Contents

1	Supported Platforms.........................................................................................................................................		1
	1.1	New Standard Target Platforms ...........................................................................................................	1
	1.2	New Custom Target Platforms .............................................................................................................	1
	1.3	Removed Platforms................................................................................................................................	3
2	Extensible Type Support...................................................................................................................................		4
	2.1	Support for Mutable Types ...................................................................................................................	4
	2.2	Support for Optional Members ............................................................................................................	4

2.3More Information Printed if DataReader and DataWriter cannot Communicate due to Incompatible Types5

3 Improvements to Ease-of-Use and Out-of-the-Box Experience..................................................................		5
3.1	Built-in QoS Profiles...............................................................................................................................	5
3.2	New Default Transport Settings ...........................................................................................................	6
3.3	New Automatic Value for ReceiverPoolQosPolicy’s buffer_size ....................................................	7
3.4	‘XML-Based Application Creation’ Feature No Longer Considered Experimental .....................	8

3.5New APIs to Get ParticipantBuiltinTopicData of Matched Publication or Subscription using Publication and Subscription Handles8

	3.6	Equals Functions for QoS Objects Now Available for All Languages............................................	8
	3.7	Automatic Participant Announcement to Default Domain Zero ....................................................	8
	3.8	More Information Available in DomainParticipant’s PropertyQosPolicy .....................................	8
	3.9	Convenience Constructors and Constants for Duration_t and Time_t ..........................................	9
4	Performance and Resource Usage Improvements........................................................................................		9
	4.1	Increased TCP Transport Performance and Scalability in Windows ..............................................	9
	4.2	Memory Usage Reduction in rtiddsspy for Types with Large Maximum Size.............................	9
5	XML-Related Features ......................................................................................................................................		9
	5.1	Support for Environment Variables in XML Configuration Files Attributes ................................	9
	5.2	Ability to Specify NULL in XML for Fields in EntityNameQosPolicy.........................................	10
	5.3	Schema for XML Application Description Now Allows Colon in Property Name....................	10
6	Code Generation..............................................................................................................................................		10
	6.1	New Code Generator ...........................................................................................................................	10

6.2New Option in rtiddsgen to Configure Name of Macro for Exporting Symbols when Building Windows DLL10

7 Transport-Related Features ............................................................................................................................

11

7.1New UDPv4 Transport Property to Allow Communication Across NAT-Enabled IP Routers 11

7.2 Transport Information Propagated in Participant Discovery Data ...............................................

11

iii

8	Content-Filtering Features .............................................................................................................................		11
	8.1	Ability to Change Expression in ContentFilteredTopic ..................................................................	11
	8.2	Ability to Define Float Constants in Filter Expressions ..................................................................	11
9	Other Features and Improvements...............................................................................................................		12
	9.1	Prioritized Samples Supported in Java and C# APIs ......................................................................	12
	9.2	Ability to Zero Out Padding in Messages on the Wire ...................................................................	12
	9.3	EntityNameQosPolicy Now Applies to Publishers and Subscribers............................................	12

9.4New Default Value for DomainParticipant’s resource_limits.participant_property_string_max_length12

9.5	New Default Value for DomainParticipant’s participant_name.name.........................................	12
10 New Experimental Features...........................................................................................................................		13
10.1	Experimental: Turbo Mode For DataWriter Performance ..............................................................	13
10.2	Experimental: Auto Throttling For DataWriter Performance ........................................................	13
10.3	New Features in RTI Prototyper.........................................................................................................	13

iv

What’s New

This document highlights new or changed features in RTI® Connext™ (formerly RTI Data Distri- bution Service) 5.1.0 compared to the previous release, 5.0.0. (For details on fixed bugs, please see the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities Release Notes.)

Many readers will also want to look at additional documentation available online. In particular, RTI recommends the following:

❏Use the RTI Customer Portal (http://support.rti.com) to download RTI software, access documentation and contact RTI Support. The RTI Customer Portal requires a username and password. You will receive this in the email confirming your purchase. If you do not have this email, please contact license@rti.com. Resetting your login password can be done directly at the RTI Customer Portal.

❏The RTI Community website (http://community.rti.com) provides a wealth of knowl- edge to help you use RTI Connext DDS, including:

•Best Practices,

•Example code for specific features, as well as more complete use-case examples,

•Solutions to common questions,

•A glossary,

•Downloads of experimental software,

•And more.

❏Whitepapers and other articles are available from http://www.rti.com/resources.

