Summary

The scope of the Connect Platform 4.4 release covers the following:

  1. New features to support streamlining the data ingestion and data processing elements within Connect to support multiple business use cases

  2. Optimization and improvements for platform stability

  3. Platform maintenance for Security, .NET upgrades and access token management, Defect resolutions

New Features

  1. Each DICOM Server and DICOM Listener configured for Connect will include sub-entities called targets - which are used to associate application and datasets for all data ingested into Connect

    1. These created targets are visible on the DICOM utility screens for both Servers and Listeners

  2. Connect Administrators and Platform users can elect to do upfront data validation at the point of ingestion on a per server target basis

  3. Connect Administrators and Platform users can elect to enable metadata storage - by default, metadata will not be stored upon data ingestion on a per server target basis

  4. Connect Administrators and Platform users can create a Folder Import type server that can be used for retrieval only of DICOM images in a specific Folder location accessible by Connect - this replaces the FileSystem server type

Fixes / Maintenance

  1. .NET 8 upgrade for the DICOM Service and Data Manager Service components

  2. Security vulnerability remediation

  3. Retirement of the DICOM Imaging Service - no longer used by any business application on Connect

  4. Retirement of previous access token used for GitHub - has been replaced in the last Connect release with a new access token that interacts directly with C3

  5. Pre-installation doctor command not always detecting the redirected homedrive / homepath

  6. Choose Directory screen being blank when editing a FileSystem server in the DICOM utility

If an existing Connect Site has not performed the requested upgrade during the last release (v4.3), they will not have the required new access token that allows them to get Connect package updates from ACR’s C3 service. After this release, the old access token will be revoked, so all existing Sites will need the new access token in order to continue to receive Connect updates.

Improvements

  1. Improved the pre-installation doctor command in the CLI Installer to also verify the Firewall status of the ports being checked

  2. Modified the default configuration for MariaDB maximum connections and wait timeout settings to improve database connections

    1. Attached is a guide for how existing Connect Sites can modify this MariaDB configuration to get the optimization needed for processing large data volumes - it is highly recommended to make this configuration change

    2. New Connect Sites will have the updated configuration by default at the time of installation

  3. Improvements to the UI in the DICOM utility to accommodate new features implemented as part of this release

  4. Stability improvements to the DICOM Service and Data Manager Service for -

    1. bulk querying / retrieval

    2. asynchronous communication among Connect back-end services

    3. bulk insertions of metadata

    4. query tuning

    5. streaming implementation for STOW-RS that is used during Local Drive upload