WebFOCUS 8207.08 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, April 27, 2020

wf042220a Gen 5

wi042220a

as042220a

8207.08 Gen 1913

New Features

Compare Multiple Models When Running Predictive Analytics

When running predictive analytics on your data using Regression models, you can now compare multiple models at once.

A Compare dialog box displays the evaluation reports for each model comparison, including an RMSE value and scatter plot, so you can quickly choose which model is the best.

You can also filter the model comparisons and save models individually.

Compare Multiple Models When Running Predictive Analytics

Slowly Changing Dimensions on a Data Flow

When loading to a target in a data flow on the Web Console that supports Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCDs), you can select the load type Slowly Changing Dimensions from the Load Options drop-down list, as shown in the following image.

Slowly Changing Dimensions on a Data Flow

Generating a Google Sheets Spreadsheet

When you have the Adapter for Google Sheets and the Adapter for Google Drive configured, you can generate a Spreadsheet in the Google Sheets environment from a WebFOCUS request using the HOLD FORMAT GGLSHTS command.

Adapter for Google Drive

The Adapter for Google Drive is the WebFOCUS Adapter used to integrate with Google Drive. It is also used in conjunction with the Adapter for Google Sheets to create spreadsheets in the Google Sheets environment from a WebFOCUS report.

Output formats such as PDF, JSON, and XML from WebFOCUS reports can be stored in Google Drive.

Adapters, such as JSON and XML, can be used to report against their respective documents
stored in Google Drive.

Adapter for Google Sheets

The Adapter for Google Sheets is now available and can be used to report off of spreadsheet data resident in the Google Sheets environment.

Adapter for Google Analytics: Support for Service Account Authentication

In prior releases, only OAuth20 authentication was supported for the Adapter for Google Analytics. Service Account Authentication support has now been added. A service account is a non-human user that needs to authenticate to Google and be authorized to access data in Google APIs, for example, for running reports distributed by ReportCaster.

Adapter for Google BigQuery: Support for Service Account Authentication

In prior releases, only OAuth20 authentication was supported for the Adapter for Google BigQuery. Service Account Authentication support has now been added. A service account is a non-human user that needs to authenticate to Google and be authorized to access data in Google APIs, for example, for running reports distributed by ReportCaster.

Adapter for Google BigQuery: Support for SQL Immediate Commands

The SQL Passthru commands INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE are now supported for the Adapter for Google BigQuery.

Adapters for Google Sheets and Google Drive: Service Account Authentication

Service Account Authentication is available for Google Sheets and Google Drive. A service account is a non-human user that needs to authenticate to Google and be authorized to access data in Google APIs, for example, for running reports distributed by ReportCaster. 


Fixes

  • A Distribution List displays Name and To values as blanks when editing a schedule. (191023147)
  • ​​A div tag and other code are added to the HTML page when SQUEEZE is used with a DEFINE that contains HTML code characters in the expression. (200122050)
  • In an esriGeometryPolyline map in App Studio, a drilldown from a line to a report does not work and the Selection Widget is blank. (190730080)
  • Refreshing a portal page keeps the last values and does not reset the report parameters.(200203003)
  • Using a font family that contains a space in the name will not render in a check box or radio button control. (200306001)
  • An error occurs when the output viewer in App Studio is set to Microsoft Edge®. Edge has been removed as an option in the Output Viewer. It is not supported. (200207001, 200227012)
  • Invalid SQL data type error occurs when using a Microsoft Access® driver to join a hold file to an Access table. (190130144)
  • When creating a synonym for any SQL DBMS, if a valid or invalid schema is entered and the enter button is selected, the Data Management Console becomes unresponsive and eventually crashes and terminates. (200408157)
  • When accessing and opening a wide In-Document Analytics report as an email attachment from an iPad® with iOS version 13, you will get a blank space if you switch the orientation from Landscape to Portrait mode. (200403106)
  • The ACTUAL for datetime fields is incorrect when creating a synonym for a business object using the adapter for Salesforce.com®. (200407113)
  • When an Adapter for Git connects to an Azure DevOps using Personal Access Token for authentication, DataMigrator returns errors for the Git operations. (200406112)
  • When parameters are added to site.wfs with incorrect coding, it can result in a nonresponsive WebFOCUS client, or failure of the app to start. To address this for <SET> parameter definitions, the \"\n\r\t(,)= characters between a variable name and the open parenthesis character are ignored. (181108129)
  • Japanese characters are garbled after importing a Change Management package.
  • When using the Security Center to search for an external group using an asterisk, the group does not list in the group membership report. (190402021)
  • Error status:403 occurs when accessing Reporting Server Console from the WebFOCUS Administration Console when the user ID has previously been forced off a different browser session that accessed the Reporting Server Console. (200326089)
  • The Datetime column in the ETL log is empty if a FOC2590 or FOC2594 error is returned for a procedure or flow. (200207056)
  • Dynamic Language settings for Hebrew are not reflected in the Paging Control or Search Control menu settings. (191029043)
  • A custom login page does not work and goes to the default page. (200408049)
  • When a field evaluated in the inner query is set to NOT NULL and the inner query does not return a value, a FOC295 error is returned to the non-APT correlated sub-query or incorrect result. (190626058)
  • Data is not returned from a remote synonym that has a column with MDYY format. (200304045)
  • The Visualize Data Chart Designer results in a pop-up error when you have a filter and click to turn on or off the Run with Insights option. (200323146)
  • Adding CSSURL reference in a stylesheet (*.STY) prevents the stylesheet from being used in Designer. (200402091)
  • Garbled characters are generated in a focexec when pasted to the desktop outside of App Studio. (200331072)
  • The ESRI adapter does not return a successful test for silent authentication. (200401031)

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 80 (WebFOCUS only), and Internet Explorer version 11. For additional browser details, see Browser Information

OpenJDK 8 JRE Update 242 (8u242) and Tomcat 8.5.51 are supported and included with the packaging.