1 Supported Platforms

1.1New Standard Target Platforms

❏This release adds support for the platforms described in Table 1.1. Please see the updated

RTI Core Libraries and Utilities Platform Notes for details on using these platforms.

❏When using VxWorks® 6.3 and higher with Real Time Processes (RTP mode):

Shared libraries are now available for MIPS CPUs. (Shared libraries are also available for Pentium CPUs but remain unavailable for PPC CPUs.)

1.2New Custom Target Platforms

This release adds custom support for the platforms in Table 1.2. If you are interested in using one of these platforms, please contact your local RTI representative or email sales@rti.com.

1

						Supported Platforms
Table 1.1 New Platforms
		Operating System		CPU	Compiler	RTI Architecture
						Abbreviation
	AIX			POWER	IBM® xlC_r for AIX v12.1	64p7AIX7.1xlc12.1
			AIX® 7.1	class (64-
					IBM Java 1.7	64p7AIX7.1xlc12.1jdk
				bit mode)
	INTEGRITY			p4080
			INTEGRITY® 10.0.2	(based on	Multi 6.1	p4080Integrity10.0.2.
				e500mc		xes-p4080-smp1
				core)
				x86	gcc 4.4.5	i86Linux2.6gcc4.4.5
			CentOS 6.0, 6.2-6.4		Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	i86Linux2.6gcc4.4.5jdk
			(2.6 kernel)	x64	gcc 4.4.5	x64Linux2.6gcc4.4.5
					Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	x64Linux2.6gcc4.4.5jdk
					gcc 4.7.22	armv6vfphLinux3.xgcc4.
			Raspbian Wheezy 7.0			7.2
				ARMv6
			(3.x kernel)		Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	armv6vfphLinux3.xgcc4.
						7.2jdk
			Red Hat® Enterprise	x86	gcc 3.4.3	i86Linux2.6gcc3.4.3
	Linux		Linux® 4.0 (2.6 kernel)	x64	gcc 3.4.5	x64Linux2.6gcc3.4.5
				x86	gcc 4.4.5	i86Linux2.6gcc4.4.5
			Red Hat Enterprise
					Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	i86Linux2.6gcc4.4.5jdk
			Linux 6.2-6.4
					gcc 4.4.5	x64Linux2.6gcc4.4.5
			(2.6 kernel)	x64
					Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	x64Linux2.6gcc4.4.5jdk
			SUSE® Linux Enter-		gcc 4.3.4	i86Linux3gcc4.3.4
			prise Server 11 SP2	x86
					Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	i86Linux3gcc4.3.4jdk
			(3.x kernel)
				x86	gcc 4.6.3	i86Linux3.xgcc4.4.3
			Ubuntu® Server 12.04		Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	i86Linux3.xgcc4.6.3jdk
			LTS	x64	gcc 4.6.3	x64Linux3.xgcc4.6.3
					Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	x64Linux3.xgcc4.6.3jdk
	OS				clang 4.1	x64Darwin12clang4.1
	Mac		Mac OS® X 10.8	x64
					Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	x64Darwin12clang4.1jdk
					Visual Studio® 2012	i86Win32VS2012
			Windows® 8
				x86	Visual Studio 2012 (C++/CLI, C# 8.0 or	i86Win32dotnet4.5
			(32-bit Edition)		9.0)
					Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	i86Win32jdk
	Windows				Visual Studio 2012	x64Win64VS2012
			Windows 8	x64	Visual Studio 2012 (C++/CLI, C# 8.0 or	x64Win64dotnet4.5
			(64-bit Edition)		9.0)
					Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	x64Win64jdk
					Visual Studio 2012	x64Win64VS2012
			Windows Server 2012
				x64	Visual Studio 2012 (C++/CLI, C# 8.0 or	x64Win64dotnet4.5
			(64-bit Edition)		9.0)
					Java Platform, Standard Edition JDK 1.7	x64Win64jdk

2

Supported Platforms

1.Only C and C++ APIs are supported.

