ALM Works

We are happy to uncover the first results of our work on the next major release of JIRA Client. One of the primary goals for 3.x series is to boost the performance, especially for large JIRA installations. Version 3.0 addresses the crucial part of this problem and introduces a few useful features. Keeping up with Atlassian, JIRA Client 3.0 will be fully compatible with JIRA 5.0, so if you are an early adopter of JIRA, we recommend trying JIRA Client 3.0 Alpha 1 as well. It works with latest JIRA 5.0 release candidates.

Back End Changes

This release features a completely rewritten back end, which gives us a foundation for great performance improvements and useful new features.

Now JIRA Client uses SQLite database for storing issues on your computer and unlike previous versions, it does not have to load its entire local database into memory. Thanks to this you can already enjoy faster JIRA Client startup and less memory consumption for many operations.

More changes are on the way. Our top priority task is to make JIRA Client work with large JIRA servers allowing you to download all issues to your local database without any performance penalty. Since the new architecture removes the limit on the number of issues stored locally, we are half way there.

"New Issue Here" and Other Features

We have resolved a long-standing request for quick issue creation: now you can right-click a query, select New Issue Here and the New Issue window will appear with field values preset to match the query constraints. Thus, once the issue is saved, it will be seen in the results of this query.

In 3.0 we are taking further one of the major advantages of a remote client — you can now continuously work on your issues and edit them without having to wait for the changes to upload. You can change priority of an issue, progress through workflow, link to other issues, and upload attachments — all without having to wait while this information reaches the server.

Routine operations are becoming faster. Now it takes just one click to assign an issue to yourself, because all Assignee editors have a "me" button. You can use it in the New Issue and Edit Issue windows, in the Assign To dialog, or in the workflow action dialog. Similar button appears in the Resolution editor and sets resolution to Fixed.

Attaching logs, dumps, or any other text to an issue has become easier too: copy your text to the Clipboard, click an Attach Text button on the issue toolbar, and a dialog containing your text will pop-up. Add your comments, click Attach, and JIRA Client will automatically save it to a file and attach the file to the issue.

Another added feature is a text search tool you can run in any text field (like description or comments) using Ctrl+F (Cmd+F): it will automatically search within the text field as you type, highlighting the matches.

There are other improvements and bug fixes too. You can see the complete list of resolved issues in our JIRA.

Compatibility with JIRA 5.0 and Earlier Versions

As mentioned above, this release is compatible with the latest JIRA 5.0 release candidates. This time, however, backward compatibility is reduced — we won't be able to support JIRA versions older than 4.2.

Licensing and the Early Access Program

We release only JIRA Client Pro this time, but you don't have to worry about licensing. Alpha 1 and its updates are shipped with a fully functional Early Access Program (EAP) license, valid until August 1, 2012.

Upgrade Instructions

You can skip this section if you haven't used JIRA Client before.

The old local database is not used by JIRA Client 3.0 (except on the first run — see below) and will be left intact; you will be able to safely return to your older version at any time. However, this also means that some information that is stored only locally will have to be migrated. Please perform all the steps below to ensure that your information is not lost.

1. Upload all your local changes from the old version of JIRA Client (Connection | Upload Changes).
2. Back up your workspace.
3. Install JIRA Client 3.0. You can install it over the older version.
4. Start JIRA Client 3.0. It will now pick up and reinitialize your connections and queries.
5. Run your top-level queries. The new database does not contain any issues yet, so this step is needed to fill it.
6. Some queries based on custom fields will not work in the new version. You can fix them by using Search | Edit Query. Normally, details of search conditions will be preserved, you will only need to re-select the fields.
7. Similarly, some custom field columns will be missing in issue table. You can add them back by clicking the button to the right of the table header or by pressing Ctrl+] (Cmd+]).
8. If you use local tags, they will need to be migrated from the old database. JIRA Client will automatically do it for you on the first run (the only time it will need the old database.) During this operation it will create a file named tags.txt in your workspace. If you see that tags are not imported, run Tools | Tag Importer for that file to get your tags.

Alpha Precautions

Note that this is an Alpha release, which means that we have some issues to resolve. All features announced here can already be used; in fact, we are using this release internally as the main issue tracking tool. We made it available to the public so that we could hear your feedback earlier, while we're still in the process of development. So don't hesitate to tell us what you think and add issues to our JIRA or write to our support!

Sincerely,
Igor Baltiyskiy,
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download JIRA Client
• Release notes in JIRA
• Change log