Release 5.0.3

ADVIZOR Analyst Edition 5.0.3 Release Notes

**ADVIZOR Solutions, Inc ADVIZOR Version 5.0.3

Release Notes Updated: April 6, 2006

Copyright 2000 - 2006, ADVIZOR Solutions, Inc.

All Rights Reserved**

This ReleaseNotes_503.htm file contains product information for ADVIZOR Analyst Edition 5.0.3 These release notes are not copied to disk during installation. Print them for use during installation or for future reference.

New names for some products: the Analyst Pro and Publisher products have been renamed as one product - Analyst. A new product that includes the former Publisher features, as well as the Predictive Analytics is called Analyst/X. The Server AE and Desktop Navigator products retain their names.

Index

• Platform Notes

• Installation Instructions

• Databases Supported

• Useful Notes

• New in this Release

• Technical Support

Platform Notes

ADVIZOR Analyst Edition 5.0.3 software is currently supported as follows:

Following are the minimum requirements for client products:

Operating Systems

• Microsoft Windows XP SP1 or

• Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 SP6 or

• Microsoft Windows 2000 SP3 or

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1

Browser

• Internet Explorer 6.0, or newer.

Other Software

• Features interfacing to MS Office applications require Office 2000 or newer.

Hardware

• Intel Pentium III, 800MHz

• 512MB of RAM (See note below)

• 16MB of video RAM

• Video display resolution of 1024 x 768 or greater (always contact the video adapter vendor and use the most recent video drivers available)

• Video display color depth of 16 million colors

• CD-ROM drive

• Mouse or compatible pointing device

  NOTE: Required RAM is highly dependent on application data. Threshold is determined primarily by 1) the specifications of the computer, 2) the amount of data being loaded into memory, and 3) the actual software implementation, where application performance may be affected. Required RAM should be determined by the intended application and performance needs.

OLAP clients

• At least SP4 for MS OLAP Services including msolap80.dll from that SP

Following are the minimum requirements for server products:

Operating Systems

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server SP3 or

• Windows Server 2003

Other

• IIS 5.0, or newer, installed and running prior to installation of the Microsoft .NET Framework

• Microsoft .NET Framework release 1.1 or release 1.0 with updates.

Hardware

• Pentium III 1GHz (See note below)

• 1GB of RAM per processor (depends on the application)

Client browsers using Internet Explorer 6.0, or newer.

NOTE: If the server also has the database software installed, consider using a multiprocessor system. Some databases such as Microsoft SQL Server take advantage of multiprocessor capabilities to improve performance. Networking delays may also be reduced by having the database on the same system.

Installation Instructions

1. Prior to installing ADVIZOR Analyst/X, remove prior versions of ADVIZOR Publisher or Analyst Pro using Add/Remove Programs.

2. Insert the CDROM into your CD drive. Double click on Setup.exe in the root directory on the CD.

3. If you are instructed to remove a prior version of an ADVIZOR Analyst Edition product, proceed as directed, or use the operating system's "Add/Remove Software" facility.

4. Holding down the shift key during application startup (while the logo is displayed), will restore the application settings to the "factory default" settings. These setting are sometimes updated when a new release is issued, so its a good practice to do so whenever you have loaded a new version of the software..

5. After installation, confirm the new version is installed by starting the ADVIZOR Analyst Edition Product and looking at menu Help->About Version. Version should be as noted in the following table .

Product	Version Number (Help About...)
ADVIZOR 5.0 Analyst	5.0.2286.29396
ADVIZOR 5.0 Analyst/X	5.0.2286.29391
ADVIZOR 5.0 Desktop Navigator	5.0.2286.29398
ADVIZOR 5.0 Server AE	5.0.2286.29394

Installation of ADVIZOR Server AE 1. Stop the IIS server on the target machine. 2. Use Add/Remove Software (found in Control Panel) to remove any prior version of the software. 3. Restart IIS. It must be running when you install. 4. Install the Server AE software. 5. Don't forget to perform the post-installation setup displayed at the end of installation

Databases Supported

As of this release, ADVIZOR supports:

• Text files (see note below)

• MS Excel (see note below)

• MS Access (see note below)

• Business Objects WebI (6.5) (see note below)

• MS SQL Server (version 7.0 or later)

• MS Analysis Services (OLAP)