2.Requires Linaro Gnueabihf Cross Compiler

Table 1.2 New Custom Target Libraries (CTLs)

	Operating	CPU	Compiler	RTI Architecture Abbreviation
	System
Linux	NI Linux 3.2	ARMv7	gcc 4.4.1	armv7AngstromLinux3.2gcc4.4.1.
				cortex-a9
		Any PowerPC CPU with floating-
		point hardware that is backwards-	JamaicaVM	For Kernel Modules:
	VxWorks 6.7	compatible with 32-bit PowerPC
			6.2.1 with	ppc604Vx6.7gcc4.1.2jdk
VxWorks		6041	gcc 4.1.2
		Any PowerPC CPU with floating-
		point hardware that is backwards-	JamaicaVM	For Kernel Modules:
	VxWorks 6.8	compatible with 32-bit PowerPC
			6.2.1 with	ppc604Vx6.8gcc4.1.2jdk
		604	gcc 4.1.2

1.Some PowerPC cores such as e500v1 and e500v2 are not fully backwards-compatible with PPC 604.

1.3Removed Platforms

The platforms in Table 1.3 were supported in 5.0.0 but are not supported in this release.

Table 1.3 Removed Platforms

3

					Extensible Type Support
Table 1.3 Removed Platforms
		Operating System	CPU	Compiler	RTI Architecture
					Abbreviation
		Mistral Linux Kernel 2.6.32	ARMv7	Sourcery G++ Lite 2009q3-67	armv7leLinux2.6gcc4.4.1
		(Custom Target Platform)		gcc 4.4.1
		Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1		gcc3.4.6	i86Linux2.6gcc3.4.6
			x86
				Sun Java Platform Standard
		(Custom Target Platform)			i86Linux2.6gcc3.4.6jdk
				Edition JDK 1.5 and 1.6
		RedHawk Linux 5.1		gcc 4.1.2	i86RedHawk5.1gcc4.1.2
			x86
				Sun Java Platform Standard
		(Custom Target Platform)			i86RedHawk5.1gcc4.1.2jdk
				Edition JDK 1.5 and 1.6
		RedHawk Linux 5.4 (2.6 kernel)		gcc 4.2.1	i86RedHawk5.4gcc4.2.1
			x86
				Sun Java Platform Standard	i86RedHawk5.4gcc4.2.1jdk
		(Custom Target Platform)		Edition JDK 1.6
	Linux
				gcc 4.1.0	i86Suse10.1gcc4.1.0
			x86
				Sun Java Platform Standard	i86Suse10.1gcc4.1.0jdk
		SUSE Linux Enterprise Server		Edition JDK 1.5 and 1.6
		10.1 (2.6 kernel)		gcc 4.1.0	x64Suse10.1gcc4.1.0
			x64
				Sun Java Platform Standard	x64Suse10.1gcc4.1.0jdk
				Edition JDK 1.5 and 1.6
				gcc 4.4.3	i86Linux2.6gcc4.4.3
			x86
				Sun Java Platform Standard	i86Linux2.6gcc4.4.3jdk
				Edition JDK 1.6
		Ubuntu Server 10.04 (LTS)
				gcc 4.4.3	x64Linux2.6gcc4.4.3
			x64
				Sun Java Platform Standard	x64Linux2.6gcc4.4.3jdk
				Edition JDK 1.6
	OS			gcc 4.2.1	x64Darwin10gcc4.2.1
		Mac OS X 10.6	x64
	Mac			Java SE 1.6 for Mac OS	x64Darwin10gcc4.2.1jdk
	Solaris		x86	Sun Java Platform Standard	i86Sol2.9jdk
		Solaris™ 2.9		Edition JDK 1.6
			UltraSPARC	Sun Java Platform Standard	sparcSol2.9jdk
				Edition JDK 1.6

2 Extensible Type Support

2.1Support for Mutable Types

This release adds partial support in the C, C++, Java, and .NET APIs for mutable types, as defined in the "Extensible and Dynamic Topic Types for DDS" (DDS-XTypes) specification from the Object Management Group (OMG).

Using mutable types allows data types to evolve over time by adding, removing, or changing the order of the members in the type definitions. Specifically, these features are now supported:

❏Specifying the MUTABLE_EXTENSIBILITY value for the Extensibility annotation in IDL, XML, and XSD. For example, to use this value in IDL:

struct MyStruct { long m1; long m2;

4

Extensible Type Support

}; //@Extensibility MUTABLE_EXTENSIBILITY

❏Specifying the member ID in IDL, XML, and XSD with the built-in annotation, ID. For example, to use the ID annotation in IDL:

struct MyStruct { long m1; //@ID 100 long m2; //@ID 200

}; //@Extensibility MUTABLE_EXTENSIBILITY

❏Accessing the member ID information in a TypeCode by using the

DDS_TypeCode_member_id() operation.

❏Propagating member ID information on the wire as part of the TypeObject.

❏Accessing and setting the value of members of a mutable type using the member name in existing DynamicData API. Accessing or setting by member ID is not supported at this time.

