WebFOCUS 8207.10 Release Notes


The following topic provides all the information that you need to know about this release of WebFOCUS.

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Release and Gen Information

Release Date Gen Information Reporting Server
Friday, May 22, 2020

wf052120a Gen 9

wi052120a

as052120a 

8207.10 Gen 1915

New Features

Choosing Columns to Load When Uploading Files

When using Get Data to upload a file, you can choose which columns will be loaded to the target database or data store, so you only load the columns you need.

From the file upload Preview page, click the Choose Columns icon . The Choose Columns dialog box displays.

All columns are selected by default. You can clear the check boxes for the columns you do not want to be loaded.

Change Data Capture (CDC) on a Data Flow

In the Web Console, when a table is log-enabled, you can use the load option Change Data Capture along with the log file to update only the rows that have changed since the last load.

Showing the Confidence Level for Adding a Union to a Data Flow

You can right-click a source in a data flow and add a new source as a union.

A list of tables displays for choosing the new source to add. This table now includes a confidence level, based on matching column names and data types for each prospective new source, showing how compatible it is with the existing source.

Support for GROUP BY On Column Position or AS Name

In prior releases, a GROUP BY clause in an SQL SELECT statement could only use a column name or expression. Now, the GROUP BY clause can also use the column position (such 1 to indicate the first column) or an AS name from the SELECT list.

This syntax is commonly generated by some third-party tools and can also be used in DataMigrator in a custom SQL flow, or in WebFOCUS in an SQL query.

Adapter for REST: Setting a Default Field Length

The Adapter for REST SET FIELDLENGTH command sets a default USAGE and ACTUAL length for alphanumeric fields to be used when creating a synonym.

Adapter for REST: Support for Passing Text and Binary in a REST POST Request

The Adapter for REST now can read text and binary data from a file and pass it in the body of a POST request.

Adapter for ElasticSearch

The Adapter for ElasticSearch is new in this release and can be found in the Search Engines group folder.

ElasticSearch is a highly-scalable search engine that performs fast searches and analytics against large amounts of data. It centrally stores all types of data, including textual, numerical, geospatial, structured, and unstructured. The Adapter for ElasticSearch is used to send search requests to the ElasticSearch engine and report against the information returned.


Fixes

  • Multiple portals are not loading when invoked at the same time from the same portal. (200203134)
  • Using the bulk load process to load Hyperstage data that contains missing or null values results in an error. (200311100)
  • Links to the log for failed flows are not displayed in red in Statistics reports in the Data Management Console. (200408156)
  • When editing a synonym, adding a new DEFINE and deleting it results in a TCP/HTTP listener crash when attempting to add another DEFINE. (200505013)
  • The DECIMAL parameter marker value is formed incorrectly when an ODBC connector is used to read data from an Access® database, causing it to crash and terminate the connection. (200422045)
  • Favorites are slow to load on the WebFOCUS Home page. (200217090)
  • Issue with chained parameters in pages. (191211098)
  • If a user uses more than 14 fonts in a .fex with a PDF output format, fonts do not apply properly. (191230051)
  • Synonym Editor hangs and the edapgwy.exe CPU usage rises to ~50% when opening a Business View with two DEFINEs that were added to the Master File during creation. The two DEFINEs use the same measure field. If only one of the fields is removed or commented out under the Measures folder or the measures field from the Dimension folder is removed or commented out, then the Master File opens without issue. (200415038)
  • Designer Page chained parameter filters do not display expected values for some requests. (191211098)
  • After importing the Fintoso Demo, the comparison me or comparison people report display HTML code characters in the heading. (191216033)
  • Including a repository focexec procedure using the legacy relative folder reference (INCLUDE ./subfolder/xxxx.fex) fails when the main focexec procedure is run. (200429027)
  • Favorites are slow to load with a large number of users. (200217090)
  • Running a Change Management import of a Portal twice results in an error: IBFSException 1244: ERROR_IBFS_INVALID_ARGUMENT_VALUE (200211001, 200226123, 200115003)

Upgrade Notes

  • When upgrading from release 8206.xx to 8207.xx, the WebFOCUS Integrated Installation does not automatically assign the Unicode UTF-8 (CP65001) code page to the Reporting Server configuration. In order to configure the Reporting Server to use the UTF-8 code page, you can select the entry directly from the CODE_PAGE? list. In the Web Server console, this list appears in the NLS Configuration tab of the Workspace node.

    We recommend that you apply this change because, as of release 8207, WebFOCUS Integrated Installations configure all installed components to use the UTF-8 code page. Changing the Reporting Server code page to UTF-8 will ensure that there is no mismatch of code pages between WebFOCUS, Tomcat, and the Reporting Server, which could result in data retrieval issues.
  • In Release 8207, Magnify functionality is not available. To add Magnify functionality to Release 8207 and higher, see the manual steps outlined in this topic.  
  • As of Release 8207, in App Studio, the Domains node in the Configured Environments tree has been renamed to the Workspaces node.
  • The WebFOCUS Server on Linux using the Adapter for salesforce.com now requires using OpenSSL version 1.1.1. While current distributions include this release older ones do not.

