MidPoint 4.1 “Pasteur” was released. It brings major authentication improvements, user interface improvements, improved archetype functionality and a number of smaller improvements. There are also many cleanups and simplifications in the Pasteur release.
Perhaps the most significant feature of midPoint 4.1 is flexible authentication. This feature allows flexible configuration of midPoint authentication mechanisms. Although there were always some ways how to make midPoint use SAML or LDAP for authentication, those methods were never officially supported and they were not really nice and easy. We have fixed that. MidPoint 4.1 has mostly complete and officially supported modular authentication subsystem. Internal password authentication, SAML and LDAP authentication to midPoint user interface are officially supported now. There are still some limitations that will be improved in midPoint 4.2, but midPoint 4.1 functionality should work well for most midPoint deployments.
The other big improvement is in midPoint user interface. Server Tasks section of user interface was re-written to match the rest of midPoint GUI. This part is one of the older parts that was still in use and it was about time to do something about it. Therefore we did. Server tasks UI is now nice, clean and consistent with other parts of midPoint GUI. Also there was a number of smaller GUI improvements in audit log viewer, archetype functionality, recompute tasks and other parts of user interface.
We have also invested significant effort to clean up midPoint internals. MidPoint code is almost 9 years old. We have to improve internal quality of midPoint continuously to keep midPoint maintainable. We are doing that in all midPoint releases. But Pasteur release got a bit more than the usual share of cleanups, refactorings and internal improvements. MidPoint 4.1 should be more “sanitized” that its predecessors. Authentication mechanism also make midPoint safer for general use. These two characteristics were the main inspiration for Pasteur as release code-name.