❏Using content filters for mutable types

For more information on using mutable types, please see the updated RTI Core Libraries and Util- ities Getting Started Guide Addendum for Extensible Types.

2.2Support for Optional Members

This release adds support for optional members in C, C++ and Java, as defined in the "Extensible and Dynamic Topic Types for DDS" (DDS-XTypes) specification from the Object Management Group (OMG).

In a structure type, an optional member is a member that an application can decide to send or omit as part of every published sample. Specifically, these features are now supported:

❏Declaring struct members as optional in IDL, XML and XSD

❏Generating code for types with optional members in C, C++ and Java

❏Accessing and setting optional members in the existing DynamicData API using the member name. Accessing or setting by member ID is not supported at this time.

❏Using content filters for types with optional members

For more information on using optional members, see the updated RTI Connext Getting Started Guide Addendum for Extensible Types.

2.3More Information Printed if DataReader and DataWriter cannot Communicate due to Incompatible Types

Connext DDS checks that a DataReader and DataWriter for the same topic use types that are com- patible. If a DataReader’s TypeConsistencyEnforcementQosPolicy kind is set to DDS_DISALLOW_TYPE_COERCION, the middleware requires that both types are equal. In the previous release, the warning messages did not include the specific reason why the types were not equal. The warning messages now include more details. For example:

RTICdrTypeObjectStructureType_equals:types are not equal: different number of members

RTICdrTypeObjectTypeLibraryElement_equals:types are not equal: TypeA, TypeB

Warning messages used when the TypeConsistencyEnforcementQosPolicy kind is DDS_ALLOW_TYPE_COERCION (the default) have also been improved.

5

Improvements to Ease-of-Use and Out-of-the-Box Experience

3 Improvements to Ease-of-Use and Out-of-the-Box Experience

3.1Built-in QoS Profiles

A number of QoS profiles are now built into the Connext core libraries and can be used as start- ing points when configuring QoS for your Connext applications.

There are two provided libraries, BuiltinQosLib and BuiltinQosLibExp, and 34 different pro- files. You can use any of these profiles as base profiles when creating your own XML configura- tions or simply use these profiles directly in the DDS_*_create_*_with_profile() APIs.

There are three types of profiles:

❏Baseline.X.X.X profiles represent the QoS defaults for Connext version X.X.X. The defaults for the latest Connext version can be accessed using the BuiltinQosLib::Base- line profile.

❏Generic.X profiles allow you to easily configure different features and communication use-cases with Connext. For example, there is a Generic.StrictReliable profile for use when your application has a requirement for no data loss, regardless of the application domain.

❏Pattern.X profiles inherit from Generic.X profiles and allow you to configure various domain-specific communication use cases. For example, there is a Pattern.Alarm profile that can be used to manage the generation and consumption of alarm events.

The USER_QOS_PROFILES.xml file generated by rtiddsgen now contains a profile that inherits from the BuiltinQosLibExp::Generic.StrictReliable profile as an example of how to use these profiles in your own application.

Example use cases for these profiles:

❏To quickly enable RTI Monitoring Library by inheriting from the

BuiltinQosLib::Generic.Monitoring.Common profile.

❏To easily revert to the default QoS values from a previous Connext version by inheriting from the correct BuiltinQosLib::Baseline.X.X.X profile.

❏To set up common use-case configurations and patterns such as strict reliability or large data communication by inheriting from one of the BuiltinQosLibExp::Generic.X or

Pattern.X profiles.

To see the contents of the built-in QoS profiles:

In <Connext installation directory>/resource/qos_profiles_5.1.0/xml, you will find:

❏BaselineRoot.documentationONLY.xml—This file contains the root baseline QoS profile corresponding to the default values of Connext 5.0.0.

❏BuiltinProfiles.documentationONLY.xml—This file contains the rest of the built-in QoS profiles.

These profiles are also described in the API Reference HTML documentation (under Modules/ RTI Connext DDS API Reference/Infrastructure Module/Builtin QoS Profiles) and in Section 17.9.5, Built-in QoS Profiles, in the Core Libraries and Utilities User’s Manual.

Notes:

❏The built-in QoS profiles that enable RTI Monitoring Library set the property rti.moni- tor.create_function. Consequently, they only work in Connext applications in which the monitoring library can be loaded dynamically. Specifically, the built-in monitoring pro- files will not work in these situations:

6

Improvements to Ease-of-Use and Out-of-the-Box Experience

•When the Connext application links the monitoring libraries statically

•When using a VxWorks 6.7 or 6.8 platform with Java1.

