Advanced Topics for Altium Concord Pro

Info for IT Departments

Many companies require that their IT professionals install and set up their Altium Concord Pro instance for them. Documentation is available  providing a single, detailed resource for an organization's IT department. A place to come for answers to typically asked questions regarding this technology, including:

• What are the hardware requirements to install Altium Concord Pro?
• What is installed?
• What programs and processes are running?
• Where is the data stored?
• What ports are used?
• What protocol is used for communications?
• How is data backed-up?

Server Items

Within Altium Concord Pro, each design entity that can be stored, managed, and reused, is represented as a specific type of Item. An Item is uniquely identified within the Server and can contain any number of Revisions, where a revision contains the data for that Item. Each time a change is made to the data contained within a revision - which for most Item types can be edited directly within an associated temporary editor - it is committed (or re-released) into a new revision of that Item, ensuring that no existing revision can ever be overwritten, and thereby ensuring the highest integrity.

An Item can have any number of revisions, which are essentially an evolution of that Item over time. A change is made and the new data content is committed/uploaded/released into a new revision. The data stored in each revision of an Item is therefore typically different. To identify between these different revisions of an Item, a revision identifier (ID) is used, which in combination with the Item ID creates a unique identifier for each release of an Item. This gives us the Item-Revision.

Another important aspect of an Item Revision is its Lifecycle State. This is another identifier that can be used to quickly assess what stage that revision has currently reached in its life, and what designers are therefore authorized to do with it. Where the Revision reflects design changes made to the Item, the Lifecycle State reflects the state of the item from a business perspective, such as Planned, New From Design, For Production, Obsolete, and so on.

The Explorer Panel

From within Altium Designer, component management is streamlined through use of the Components panel and Manufacturer Part Search panel. However, another interface to your Altium Concord Pro installation is the Explorer panel. From this panel you can perform many activities, including:

• Creating and managing the organizational structure used in the Server.
• Creating any number of Items, each representative of a design object.
• Direct editing and placement of Item Revisions.
• Reviewing and managing the lifecycle of Item revisions.
• Interrogating the usage of a particular Item revision (Where-Used).
• Browsing and managing supply chain information for Component Items.
• Downloading stored data, including data generated through the managed release of board design projects.

LDAP Sync

To simplify the process of connecting to and accessing company networks, Altium Concord Pro facilitates directory services support through its browser interface.

This offers domain user synchronization based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), which queries the network’s central LDAP server to retrieve domain user group and role membership information. Authenticating domain users through established directory services in this way offers the potential of a single login for access to all company systems, including Altium Concord Pro.

The Altium Concord Pro LDAP synchronization queries the network services on a user role basis, where role membership information is gathered for Concord Pro user access authorization. Polling the domain membership through the LDAP service (synchronizing) allows the system to respond to a domain user configuration change within a synchronization cycle.

An LDAP Sync allows an administrator of Altium Concord Pro to leverage the network domain’s existing username and password credentials, so that user credentials do not have to be created manually one at a time on the Users page of Concord Pro's browser interface. When setup correctly, the Users page will automatically populate with user credentials, enabling any user listed to sign into Altium Concord Pro using their regular corporate network username and password.

Private License Service

For organizations that require their Altium Designer installations to remain offline - isolated from the internet - the convenience and flexibility of on-demand software licensing can be provided by a localized Private License Server, rather than from the internet-based Altium Licensing Service. The Altium Concord Pro installation provides just the ticket, through its local Private License Service. It can be configured as a central, or local License Server, and can serve both Altium Designer and Altium Concord Pro licenses over a local network. In addition, a server administrator is able to take full control over the offline leasing of license seats, configure licensing for use by specific roles, and configure a license for Roaming, and much more.

The server's PLS can be configured and used in different modes of operation, as summarized below:

• No PLS mode - the Server's standard configuration, where its acquired licenses are not made available (served) on the network.
• Local PLS mode - both Altium Designer and Altium Concord Pro licenses that have been acquired by the Server are served over a network by the Server's (local) PLS service.
• External PLS mode - the Server connects to, and uses, an external PLS service (such as a remote Server PLS that has been set up as a central license server) in place of its own PLS service.

Data Acquisition

Altium facilitates the ability for an organization to copy the content they need from a source Server, and deliver it to a second target Server - a process referred to simply as Server Data Acquisition. By acquiring design content, ownership is placed firmly in the hands of the receiving organization, who are free to make local modifications and maintain the content as they desire moving forward. And by keeping a link between the acquired data and its original source, intelligent handling of the data can be performed, including notification when the source of any copied content is updated. And no matter if additional releases have been made to an item locally, there is always the possibility to revert to a previous revision from the original source Server - all by keeping a link back to the item's original source, or Origin.

Acquisition is performed using the Content Cart dialog. Access to this dialog is made from within the Explorer panel. While browsing the source server from which you wish to obtain data, simply right-click on the revision of a supported Item type that you wish to acquire (or a folder of components, for example), and choose the Add to Content Cart command from the context menu.

Local Version Control Service

The Altium Concord Pro installation provides localized (and centralized ) version control, courtesy of its Version Control service. This service provides version control possibilities right there where you need them, locally, without searching, or paying for, external VCS management software.

A new installation of Altium Concord Pro provides a single Git-based design repository for accommodating all of your managed design projects - and that's it! This avoids any setup and complexity regarding the Server's local Version Control service. You have a single design repository - Versioned Storage - for all your designers to access and release into. As such, the VCS page of the Server's browser interface becomes purely informational - you cannot add a new repository, and the single Git repository cannot be modified in any way, nor deleted. If you have upgraded to Altium Concord Pro from Altium NEXUS Server 1.0 (or Altium Vault 3.0) then use of SVN repositories will also be enabled, so that you can continue to use your previous (and established) design flow. In this case, you can continue to create repositories through the local Version Control service (SVN-only), or connect to external repositories (SVN or Git).

By defining design repositories in this centralized fashion, an organization can fully control which repositories its designers can access and use.