WebFOCUS 8207.16 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, September 4, 2020

wf090120b Gen 8

wi090120b 

as090120b

 8207.16 Gen 1921

New Features

Identifying Authored and Assembled Pages From the WebFOCUS Home Page

In WebFOCUS Designer, you can create two different kinds of pages. If you create a new chart or report using the Visualize Data option on the WebFOCUS Home Page, you can convert it into an authored page. Authored pages feature out of the box filtering functionality, such as chaining and on-canvas filtering, and allow you to build new charts and reports directly within the page canvas, facilitating the data discovery process. Alternatively, you can use the Assemble Visualizations option, in the plus menu on the WebFOCUS Home Page, to create an assembled page. You can build an assembled page from existing content items, such as charts, reports, images, URLs, and more. Assembled pages also allow you to customize filter styling and behavior.

You can now differentiate new authored and assembled pages by the icon they use on the WebFOCUS Home Page. Authored pages use an icon in which the stylized containers are filled in, as shown in the following image.

authored page
 

Assembled pages, meanwhile, show the stylized containers in the icon as hollow, as shown in the following image.

Assembled page

This gives you a better idea of the options and functionalities that are available when you run or edit a particular page.

New Prepare and Manage Data Workflows from WebFOCUS Home Page

New workflows are available from the WebFOCUS Home Page when using the Prepare and Manage Data option to open the WebFOCUS Server Console, and then clicking Get Data, that allow you to return to the Server Console to prepare, manage, or upload more data before visualizing your data.

To enable the workflows, set the following Server preference: From the Tools menu in the WebFOCUS Server Console, select Workspace, click Settings, select Settings for Web Console Preferences, click Miscellaneous Settings, and set NEWSYNSTAT to YES. Click Save to apply the new setting.

From the Home Page, on the plus menu, click Prepare and Manage Data to go to the WebFOCUS Server Console, and then click Get Data.

When you connect to a data source, and create a synonym, you are now taken to an intermediate Create Synonym Status page. You now have the option to click a Prepare and Manage Data button to return to the Server Console, instead of proceeding directly to Designer.

When you upload a data file, on the Uploading Data page, you now have the option to click a Prepare and Manage Data button to return to the Server Console, instead of proceeding directly to Designer.

Support for New Data Flow Targets With No Key Fields

When you create a Data Flow with a new target, you can now specify in the load options that the target has no key fields.

To specify that the target has no key columns, select No Key from the Key columns derived from drop-down list, as shown in the following image.

Data prep example

Autoprompt Multiselect Static Lists Can Now Automatically Select All Values at Runtime

You can use the new Preselect all values for static list controls (IBI_FOCALL_DEFAULT) setting to ensure that all values in multiselect static selection lists are automatically selected when running Responsive Autoprompt interface queries, as shown in the following image.

A multiselect selection list parameter with all values selected

Multiselect static selection lists that identify a specific default value as their initial selection continue to display that value and are not affected by this new setting.

By activating this feature, you can improve the usability of Responsive Autoprompt procedures that include multiselect static selection lists. Users are no longer required to open each list and individually select all values when they wish to conduct a comprehensive search. Instead, queries are automatically configured to provide the broadest range of results that users can refine into more focused queries.

This new setting is located on the Parameter Prompting page of the Administration Console Configuration tab.

 

Fixes

  • Using Jupyter running on Linux and an ODBC connector to retrieve character data fails with a data type conversion error.
  • Non-encoded special characters within a REST response displays incorrectly in a WebFOCUS Report when using the REST adapter.
  • Empty values are created within the array of a JSON input for the REST request using the REST adapter when ACCEPT=SYNONYM is in the fieldname definition. (200803011)
  • An error message occurs using an ODBC data source to configure an ODBC connection and entering a Data Source Name (DSN) that contains spaces or other invalid characters.
  • When creating a synonym for a CSV file that contains fields with numeric values, are created as character values.
  • Creating a synonym for a Stored Procedure does not return candidates if the SQL Server database is using case-sensitive collation. (191121110)
  • Creating a representative sample of a data set from a complex data structure fails when some of the source tables contained no data.
  • When a data flow is saved with a multi-part target table name (dfs.tmp.sales) and is reopened, the name would be the table name, or the first part of the name is lost.
  • In a Data Flow when a field name is renamed in the SQL editor, the new name is not reflected in the MERGE editor when used.
  • If the ending value for a loop condition is not supplied, a crash occurs. (200731044)
  • When using an ODBC Data Sources and adding a new DSN with the same name but different case from an existing DSN, will delete the existing DSN.
  • Using the ODBC Connector from Power BI and Get Data to retrieve data from a large source table fails with a memory allocation failure.
  • When using the JDBC connector to retrieve a small aggregated answer set from a large table, a query that ordinarily took less than two seconds now takes much longer.
  • The list of files entered for the IBI_CLASSPATH was not saved when entered on the Adapter's for Git connection page. (200807091)

Upgrade Notes

  • As of WebFOCUS 8207.15, the default setting for ALLOW-NOPRINT is ON. In AHTML reports using the new Designer style (ARVERSION=2), you can select hidden or NOPRINT fields, when you create a new component from the Options menu. These fields are also available in the fields list, when you create a chart, rollup, or pivot from the Column menu.
  • 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 certified and has been tested with Google Chrome version 84, Firefox version 79, Microsoft Edge Chromium version 83 (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.