For more information, see the RTI Monitoring Library Getting Started Guide

(RTI_Monitoring_Library_GettingStarted.pdf).

❏Some of the built-in profiles are experimental. All the experimental profiles are contained within the library BuiltinQosLibExp.

3.2New Default Transport Settings

Some of the default settings for a number of the provided transport plugins have changed to provide better out-of-the-box performance. By increasing the out-of-the-box performance, in most cases you will not have to modify these settings or keep them in sync across all Connext applications and services within your system.

The affected transports are UDPv4, UDPv6, Secure WAN, TCP, and shared memory.

For UDPv4, UDPv6, WAN, and TCP, we changed the values for message_size_max, send_socket_buffer_size, and recv_socket_buffer_size.

For shared memory, we changed the values for message_size_max, received_message_count_max, and recv_buffer_size.

Table 3.1 and Table 3.2 show the old and new default values.

Table 3.1 UDPv4, UDPv6, WAN, and TCP

	Old Default	New Default (bytes)
		Non-INTEGRITY		INTEGRITY
	(bytes)
		Platforms		Platforms1
message_size_max	9216	655072		9216
send_socket_buffer_size	9216	131072		131072
recv_socket_buffer_size	9216	131072		131072

1.Due to limits imposed by the INTEGRITY platform, the new default settings for all INTEGRITY platforms are treated differently than other platforms. Please see the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities Platform Notes for more infor- mation on the issues with increasing the message_size_max default values on INTEGRITY platforms. Notice that interoperation with INTEGRITY platforms will require updating the transport property message_size_max so that it is consistent across all platforms.

2.The value 65507 represents the maximum user payload size that can be sent as part of a UDP packet.

Table 3.2 Shared Memory

	Old Default	New Default (bytes)
		Non-INTEGRITY		INTEGRITY
	(bytes)
		Platforms		Platforms1
message_size_max	9216	65536		9216
received_message_count_max	32	64		8
receive_buffer_size	73728	1048576		18432

1.Due to limits imposed by the INTEGRITY platform, the new default settings for all INTEGRITY platforms are treated differently than other platforms. Please see the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities Platform Notes for more infor- mation on the issues with increasing the message_size_max default values on INTEGRITY platforms. Notice that interoperation with INTEGRITY platforms will require updating the transport property message_size_max so that it is consistent across all platforms.

1.VxWorks 6.7 and 6.8 Java platforms require custom supported libraries.

7

Improvements to Ease-of-Use and Out-of-the-Box Experience

Important Notes:

❏If you are using a LynxOS platform over the loopback interface, you may have to decrease the default value for message_size_max because (due to a LynxOS bug) the loopback interface does not allow IP fragmentation. Please see the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities Platform Notes for more information.

❏Because the default value for message_size_max changed, Connext 5.1.0 is not out-of- the-box backwards compatible with older versions. For details, please see Section 2.5.2, Transport Compatibility for Connext 5.1.0 in the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities Release Notes.

3.3New Automatic Value for ReceiverPoolQosPolicy’s buffer_size

In previous releases, increasing the message_size_max of an installed transport usually required

adjusting the ReceiverPoolQoSPolicy’s buffer_size. The buffer_size must always be at least as large as the maximum message_size_max of any installed non-zero-copy transport.1

In this release, the buffer_size can be adjusted automatically by the middleware by configuring its value to DDS_LENGTH_AUTO (in C/C++) or ReceiverPoolQosPolicy.LENGTH_AUTO (in

.NET and Java). When buffer_size is set to DDS_LENGTH_AUTO (the default value), the effec- tive value will automatically be set to the largest message_size_max of all installed transports, without needing any other configuration. You should not need to change this value to anything other than the default.

3.4‘XML-Based Application Creation’ Feature No Longer Considered Experimental

The XML-Based Application Creation feature, introduced in Connext 4.5f, is no longer consid- ered ‘experimental.’ This feature simplifies the development and programming of RTI Connext applications by allowing you to define your entire system using XML.

Without this feature, you can define data types and Quality of Service settings in XML. With this feature, you can also use XML to define your system’s Topics, DomainParticipants, and all the

Entities they contain (Publishers, Subscribers, DataWriters and DataReaders).

For details on using this feature, see the XML-Based Application Creation Getting Started Guide (RTI_CoreLibrariesAndUtilities_XML_AppCreation_GettingStarted.pdf).