    This software can be downloaded from https://www.openssl.org/source/ and it must be compiled with the shared option.

    Ater this, create symbolic links to the required libraries. For example, if the directory used was /usr/local/ssl, issue the following commands:

    sudo ln -sf /usr/local/ssl/lib/libssl.so.1.1 /usr/lib64/libssl.so
    sudo ln -sf /usr/local/ssl/lib/libcrypto.so.1.1 /usr/lib64/
    libcrypto.so

Known Issues

  • The WebFOCUS help system does not work when the Application Server is configured with Java Version 11. As a workaround, you can configure your WebFOCUS instance to use help hosted by IBI. This provides an additional benefit, as users will have access to the latest content. See the workaround in the Release Notes PDF. 
  • The canvas of WebFOCUS Designer for this release is an interactive canvas based on AHTML. When creating a report, page and row break settings are not supported on this canvas for this release. If you select any other output format, such as HTML, PDF, PPTX, or XLSX, you will see these breaks at runtime. These output format options are available for stand-alone content items only. This will be resolved with the introduction of the non-interactive document canvas in a future release.
  • When an Insight-enabled chart created in the 8207.00 version of WebFOCUS Designer is added to a visualization as external content, the Insight icon does not appear on the chart when the page is run, so Insight features cannot be accessed. Resave the chart in WebFOCUS Designer 8207.01 or later to make Insight available when the chart is added to a visualization.
  • When working with the Cell menu in an interactive report, the filtering functionality does not work as expected.
  • When saving an artifact (from or of and interactive report, chart or dashboard), the output file name is ARsave.html rather than ARhtml.html.
  • If you create a report or chart in ARVERSION=2 (In-Document Analytics) and you set the output format to PDF Analytic Document, an error occurs when you run it. If you change the option in Procedure Settings to Legacy, the report or chart is produced correctly.
  • If you are working with an In-Document Analytics chart in landscape mode on an Android mobile device and you switch to portrait mode, your content displays in fullscreen mode. Your chart displays at the bottom. If you run your content in new window mode, your In- Document Analytics chart does not display in fullscreen mode, displaying the chart on the right.
  • HIDENULLACRS, which hides across columns that have null or zero values in the entire column, is not supported with interactive content using the new Designer style of In- Document Analytics capabilities.
  • If you add an existing ARVERSION=1 report to an AHTML document set to ARVERSION=2, it fails at run time, displaying JSON text on the screen instead of the expected report output.
  • If you are working with a procedure (.fex) and you change the ARVERSION to ARVERSION=2, global filters do not display when you run the procedure.
  • In a scatter plot chart or bubble chart, multiple measure fields on the horizontal and vertical axes generate separate axes, resulting in a grid of scatter plots for each combination of measure fields. In WebFOCUS Designer, if you create a scatter plot chart or bubble chart with multiple measures in the Vertical or Horizontal buckets, only the axis for the first measure in each bucket displays on the canvas. When you run the chart, all measure fields in the Vertical and Horizontal buckets are shown as separate axes, as intended.
  • The Expression Editor has a an area that displays objects that you can add to an expression, which are columns, variables or functions. The selection and display of these was controlled by buttons above the area, but when then size of the area was compressed, some of the buttons were hidden. Now there is a single button with a pull-down menu that allows selecting what objects are displayed.
  • Both the db_collation.sh file and the db_collation.bat file generate the "Main WARN Error while converting string [] to type," error message in the Command Prompt window at the end of their run. This message has no impact on the functionality of this post-installation utility, and it completes the run successfully.
  • The load_repos.sh file generates the "WARNING: sun.reflect.Reflection.getCaller Class is not supported. This will impact performance," error message in the Command Prompt window at the end of its run. In addition, the db_inplace_update.sh, WFReposUtilCMDLine.sh, and update_repos.sh files generate the "Main WARN Error while converting string [ ] to type," error message in the Command Prompt window at the end of their run. These messages have no impact on the functionality of these post installation utilities, and each one completes its run successfully.
  • App Studio upgrades are currently not supported. Messages related to failures that occurred while merging changes in the mime.wfs and languages.xml files display during the upgrade installation process.
  • In Release 8207, you cannot install a standalone version of ReportCaster. If you attempt to do so, you receive an error message after you click Next to exit the Advanced Configuration page of the installation wizard. Currently, there is no workaround for this issue. However, you can successfully install ReportCaster by including it in a WebFOCUS installation.
  • When using MS SQL Server as the database platform for the WebFOCUS Repository and upgrading from 8105M to 8207.06, only MS SQL Server 2008 and 2012 are supported. MS SQL Server 2014 and later versions are not supported.

Browser Information

This release is now certified and has been tested with Google Chrome version 81, Firefox version 75, Microsoft Edge Chromium version 81 (WebFOCUS only), Microsoft Edge version 44 (WebFOCUS only), and Internet Explorer version 11. Internet Explorer Compatibility mode is not supported. For additional browser details, see Browser Information