WebFOCUS 8207.11 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
Monday, June 8, 2020

wf060420a Gen 6

wi060420a

as060420a

8207.11 Gen 1916

New Features

Enhancements to the Union Editor

The union editor has been redesigned to show clearly what needs to be corrected, if there are validation problems. For more information, see the topic in the WebFOCUS Release Notes PDF. 

Slowly Changing Dimensions: Enhanced Processing for Type I Columns

In prior releases, if a source row had Type I field values that were the same as the existing row, the Changed Flag was restored and the record was updated with the same value.

Now, when DataMigrator Slowly Changing Dimension processing is used to load a dimension table with Type I columns, only rows in which the source and target rows have different values for the Type I columns are updated. This can result in reduced processing time, especially for large dimension tables. 

For more information, see the topic in the WebFOCUS Release Notes PDF.

Adapter for REST: Support for STRING Format

The Adapter for REST now supports STRING USAGE and ACTUAL formats in both the request and response. Since STRING format supports an unlimited string, PDF, binary, and graph output can be retrieved from a variety of Web Services using this format.

For more information, see the topic in the WebFOCUS Release Notes PDF.

Raised Limit for Join Fields

In prior releases, the limit for field pairs in a join was 20. The number of join field pairs has now been raised to 128.

Generating Data Flows Using a Template Flow

You can now use a template data flow that has one source and one new target to generate multiple new data flows. A process flow will be created that contains all of the generated data flows. This feature enables you to easily move any number of single sources to new targets.

For more information, see the topic in the WebFOCUS Release Notes PDF.


Fixes

  • Using more than 14 fonts in a PDF report request does not apply properly to the report output. (191230051)
  • When creating metadata with a default dataset configured, a FOC45645 error occurs.
  • When connecting from a client tool, the user is prompted for their ID and password even when it is stored and encrypted in the communications configuration file.
  • The client ID and secret are not sent in the token request body during Create Synonym when BDYCLT:TRUE is configured in the REST connection. (200519060)
  • When using App Studio with the adapter for SAP configured and opening a synonym, the HTTP listener crashes. (200330086, 200430012)
  • When a synonym is created for a file with a name that starts with a number, the synonym and segment name would start with a number causing the join profiler to fail.
  • Removing selected items in a double list box hangs the browser session. (200522071, 200527041)
  • Portal hang on loading when Usage Analytics is enabled on iOS devices. (200424080)
  • App Studio is removing the br tags from the JavaScript code. (200518064)
  • The default format used (I3) is not large enough for the value calculated when a dimension is added as a measure to a Designer chart. (200423136)
  • If a DEFINE field is created in InfoAssist which references another field, and then a JOIN is created, the Define is duplicated. (191121013)
  • Editing a Reporting Object with multiple DEFINE fields or a report created from the Reporting Object is making multiple calls to the Reporting Server which is impacting performance. (180404044)
  • Importing a Blackout Dates file 1.38MB in size results in the browser hanging and F12 displays an uncaught type error. (200403013)
  • An X/Y scatter chart with valid syntax to turn on data labels does not show the data labels. However, turning the chart into an X/Y/Z scatter chart with a measure in the SIZE bucket shows the data labels. (191211100)

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 83, Firefox version 76, 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