3.5New APIs to Get ParticipantBuiltinTopicData of Matched Publication or Subscription using Publication and Subscription Handles

Two new APIs, get_matched_publication_participant_data() (for a DataReader) and get_matched_subscription_participant_data() (for a DataWriter), allow you to get the DDS_ParticipantBuiltinTopicData of a matched publication or subscription using publication and subscription handles. Previously, retrieving the DDS_ParticipantBuiltinTopicData was only possible using a corresponding participant handle. These APIs are safe to use in listener call- backs.

3.6Equals Functions for QoS Objects Now Available for All Languages

All QoS objects have ‘equals’ functions that check two QoS objects for strict equality. In previous versions, this feature was only available in the Java API. Now all of supported language APIs support the QoS equals functions.

1.A “zero-copy transport” does not use the receive buffer. A transport is zero-copy if the properties_bitmap prop- erty in the DDS_Transport_Property_t is NDDS_TRANSPORT_PROPERTY_BIT_BUFFER_ALWAYS_LOANED. The only built-in transport that supports zero-copy is the UDPv4 transport on VxWorks platforms.

8

Performance and Resource Usage Improvements

3.7Automatic Participant Announcement to Default Domain Zero

Starting with this release, DomainParticipants announce themselves to default domain ID 0 using the default UDPv4 multicast group address (239.255.0.1) for discovery traffic on that domain.

This feature is used by tools such as RTI Admin Console and RTI Monitor to monitor and provide a list of all active domains in a system.

The feature is configured using two new fields in the DiscoveryConfigQosPolicy:

❏default_domain_announcement_period

❏ignore_default_domain_announcements

By default, participant announcements to the default domain are sent every 30 seconds. You can choose to disable this feature by setting default_domain_announcement_period to DDS_DURATION_INFINITE.

Notice that announcement to the default domain is orthogonal to regular discovery.

For additional information, see the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities Users Manual.

3.8More Information Available in DomainParticipant’s PropertyQosPolicy

In the previous release, new system information such as hostname and process_id were added to the DomainParticipant's PropertyQosPolicy. This releases adds even more information, such as:

❏username — the username that is running the process

❏execution_timestamp— the time when the execution started

❏creation_timestamp — the time when the executable was created

❏executable_filepath — the name and full path of the executable

❏target — the architecture for which the library was compiled (for example, x64Darwin10gcc4.2.1)

The username, execution_timestamp, creation_timestamp, and executable_filepath properties are only supported on Windows and Linux architectures.

By default, these properties, like any other properties, are propagated. It is always possible to disable propagation by setting the property’s propagate field to FALSE. For more information, see Section 8.7, System Properties, in the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities User’s Manual.

3.9Convenience Constructors and Constants for Duration_t and Time_t

The classes Duration_t and Time_t include four new convenience constructors: from_micros(), from_millis(), from nanos(), and from_seconds(). Duration_t has two new static constants: Duration_t.INFINITE and Duration_t.ZERO. Similarly, Time_t also has two new static con- stants: Time_t.INFINITE and Time_t.ZERO.

4 Performance and Resource Usage Improvements

4.1Increased TCP Transport Performance and Scalability in Windows

This release increases the performance and scalability of the TCP transport on Windows systems by adding I/O Completion Ports (IOCP) support.

9

XML-Related Features

To configure the TCP transport to use IOCP, set the new property socket_monitoring_kind to WINDOWS_IOCP. For details, see Section 36.2.5, TCP/TLS Transport Properties, in the Core Librar- ies and Utilities User’s Manual.

4.2Memory Usage Reduction in rtiddsspy for Types with Large Maximum Size

In previous releases, rtiddsspy preallocated a set of buffers to receive incoming samples from DataWriters. The size of these buffers was equal to the maximum serialized size of the types associated with the incoming samples.

For types with a large maximum size, rtiddsspy could run out of memory even when the actual size of the incoming samples was small.

This release resolves this problem by preallocating the buffers to a small size and using dynamic memory allocation if the size of the buffers is not enough to hold the incoming samples.

5 XML-Related Features

5.1Support for Environment Variables in XML Configuration Files Attributes

The previous release introduces the ability to refer to an environment variable within an XML tag. This release extends this functionality by also allowing environment variables within attri- butes, keeping the same format.