• Oracle (version 9i or later)

• Teradata (version V2 R5.0 or later)

and the following ODBC interfaces:

NOTE: ODBC DSN configurations must be defined as "System DSNs"

Oracle drivers

• Microsoft ODBC for Oracle - MSORCL32.DLL

• Oracle in OraClient10g - SQORA32.DLL

SQL Server driver

• SQL Server - SQLSRV32.DLL

  Pervasive drivers

• Pervasive ODBC Client Interface - W3ODBCCI.DLL

• Pervasive ODBC Engine Interface - W3ODBCEI.DLL

MySQL driver

• MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver - MYODBC3.DLL (MyODBC-3.51.11-2-win.msi - when used with MySQL version mysql-essential-4.1.13-win32.msi)

For Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel and text files, you MUST use the non-ODBC options in the Data Wizard.

Unified Web Services is a pre-requisite for accessing data from a Webi installation. NOTE that Unified Web Services is not part of the version 6.5 product suite. It is contained within the Business Objects - Crystal Integration Pack v1.0. With BOE XI, the packaging may be different. Contact Business Objects for details

Support for other database types will require custom development. If interested contact [e-mail]

Useful Notes

• Regarding configuration of an ODBC data interface: 1. You must ensure you have the proper ODBC drivers for your database per the information under "Databases Supported" (above). 2. You must configure ODBC drivers through the Windows OS prior to trying to use them in ADVIZOR. 3. The ODBC must be configured as a System DSN, not a User DSN.

• Microsoft .NET Framework release 1.1 or release 1.0 with updates is required for ADVIZOR Server. Release 2.0 will not work since the .NET 1.1 modules are compiled into the ADVIZOR executables. However, in IIS virtual directory configuration, you should be able to select the .NET version you want to associate with the ADVIZOR Server virtual directories. You should select 1.1.

• Some database products, like MS SQL Server, may at times, place significant demands on system resources. For this reason, we recommend installing ADVIZOR Server products on a machine other than the DB server. Doing so should result in noticeably better performance of ADVIZOR Server.

• ADVIZOR Server AE runs into a couple difficulties that are unique to Windows 2000 systems (both of which are not problems with Windows XP/2003):

  • ADVIZOR Server AE must be accessed first from an external machine to ensure that permissions are initialized properly.

  • The Publisher application and the Server cannot run simultaneously on the same system. That is, if the Server has opened a project, the Publisher cannot be started, and if the Publisher is running, the Server will not be able to open a project. In order for you to create and publish a project and access it from the Server on the same Windows 2000 machine, you need to follow this sequence:

    1. Make sure the Server is not running (restart IIS from the Computer Management console).

    2. Start the Publisher, open your project, and publish perspectives to http://<servermachine>/ADV.

    3. Close the Publisher application without accessing your published page (don't click on the link to view the page).

    4. From another machine, access http://<servermachine>/ADV/AsiProjectDirectory.aspx and then click on the newly published project.

    5. On the server machine, access http://localhost/ADV and click on the new project.
• If your views seem incorrect compared to what you know about your data, and you are using a .csv, .txt or .xls data source, check to be sure your data is "clean". For instance, we've noted cases where an excel column is defined to be "number", but one of the entries contains something like 98763X. This may confuse Microsoft's JET driver (used with .csv, .txt, .xls data) & cause what appear to be incorrect data. Similarly, where a column is defined to be a "Date", but there was an entry "-" (someone had put in a "dash" because they didn't know the date value for that entry). You're better off leaving the entry blank.

• Holding down the shift key during application startup (while the logo is displayed), will restore the application settings to the "factory default" settings. These setting are sometimes updated when a new release is issued, so its a good practice to do so whenever you have loaded a new version of the software..

• As a troubleshooting aid, any logging information may be written to either C:\Program Files\ADVIZOR Publisher\error.log or C:\Program Files\Common Files\exception.log, depending on the nature of the problem. The operating system's "Application Event" log may also provide useful information.

