 to 6.0.4? Would they be affected by this issue?

I believe migration itself would run without any issue. For all PA's which has a special character you will see a warning message in the addTable command.

If you'd like to fix all PA prior to upgrade you might want to run a query on a CCM or QM database SELECT * FROM PROCESS.PROCESS_AREA WHERE NAME LIKE '%<%' OR NAME LIKE '%>%' OR NAME LIKE '%&%' OR NAME LIKE '%"%' OR NAME LIKE '%/%' OR NAME LIKE '%''%';

Rename them before running a upgrade commands. Hope it helps.

One other answer



permanent link
Lorenzo . (49411) | answered Dec 08 '16, 9:31 a.m.
Following this problem, a TechNote has been created:

     Creating a Project area fails with "Cannot initialise new Project Areas" or Modifying a Team Area fails with "Cannot modify existing Team Area" in Rational Team Concert., ,
     https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21993070

And note similar to the one below will be added to the next iFixes README's :

-----
12. KNOWN ISSUES
+-- Product Rational Team Concert
Attempts to Create a Project area fails with "Cannot initialise new Project Areas" and Attempts to Modifying a Team Area fails with "Cannot modify existing Team Area" in IBM Rational Team Concert (RTC) after installation of an 6.0.2 iFix005. Please see the following technote for further details and the resolution - http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21993070
-----

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