For example:

<element attr="Attribute is $(MY_ATTRIB)"> <name>The name is $(MY_NAME)</name> <value>The value is $(MY_VALUE)</value>

</element>

Providing support for environment variables within attributes increases reusability for a wider set of schemas. For instance, the feature can be used in XML-Based Application Creation to parameterize the domain ID and avoid file duplication for each domain.

5.2Ability to Specify NULL in XML for Fields in EntityNameQosPolicy

The new default value for the EntityNameQosPolicy's name field is NULL. To support this in an XML configuration, it is now possible to set both the name and role_name fields of the Entity- NameQosPolicy to NULL with the attribute xsi:nil. For example:

<participant_name>

<name xsi:nil="true"/> <role_name xsi:nil="true"/>

</participant_name>

5.3Schema for XML Application Description Now Allows Colon in Property Name

The rti_dds_profiles.xsd XSD schema used by the XML-Based Application Creation feature and the RTI Prototyper tool has been enhanced to allow a colon ':' to appear in property names.

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Code Generation

6 Code Generation

6.1New Code Generator

This release includes a separate and new implementation of the Code Generator; this new ver- sion significantly improves the performance and the original implementation and makes easier to customize the generated output.

The new code generator can be invoked using the script rtiddsgen2. It coexists with the original implementation, rtiddsgen.

For more information, see the RTI Code Generator 2 Getting Started Guide.

Note: Code Generator 2 is considered an Early Access Release.

6.2New Option in rtiddsgen to Configure Name of Macro for Exporting Symbols when Building Windows DLL

This release introduces a new rtiddsgen command-line option, -dllExportMacroSuffix, that allows you to configure the suffix of the macro used to export type-plugin symbols when building a Windows DLL.

If you run rtiddsgen without this option, the macro is named NDDS_USER_DLL_EXPORT. With this option, the macro is named NDDS_USER_DLL_EXPORT_<Suffix>.

7 Transport-Related Features

7.1New UDPv4 Transport Property to Allow Communication Across NAT-Enabled IP Routers

This release includes a new UDPv4 transport property, dds.transport.UDPv4.buil- tin.public_address, which allows you to configure the IP address that a DomainParticipant will announce to other DomainParticipants.

This property will typically be initialized with the public address of the IP NAT router that pro- vides access to the WAN.

For additional information on this new property, see Table 15.2 in the RTI Core Libraries and Util- ities User's Manual.

7.2Transport Information Propagated in Participant Discovery Data

Starting with this release, the message_size_max of each installed transport in a DomainPartici- pant is propagated as part of the participant discovery information.

A DomainParticipant can access the transport information of a remote DomainParticipant by inspecting the field transport_info in the remote DomainParticipant’s Built-in Topic Data. For more information, see Chapter 16, Built-in Topics, in the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities Users Manual.

Connext uses the transport information propagated via discovery to detect potential misconfigu- rations in a Connext distributed system. If two DomainParticipants that discovered each other have one common transport with different values for message_size_max, Connext will print an error message indicating that condition.

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Content-Filtering Features

8 Content-Filtering Features

8.1Ability to Change Expression in ContentFilteredTopic

In previous releases, the filter expression in a ContentFilteredTopic was immutable and you could only change the expression parameters. This limitation has been removed. Now you can change the filter expression by means of the DDS_ContentFilteredTopic’s set_expression() oper- ation.

8.2Ability to Define Float Constants in Filter Expressions

Now you can specify a float constant in a filter expression by using the suffix F (or f). For exam- ple:

"a_float = 4.3F"

Typically, F is only required if a double has been assigned a float value in the code and then is tested against a constant in a SQL expression. In this case, it is important to use the F suffix appropriately. Consider the following case:

struct MyType { float a_float; double a_double; };

Assign the values in code (C):

a_float = 4.1; a_double = 4.1F;

This expression works because a_float is a float, so a_double is demoted to a float:

"a_float = a_double"

However, this next expression will not work because both operands are treated as doubles, but a_double was assigned a float:

"a_double = 4.1"

Instead, the expression must be written as:

"a_double = 4.1F"

9 Other Features and Improvements

9.1Prioritized Samples Supported in Java and C# APIs

The Prioritized Samples feature is now supported in the Java and C# APIs; previously it was only available in the C and C++ APIs.

This feature allows you to prioritize traffic that is in competition for transmission resources. For more information, see Section 6.6.4, Prioritized Samples, in the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities User’s Manual.

