WebFOCUS 8207.17 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
Thursday, September 17, 2020

wf091520a Gen 7

wi091520a

as091520a

8207.17 Gen 1922

New Features

Providing Access to Content Items and WebFOCUS Tools From a Page

When creating a page from existing content in WebFOCUS Designer, you can use the Explorer widget to provide access to the Workspaces view of the WebFOCUS Home Page. This allows anyone accessing the page, or a portal containing the page, to open and run content items and create new content, depending on their privileges. When an administrator uses the Redirect /ibi_apps to option in the Administration Console to enable a custom welcome page with the Explorer widget, you can provide an enhanced home page combining all of the options available from the Workspaces view with custom content of your choice.

By default, the Explorer widget fills the entire page in order to provide ample space to display any content items and content creation options. As a best practice, leave the Explorer widget as the only item on a page, and add that page to a portal with other pages whose contents you want to display. A page with the Explorer widget is shown in the following image.


Providing Access to Content Items and WebFOCUS Tools From a Page

Support for Direct Load Flows to Load AWS S3 Data to PostgreSQL

If you have configured both the Adapter for AWS S3 and the Adapter for PostgreSQL, you can create a direct load flow from a delimited file in the AWS S3 repository to a PostgreSQL target.

When you configure the Adapter for AWS S3, you map the AWS S3 repository to an application on the server, as shown in the following image.

Support for Direct Load Flows to Load AWS S3 Data to PostgreSQL

Then, you can drag a file from that application directory to the Data Flow canvas as a source for the flow. The following image shows a Data Flow in the Server Web Console with an AWS S3 source and a PostgreSQL target.

Support for Direct Load Flows to Load AWS S3 Data to PostgreSQL

In the Load Options dialog box, select PostgreSQL from the Adapter drop-down list, select the Bulk Load check box, and select On from the Allow Direct Bulk Load drop-down list, as shown in the following image.

Support for Direct Load Flows to Load AWS S3 Data to PostgreSQL

When you run the flow, the AWS S3 data will be loaded directly to the PostgreSQL table.

Using Bulk Load to Insert Sample Data

On the DMC and the Server Web Console, Insert Sample Data is an option if you right-click a synonym and point to Data Management. If the synonym is for an adapter that supports Bulk Load, a Bulk Load check box is available in the Insert Sample Data dialog, as shown in the following image.

Using Bulk Load to Insert Sample Data

If you select the Bulk Load check box and click Insert, the sample data will be inserted using Bulk Load. This reduces load times when a large number of sample rows are inserted.

New Regular Expression Pattern Matching Functions

he following FOCUS and SQL functions search for strings that match a pattern expressed as a regular expression.

  • REGEXP_COUNT. Counts the number of matches to a regular expression pattern in a string.
  • REGEXP_INSTR. Returns the first position of a regular expression pattern in a string.
  • REGEXP_REPLACE. Replaces all matches to a regular expression pattern in a string with a replacement string.
  • REGEXP_SUBSTR. Returns the first match to a regular expression pattern in a string.

For more information, see the WebFOCUS Release Notes PDF.

Displaying the Remote Servers List Collapsed on the Get Data Advanced Page

In prior releases, the Remote Servers folder was shown expanded on the Get Data Advanced Mode page of the Server Console. When this list was long, a lot of scrolling was required to get past this list and see the configured adapters.

Now, the Remote Servers folder is collapsed by default, and the first adapter folder is open, as shown in the following image.

Displaying the Remote Servers List Collapsed on the Get Data Advanced Page

Enhanced Options for Creating Cluster Joins

When you use Get Data in Advanced Mode to create a synonym for multiple tables, two options are now available, as shown in the following image.

Enhanced Options for Creating Cluster Joins

  • Cluster Join. All selected tables are added, and join columns can be selected as needed, as shown in the following image.Cluster

    The dotted line indicates where no join condition could be identified. You can click the Warning in the Sample Data area to see the details.

    Warning message

    You can create a join condition in the Join Editor, if possible, or remove the table from the cluster.

  • Cluster Join for Star Schema. Only creates join conditions when the database has Primary Key/Foreign Key relationships.

    The following image shows the fact table and two related dimension tables selected to generate a cluster join for a star schema.

    Fact table

    The following image shows the cluster join that was created.

    Cluster

    If no primary key/foreign key relationship is found, the corresponding dimension table is not added to the cluster, and a diagnostic message is issued, as shown in the following image.

    Cluster

    The dimensions were not added because of the lack of Primary Key/Foreign Key relationships, as shown in the following image.

    Cluster

Generating Table and Column Names With DBMS-Specific Length Limits

When you use Get Data to upload files, a Data Flow to load data to a target, or Quick Copy to copy data from one DBMS to another, the column names generated may be truncated in order to account for variations in DBMS-specific name length limits.

The name length limit used has been increased to the maximum length supported by the DBMS. In most cases this is 128 characters, although some have shorter limits, including the following:

  • SAP HANA, Amazon Redshift. 127 bytes.
  • MySQL, MariaDB. 64 bytes.
  • PostgreSQL, Greenplum, Hyperstage. 63 bytes.
  • Progress. 32 bytes.
  • Oracle, DB2 on z/OS. 30 bytes.

Adapter for Amazon Web Services: Loading a File From AWS S3 Directly to Amazon RDS

Using DataMigrator or a Data Flow, a delimited file (.csv) stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 can now be loaded directly to Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), stored in PostgreSQL.

In prior releases, you had to use the Adapter for Athena to read the file.

In order to load the file directly:

  • The adapter for AWS S3 must be configured.

    For information about configuring the Adapter for AWS S3, see the chapter named Using the Adapter for AWS S3 in the Adapter Administration manual.

  • The Adapter for PostgreSQL must be configured to point to the PostgreSQL database in Amazon RDS, as shown in the following image that points to the example URL jdbc:postgresql://database-1.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.rds.amazonaws.com:9999/postgres.

    AWS

    For information about configuring the Adapter for PostgreSQL, see the chapter named Using the Adapter for PostgreSQL in the Adapter Administration manual.

  • An application directory must be added that is mapped to the AWS S3 connection.

    For information about mapping an application directory to an AWS S3 connection, see the chapter named Using the Adapter for AWS S3 in the Adapter Administration manual.

In the following image, aws01 is the application directory mapped to the AWS S3 connection, and the Data Flow loads a delimited file from the AWS S3 repository to PostgreSQL.

AWS

 


Fixes

  • Sorting a table shifts all the columns to the left outside of their proper headers on the Shared with Me and My Workspace pages while using Internet Explorer® 11. (200528045)
  • A data flow crashes when the SQL statement uses a CASE statement with aggregation functions. (200823110)
  • Some error messages returned by WebFOCUS Server are not translated when the server is configured for another language.
  • 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)
  • Using an SQL SELECT statement to retrieve data using the adapter for Couchbase® results in an agent crash and the ODBC connector results in a communication error. 
  • In Internet Explorer 11, a chart's heading text overlays the top of the chart while the footing text has additional space and then appears cut off. (200901085)
  • A Data Flow crashes when the SQL statement uses a CASE statement with aggregation functions. (200828110)

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 85, Firefox version 80, Microsoft Edge Chromium version 85 (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