Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) has released a slew of upgrades in the past six weeks, including delivering their latest version, Adobe Commerce 2.4.5.
Highlights of the Latest Version of Adobe Commerce
In addition to the new capabilities for the established former versions, the new version promises multiple enhancements designed to improve platform performance, scale, quality and security.
B2B commerce catalog improvements
These remove duplicate SKU data from shared catalogs, allowing your customers to enjoy larger, more complex catalogs without confusion
GraphQL API optimization
This improves the customer and developer experience for headless implementations, delivering a better experience with 5% faster response times and reducing the time it takes to rebuild the GraphQL schema by up to 80%.
Performance improvements
Adobe Commerce 2.4.5 is faster by far than the former version, delivering increases of:
- 3x the rate of orders processed per hour
- 3x the page views per hour
- 2x concurrent admin users from updates to high throughput order processing
It also offers API improvements and the adoption of PHP 8.1
Accessibility enhancements
This creates a more perceivable storefront experience on Venia (PWA Studio) that includes both contrast and keyboard accessibility enhancements, as well as providing support for screen readers which will announce when a new page view loads and recite search results summary information
Updated platform components
These include support for Google’s new GTag mechanism which is intended for integrating modules like AdWords and Analytics, as well as DHL’s latest version of their shipping integration schema.
Security and compliance features
Adobe Commerce 2.4.5 integrates more than 20 resolved security issues, helping businesses stay compliant and secure.
Upgrade Compatibility Tool Update
This version includes several new validations meant for easier identification of any additional incompatibilities between versions, and will give users recommendations on issue resolution for faster, easier upgrade analysis processes.
Live Search
Live Search is being upgraded to include B2B support, which means users can now install the Live Search and leverage Shared Catalogs in the B2B Module to return customer specific pricing and catalog access rules. The Live Search extension is available on the Magento Marketplace. Customers must be on version 2.4.4+ and will need the B2B Module installed to take advantage of this upgrade.
End of Software Support
Adobe has a streamlined Lifecycle policy. Support is provided based on this policy, for both quality and security fixes.
Quality fixes
The Lifecycle allows for quality fixes to be provided to the 2.4 release line until the end-of-support date of the PHP version upon which it is based.
Customers are able to easily access these quality fixes by contacting Adobe Commerce Support or through the self-serve Quality Patches Tool, as long as their version is still eligible for quality support.
Security fixes
While quality fixes can be backported to previous minor releases or previous patch releases within supported minor releases, the same is not true for security fixes. These are provided only through the latest patch or security patch release (even if the customer’s version remains eligible for quality support)
However, for critical security issues (like zero-day vulnerabilities) Adobe will provide hotfixes for all customers on supported versions. These are not equal to the security provided by simply upgrading to the latest release.
Support ends based on the PHP version
As of September 8, 2022, support ended for Adobe Commerce 2.3 (PHP 7.3 and 7.43). Support for Adobe Commerce 2.4.0-2.4.3 (PHP 7.4) is slated to end November 28, 2022.
Support for Adobe Commerce 2.4.4-2.4.6 (PHP 8.1) is intended to continue until November 25, 2024. All eCommerce owners are strongly advised to check the Lifecycle policy regularly.
Pixafy’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution is designed to deliver streamlined functionality and user experience for Adobe Commerce users. To learn more, contact Pixafy today.
