About Feature Levels and ClearCase

Following are descriptions of all feature levels and the features that they enable.

Feature Level 9:

Raising the feature level to 9 enables the following features:

1. Assignment of explicit mastership to branches.

2. New oplog entry to support replication of "sideways" rebase operations.

For more information about these features, refer to technote 273651.

Feature Level 8:

Raising the feature level to 8 enables the following features:

• Introduces ACLs (Access Control Lists) to control access to VOBs.


• Feature Level 8 also changes mkelem/mkdir behavior for the new element's group, as explained in the 'mkelem' reference page in the help. At Feature Level 8, the element group is copied from the containing directory's group, rather than from one of the user's groups.


• When the VOB family feature level of a replica is 8, changing a replica from non-preserving to preserving is blocked; this action prevents inconsistent notions of identities and permissions among members of the VOB family.

Reference Version 8 mkelem documentation in the help

Feature Level 7:

This Feature Level is the first that requires VOB Database Schema Version 80 or 81. All subsequent feature levels require this database schema version.

Raising the feature level to 7 (for a replicated VOB, raising the replicated VOB family to feature level 7) enables the following features:

• Evil twin detection and prevention
• Support for more integrations with Rational Team Concert
• Predefined element types for Unicode type managers
• Improved UCM Performance
• More precise event time storage during checkin and checkout

Feature Level 6:

Raising the replicated VOB family to feature level 6 results in the following changes in the VOB:

• Introduces new Synchronous Request for Mastership (SRFM) functionality, which allows a user to request mastership during a checkout operation. Refer to technote 152339 for further details.

Feature Level 5:

Raising the feature level to 5 (or for a replicated VOB, raising the replicated VOB family to feature level 5) results in the following changes in the VOB:

• A VOB at feature level 5 is able to contain elements that are larger than 2 GB.
   
• A UCM project in which the PVOB and all component VOBs are at feature level 5 takes advantage of improvement in several UCM operations.
   
• When a replica family is at feature level 5, replication becomes more efficient in cases where the -maxsize option is used with syncreplica.

Feature Level 4:

Raising the feature level to 4 (or for a replicated VOB, raising the replicated VOB family to feature level 4) results in the following changes in the VOB:

• Feature level 3 placed constraints on client/server compatibility in UCM environments. Feature level 4 introduces no additional constraint; it is equivalent to feature level 3 in terms of PVOB client/server compatibility. Also, read-only streams and single-stream projects are restricted to PVOBs at feature levels 3 and higher (see the reference page for mkstream).


• Permission preserving replication mode was introduced for MultiSite between Feature level 4 and higher VOBs.


• The predefined element types xml, html, and rose (if they exist) are renamed to xml_v5.0, html_v5.0, and rose_v5.0. Similarly, element type names that you have changed are renamed to name_v5.0. The v5.0 types lose their status as well-known element types. When you create new elements, the file-to-type mapping mechanism no longer treats these types as the defaults (see the cc.magic reference page). The type of an existing element does not change; however, you can use chtype to change it.


• The new predefined element types xml, html, and rose are created. The purpose of replacing these types is to base the type managers on the binary_delta type manager instead of the text_file_delta manager. The cc.magic file maps new elements to these types by default.


• The element type, xde, is created.