• If you have problems loading textual data from a .csv or .txt file, you may need to explicitly specify the formatting of the fields in the data. This may be done using a Schema.ini file. The Schema.ini file is a Microsoft convention for specifying data formats when using the JET or ODBC drivers. Further information is available at:

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odbc/htm/odbcjetschema_ini_file.asp

  The following link shows a good example schema.ini file about half way through the article.

  http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;155512
• Loading data using a Schema.ini file: In the Schema.ini file, if you specify that there is no column header in the data file, this will override the ADVIZOR Data Wizard setting for that attribute and will consequently read one less line of data than there actually is. This is a platform software issue beyond our control.

• If you are reading data from a .csv or .txt file that you've used previously with a pre 4.0 version of ADVIZOR, the existence of field type specifications in line 2 of your data may cause incorrect interpretation of some of the field types, or an error during startup of your project. Starting with version 4.0, ADVIZOR uses Microsoft's JET Driver, so type specifications in the second line of data should no longer be used.

• A pre-requisite for accessing data from a Business Objects WebI installation: you must have Business Objects' Unified Web Services installed.

• Additional information (available on request)

  • Guide on advanced publishing

  • Guide on branding

  • Guide on audit logging

This "update" release provides:

1. Features and Enhancements

   • There are no substantive feature additions in this version. The 5.0.3 release has been focused on improving performance and eliminating product issues.

2. Fixes

   • Using Analyst Edition products on PC set to Regional Options where decimal is ',' (a comma) results in System.FormatException (9110)

   • "Exception: General network error" when attempting to load SQL Server table with large numbers of rows and fields. (9306)

   • In some cases, Pie Chart in a project comes up un-initialized (9393)

   • Analyst/X: selection link from group bar chart (in analytics model) to the data pool no longer works (9387)

   • Changes to publishing code required by moving Vz sessions into Data Pools (9379)

   • Load 2M row data set; Analyst memory grows to 1.5GB; same data in Workbench is 400MB (9377)

   • Load 2M row data from a dataset; process size grows to 1.5GB than process fails (9375)

   • VzDataIdentity and VzDataQuery destructors should handle case of previously-deleted Data Pool (9371)

   • Heat Map view generates COM exception setting Data Pool name (9368)

   • Some Server sessions fail with message: table could not be found (9353)

   • Slow server performance with 16 sessions using a specific dashboard (9352)

   • Bookmark name can't contain underscore (9330)

   • AE: update training materials to reflect version 5.0 (9279)

   • Failure when trying to run Analytics in ADVIZOR/X (9248)

   • Bar Chart: Standard (un-stacked) coloring not working with Averages and Ratios (9236)

   • Server AE: Get "OpenTable: table/field already exists" when running 2 dashboards that use the same data source (9231)

   • Server AE: Issues with objects referring to a Data Pool that has already been deleted (9397)

   • Get "Open Table: table/field already exists" error when opening dashboard. (9051)

   • In Parabox, if box plot is turned bubbles and then published, the published version shows box plot not bubbles (8991)

Contacting Technical Support

When submitting a problem to Technical Support, email is the preferred mechanism ([e-mail]). In the email, please provide as many of the following as possible:

• Your company name

• Your name & contact information including phone number

• The name of the product you are using and its version number

• Your license key used to install the product

• A detailed explanation of what you were doing that led up to the problem.

• Screen shot(s) and/or exact text of any error information

• C:\Program Files\ADVIZOR Product\error.log, if it exists (replace Product with Analyst or AnalystX, etc as applicable to your product)

• C:\Program Files\Common Files\ADVIZOR Components\exception.log, if it exists

• Machine's System Information file created from the "System Information" saved as type ".nfo"

• Operating system's Application event log in .evt format so that we get the detailed event descriptions

• If you're having a database access problem, submit all relevant DB information, including DB vendor, DB version, whether the DB is local or remote, whether or not you are able to access the DB using vendor or third party supplied query tools, etc

Important Note: If you encounter an error/exception and are offered the opportunity to forward diagnostic information, please do so. However, note that you can help reduce the time to resolution by also including details of the actions that led to the event. Our ability to rapidly understand the problem is significantly increased when we know all the details.

If you cannot find answers to your questions using the online help "Table of Contents", "Index" or "Find" tabs, or in this release notes file, have your application license number handy and use one of the following contact methods:

Send email to: [e-mail] (preferred method)

-or-

call the ADVIZOR Solutions, Inc Technical Support line during business hours (8:00 AM - 4:30 PM Central time, Monday - Friday) at +1.630.971.5250