WebFOCUS 8207.14 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, August 7, 2020

wf080520b Gen 22

wi080520b

 8207.14 Gen 1919

New Features

Changing Container Types

In WebFOCUS Designer pages, you can add content items to several different types of containers. These include basic panel containers, into which you can add a single content item, and tab, carousel, and accordion containers, which can support multiple content items. You can quickly change the type of a container by right-clicking it and pointing to Convert to, and then selecting an option, as shown in the following image.

 

Changing Container Types
 

The ability to easily change container types gives you more flexibility in creating pages with multiple content items, and allows you to choose the container behavior you find the most intuitive and visually pleasing.

If you convert a container to a type that supports multiple content items, you can continue to add more content to new sections of the container. If you convert a multi-content container, such as a tab, carousel, or accordion container, to a basic panel container, which only supports one content item, a new panel container is created for each content item from the original container.

Cross Database Join Performance Improvements

Retrieval performance has been improved under certain conditions when you join tables from different Relational database systems.

The performance improvements result from extracting data from the cross-referenced table prior to performing the join or issuing a sub-select. You can disable this optimization process by issuing the following command:

SQL SET HOLDSQLJOIN = OFF
END

By default, this parameter is ON.

For more details, see the WebFOCUS Release Notes PDF. 

Adapters for Hive and Impala: Using Parquet as Transfer File to HDFS

In prior releases, when you used DataMIgrator or a Data Flow to create a file in the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) in Parquet format, an intermediate text file was created.

Now, a file in Parquet format can be created in the local file system and transferred to HDFS without the need to create an intermediate file.

For more information, see the WebFOCUS Release Notes PDF. 

Adapter for OData: Turn Off Aggregation for ENTITY_SET Requests

In prior releases, aggregation requests were always sent for aggregate functions (such as CNT.DST.) when Aggregation was set on in the Connection string (EXT_AGGR:Y) and retrieval was started at the child segment by adding the ENTITY_SET attribute in the Child Segment definition of the Access File (for example, ENTITY_SET=Assets).

Now, if no fields from the root segment are referenced in the request, aggregation will not be performed. The Session Log will contain a message indicating that aggregation was turned off for the request.

Adapter for OData: Turn Off Aggregation for ENTITY_SET Requests

In prior releases, aggregation requests were always sent for aggregate functions (such as CNT.DST.) when Aggregation was set on in the Connection string (EXT_AGGR:Y) and retrieval was started at the child segment by adding the ENTITY_SET attribute in the Child Segment definition of the Access File (for example, ENTITY_SET=Assets).

Now, if no fields from the root segment are referenced in the request, aggregation will not be performed. The Session Log will contain a message indicating that aggregation was turned off for the request.

Adapter for REST: Encoding Special Characters When Creating a Synonym

In prior releases of the Adapter for REST, users had to manually enter encoded values for special characters within parameter values in the Create Synonym Service URL Parameters and Document Sample text boxes.

The Adapter for REST now automatically encodes special characters within parameter values when creating a synonym.

For more information, see the WebFOCUS Release Notes PDF. 

Enhancements to Generating Flows Using a Template Flow

Generate Flows automatically generates a Process Flow and multiple Data Flows based on a template flow that has one source and one new target. This feature enables you to easily move any number of single sources to new targets.

The Generate Flows process has been enhanced to support prefixes and suffixes for target table names, as well as prefixes and suffixes for target synonym names, to have an advanced verification dialog, and to provide the Generate Flows button on the flow canvas for a flow that conforms to the requirements of a valid template flow.

In addition, there are now two options for generating flows:

  • Generate & Save, which saves the generated Process Flow and Data Flows. Once they are saved, you can run or submit them manually. This option gives you the ability to edit generated flows prior to submitting them.
  • Generate & Submit, which automatically submits the generated Process Flow, but does not save the Process Flow or Data Flows, which are generated in the temporary foccache application and deleted when the session ends. Only the target synonyms and tables are saved.

For more information, see the WebFOCUS Release Notes PDF. 

Opening a Data Flow From a Process Flow

The following image shows a Process Flow that runs four Data Flows open in the Server Web Console.

Data prep

To open one of the Data Flows, right-click the flow you want to open and click Open, as shown in the following image.

Data prep

The Data Flow opens in a new tab, as shown in the following image.

Data prep

Fixes

  • When a BY field is dynamically reformatted, the value of that field in the hyperlink is incorrectly listed as a comma instead of the correct value. (180504005)
  • An HTTP 400 error is returned when clicking on a drilldown link using the backslash (\) character in a Unicode environment. (200618124)
  • When an AHTML report contains HFREEZE and sorting and filtering the data at run-time, the columns titles are misaligned with the columns when there are many columns in the report. (200402081)
  • The value of TITLETEXT is not displayed in the browser title tab when using ARVERSION=2. (191023224)
  • Missing data shows in a Dynamics CRM adapter report when the ALIAS of the field has the same name as the ALIAS of the field being referenced. (200702066)
  • Attempts to pivot multiple columns to rows with Repeating groups of columns selected from the Data Management Console, results in an error: Pivot column expression is missing
  • Accessing the Information Database Management System in a 64-bit release results in an abend: ABEND=S0C1 U0000 REASON=00000001 (200629074)

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.
  • When creating stacked bar, area, and line charts in WebFOCUS Designer, you can select Show stacked totals, in the Series options on the Format tab, to show the total value of the stacked riser above each bar or point in the chart. You can also use series-level data labels to show a value for each series, representing a subset of the stacked riser. If the position of the series-level data labels is set to Above, then the label for the top-most series may overlap with the total label for the stacked riser. To avoid this overlap, select a different option from the Position menu.

Browser Information

This release is now certified and has been tested with Google Chrome version 83, Firefox version 77, Microsoft Edge Chromium version 82 (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.