9.2Ability to Zero Out Padding in Messages on the Wire

This release adds a new field to the DDS_TypeSupportQosPolicy, cdr_padding_kind. It can be set so that all padding bytes are set to zero during the serialization of CDR streams that are sent on the wire. By default, the padding will not be set to zero, which is the behavior in all previous releases.

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New Experimental Features

9.3EntityNameQosPolicy Now Applies to Publishers and Subscribers

Publishers and Subscribers can be now identified with a name, represented by two new members publisher_name and subscriber_name in PublisherQos and SubscriberQos, respectively.

Unlike names for DomainParticipants, DataWriters and DataReaders, the names for Publishers and

Subscribers names are not propagated as part of the discovery information (therefore RTI tools will not display their values).

9.4New Default Value for DomainParticipant’s resource_limits.participant_property_string_max_length

The default value of participant_property_string_max_length in the DomainParticipantResour- ceLimitsQosPolicy has been changed from 1024 characters to 2048 to accommodate new system properties (see Section 8.7, System Properties, in the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities User’s Manual.)

9.5New Default Value for DomainParticipant’s participant_name.name

The default value for participant_qos.participant_name.name has been changed from the string “[ENTITY]” to NULL to provide consistency with the name of other entities such as

DataWriters and DataReaders.

10 New Experimental Features

Experimental features are used to evaluate potential new features and obtain customer feed- back. They are not guaranteed to be consistent or supported and they should not be used in pro- duction.

Experimental features are clearly documented as such in this document or in the Release Notes document of the component in which they are included, as well as in the component’s User’s Manual.

For more information on the concept of experimental features, see the RTI Core Libraries and Util- ities Release Notes.

10.1Experimental: Turbo Mode For DataWriter Performance

This release provides a new experimental feature known as Turbo Mode. This feature greatly improves the performance of Connext DDS in situations where the application is writing mes- sages at high-rate. Turbo Mode intelligently uses message-aggregation (so called Connext DDS batching feature) to combine any small samples written by a DataWriter resulting in fewer proto- col messages and a much reduced CPU load. The lower CPU load results on both higher throughput and lower latency.

Turbo Mode uses an intelligent algorithm that automatically adjusts the number of bytes in a batch at run time according to current system conditions, such as write speed (or write fre- quency) and sample size. This intelligence is what gives it the ability to increase throughput at high message rates and avoid negatively impacting message latency at low message rates.

To enable Turbo mode, set the new property dds.data_writer.enable_turbo_mode. Turbo mode is not enabled by default.

For details on using these features, see Section 6.3.18 in the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities User’s Manual.

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New Experimental Features

10.2Experimental: Auto Throttling For DataWriter Performance

This release provides a new experimental feature known as Auto Throttling. You can configure a DataWriter to automatically adjust the writing rate and the send window size to provide the best latency/throughput tradeoff as system conditions change.

To enable Auto Throttling, set the new properties dds.domain_participant.auto_throttle.enable and dds.data_writer.auto_throttle.enable to true. Auto Throttling is not enabled by default and only applies to reliable communications.

For details on using this feature, see Section 10.4, Auto Throttling for DataWriter Performance— Experimental Feature, in the RTI Core Libraries and Utilities User's Manual.

10.3New Features in RTI Prototyper

RTI Prototyper is an experimental tool to accelerate Connext application development and sce- nario testing. It gives you an easy way to try out realistic scenarios on your own computer sys- tems and networks, and get immediate information on the expected performance, resource usage, and behavior on your system.

This release provides the following new features in Prototyper:

10.3.1Prototyper Now Includes Lua Scripting Engine

RTI Prototyper now includes an embedded Lua scripting engine. This fast, lightweight, and extensible scripting language provides an easy and powerful way to define the behavior of your distributed application components.

Configuring Prototyper to use Lua Scripting is straightforward and allows you to define custom behavior for all the entities and data contained in your XML configuration file. This enables the use of Rapid Application Development (RAD) techniques for developing sophisticated applica- tion to process data on the fly.

See the RTI Prototyper Getting Started Guide for more information (in <Connext installation directory>/ndds.<version>/doc/pdf).

10.3.2Prototyper Starts Right Away if Only One Configuration is Provided

If the XML profiles contain only one configuration, RTI Prototyper will no longer prompt the user to choose one. Instead it will start right away, using the configuration. If multiple configurations are available, the user will be asked to choose one.

10.3.3Prototyper -domainID Option Overrides Domain ID Specified in XML Configuration

The domain ID specified in the XML configuration can be now overwritten by using RTI Proto- typer ‘s new command-line option, -domainId.

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