New Features in AEM 6.1

New Features in AEM 6.1

                    Adobe Experience Manager 6.1 is an upgrade release to the Adobe Experience Manager 6.0 code base. It provides new and enhanced functionality, key customer fixes, high priority customer enhancements and general bug fixes oriented toward product stabilization. It also includes all Adobe Experience Manager 6.0 feature pack, hot fix, and service pack releases.

The list below provides an overview - while the subsequent pages list the full details.

EXPERIENCE MANAGER PLATFORM

                    The platform of Adobe Experience Manager 6.1 build on top of updated versions of the OSGi-based framework (Apache Sling and Apache Felix) and the Java Content Repository: Apache Jackrabbit Oak 1.2.

The Quickstart uses the Eclipse Jetty 9.2.9 as servlet engine.

1) Security :

                    AEM 6.1 includes a range a new and improved capabilities to maintain a secure deployment and run a secure web property. Most notable is a new Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection, with that the server does extra checks on POST, PUT and DELETE HTTP requests from browser to avoid CSRF attacks.

Further, the 'nosamplecontent' server run mode was extended to also deploy a range of 'secure by default' best practices, that with previous releases had to be manually configured.

2) Repository :

                   Since the introduction of Apache Jackrabbit Oak with AEM 6.0 in 2014, the successor of CRX2, Adobe and the community have improved and extended a wide range of aspects.

Here a few highlights:

• Introduce cold standby topology with TarMK for simplified disaster recovery deployments
• Substantial search improvements, in default configuration at install/update and possibilities to tune the search performance.
• New UI that shows slow queries and explain query execution in details, and tool to manage search index.
• Simplified maintenance operations, adding support to purge audit logs and compaction to reclaim disk space.
• Added option to use a relational database as repository persistence. More details
• Note, Adobe has removed support for CRX2 with 6.1. The release update routine converts the existing CRX2 repository to Oak during the update (CRX2Oak).

3) Component Framework

                 In Version 6.0, Adobe introduced Sightly and Sling Models, as new way to develop components, in an time efficient and secure way. AEM version 6.1 delivers incremental improvements to the new approach.

New in Sightly 1.1:

• New <sly> element as alternative to data-sly-unwrap
• URI manipulation options (e.g. ${'http://foo.com/test.html '@ scheme='https', extension='json'} outputs https://foo.com/test.json)
• Allow java.util.Locale objects to be used in i18n locale option
• data-sly-repeat (alternative to data-sly-list that repeats the whole element, instead of just the content)
• improved performance (on par with JSP) and around 150 bug fixes since 6.0
• the specification and implementation for Apache Sling of Sighlty are open source (since end of 2014)

4) User Interface :

                  Experience Manager 6.1 includes the Classic UI (same as in AEM 6.0) and Touch-optimized UI. The Touch-optimized UI in 6.1 is substantially extended to efficiently cover every-day use cases of marketing and content management practitioners. The user interface and interaction patterns aligns with the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Please refer to the individual areas of AEM on the detailed enhancements done to the Touch-optimized UI.

                 For Web Developers, 6.1 includes Plug-ins for Eclipse, Extension for Brackets and the web-based UI CRXDE Lite. Brackets, integrated with the Creative Cloud Extract service, allows efficient update of templates/components based on designs created in Adobe Photoshop.

Workflow

                 The focus for AEM 6.1 was to improve the throughput of workflow tasks that can be executed by the workflow engine, by optimizing various parts of the way workflow steps are run within AEM. Customers that update to 6.1 should see that workflows take less time to complete (in particular with lots of them running in parallel), and take less resources to run on the server.

Summary of improvements:

                  Introduction of transient workflows, that runs the workflow tasks in memory and don't persist them in the repository. This has to be enabled on the workflow level, and is useful for shot-lived workflow where no audit, or history is needed.

Internal changes, such as reducing JCR observation listeners, amount of Sling Jobs needed to run workflow tasks.

APIs

                 AEM 6.1 introduces a new simplified remote HTTP API based on JSON+Siren. This allows easier interaction with 3rd party tools to read and write content into/from the repository, compared to lower-level Sling HTTP API.

5) Supported Platforms :

                With 6.1, Adobe recommends to use Java 8 with a 64bit JVM as default. Exceptions are deployments on web application servers - such as IBM WebSphere that come recommended with their JVMs. Please consult the Supported Platform list for all details.

6) Languages :

               Including which are available in AEM 6.0 languages,  additionally certified for GB18030-2005 CITS to use the Chinese Encoding Standard.

Some Deprecated features from API side:

Security (User/Groups) :

From com.day.cq.security.* to org.apache.jackrabbit.api.security.*

Security (login) :

from loginAdministrative (org.apache.sling.jcr.api) to  Apache Sling Service Authentication

Sightly :

            Sightly i18n source option should no longer be used, use locale option instead: ${'Assets' @ i18n, locale=request.locale.language}

            The Sightly Use helper class com.adobe.cq.sightly.WCM Usehas been deprecated and is now replaced bycom.adobe.cq.sightly.WCMUsePojo which uses the new Sightly API from Apache Sling.

             The com.adobe.granite.sightly.* API has been deprecated as the Sightly engine has been donated to the Apache Foundation and is now provided by Apache Sling, through org.apache.sling.scripting.sightly.*. An adapter is provided to support code that was using the old API.

XSS :

         The com.adobe.granite.xssprotection has been deprecated in favour of org.apache.sling.xss. All XSS API calls are delegated to the Sling implementation, with the Granite bundle only loading the product's AntiSamy policies.

Vault :

          The package com.day.jcr.vault.* API is marked as deprecated starting 6.0. Vault has been donated to the Apache Foundation and is now org.apache.jackrabbit.vault.*

ClientLibs :
         The ClientLib granite.ui.bootstrap and granite.ui.bootstrap.embedded are marked as deprecated starting 6.1

CRXDE (Eclipse-based) :

         Adobe is not planning to further enhance the Eclipse-based CRXDE. Recommendation is to used the new Eclipseplug-ins shipped  with 6.0 that also work with 5.6.x.

JSP components :

         JSP components were deprecated starting 6.0 and removed in 6.1. Most components have been implemented as HBS components based on SCF, with few exceptions, such as the Poll component.

Removed Features :

This section lists features and capabilities that have been removed.

Area	Feature	Replacement
Platform Repository	Remove ability to install/run instance with CRX2 repository.	The update process replaces the CRX2 with Apache Jackrabbit Oak.
Platform GFX	Removed support for fix-size BitMap FonterFonts.	Use TrueType fonts instead
Developer Tools	Removed SVN Sync support (server-side) in CRXDE Lite (Team menu)	Brackets/Eclipse developer/code workflow is the replacement and supports any source management system incl. SVN
Client Context / ContextHub	The implementation for client-side location reverse geocoding using Google Map API. This implementation in /libs/cq/personalization/components/contextstores/geolocation/clientlib/kernel/GeolocationUtils.js has been removed due to usage terms by Google.
MSM	Indicator for deleted Live Copies was removed in Classic UI Blueprint Control Center.	The state has been merged with 'skipped' Live Copies
Apps	Removed OSGi bundle for "Adobe CQ Apple Push Notification Service (APNS)" that was introduced with CQ 5.4	Version 6.1 adds support for Amazon SNS Mobile Push and Pushwoosh
Marketing Cloud	Version 6.0 - removed Cloud Services and integration with Adobe Tag Management (EOL) that was introduced with AEM 5.6	Version 6.0 adds support for Adobe Dynamic Tag Management service
Communities	Removed OSGi bundle and components that provide support for OpenSocial	There is no replacement in the product.
Communities	Remove the JSP "SoCo" and "Social" components	Version 6.0 introduces replacement HBS components based on SCF that support the various new UGC storage options. Collab components have been removed.
Custom Nodetypes	Removed the Calendar nodetypes : cq:Calendar, cq:CalendarComponent, cq:CalendarEvent, cq:CalendarRecurrence, cq:CalendarRecurrenceRule, cq:CalendarTodo, cq:Alarm, cq:CalendarAttendee. Removed the Comment nodetype cq:Rating.

Source : https://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/aem/6-1/release-notes.html

Thanks,
SonyCharan