Release 5.4.1

ADVIZOR Analyst Edition 5.4.1 Release Notes

July 14, 2009

ADVIZOR Solutions, Inc ADVIZOR Version 5.4.1 Copyright 2000 - 2009, ADVIZOR Solutions, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This (ReleaseNotes.htm) file contains product information for ADVIZOR Analyst Edition 5.4.1 products. These release notes are available on the installation image as well as in the install directory for the product(s) you have installed.

Index

• New in this Release

• Platform Notes

• Installation Instructions

• Databases Supported

• Known Problems and Hints

• Technical Support

New in this Release

Features and Enhancements

• The Expression Builder now includes a new token, "now", which evaluates to the current date and time. This can be used with the "year()", "month()", or "day()" functions to get current day numbers. You can also subtract 2 dates, which returns the elapsed time between them in days and fractions of days. See the User Guide for the Expression Builder for more details.

• Response time for the Heat Map has been radically improved, at times by up to an order of magnitude. This makes the Heat Map more usable with large volumes of data.

• Formatting of numeric results can be specified in the Expression Builder so that "," or "$" is displayed.

• In Predictive Analystics, an additional output field, the "Score", is now created which can be used to adjust the number of values predicted. The names of the created fields have also been changed slightly to make the meaning clearer. See the User Guide in the Predictive Analytics section for more detail.

Fixes

The following faults have been repaired:

• adv2advm would not run from command line.

• Animation did not work.

• Sorting did not respect locale rules.

• Counts chart on very large string fields could cause very bad performance.

• Type mismatch on link keys did not give source and sink fields.

• Selection link now propagate the selection mode so that "add" and "subtract" selection between tables works as expected; previously selection links only operated in "replace" mode.

• Expression Builder "bin()" funtion returned double, but should be integer.

• Parabox charts embedded in Internet Explorer sometimes displayed bubbles as unfilled.

• Spurious "<NULL>" values appeared in Text Filters.

• Projects could have Data Sheets that could not be deleted, which prevented the page from being deleted as well.

• Joined string fields had poorer performance when used in charts.

• Counts came up differently in the prescence of unmatched bars (Bar Chart bars representing unmatched values in another table) and null values based on order of evaluation.

• A Bar Chart bar representing unmatched values in a second table could not be excluded or restored.

• Documentation references to Teradata databases as data sources have been removed since Teradata databases are no longer supported.

• Summary Sheets on ADVIZOR Server could become unresponsive.

• Selections in the Analytics model field output bar chart were sometimes not mapped correctly back to the base data.

Platform Notes

Client Requirements

Operating Systems

• Microsoft Windows XP SP1

• Microsoft Windows Vista 32 or 64

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1 or Windows Server 2008.

Browser

• Microsoft Internet Explorer Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported.

Other Software

• Features interfacing to Microsoft Office applications require Office 2000 or later. Output to formats specific to Microsoft Office 2007 are not currently supported, however.

Hardware

• Any current, business-focused PC or laptop.

  • This excludes computers with low-end, entry level processors.

• 2 GB of RAM or greater (See Note below). At least 2GB is required for larger volumes of data, about 750K rows.

• Graphics display processor with at least 256MB of video RAM

  • Either shared or dedicated video RAM is acceptable

  • Always use the most recently available drivers for the graphics display processor (contact the vendor to obtain them)

• Video display resolution of 1024 x 768 or greater

• Video display color depth of 16 million colors

• CD-ROM drive

• Mouse or compatible pointing device

NOTE: For a given dataset, performance of the ADVIZOR Analyst software is dependent on:

• Amount of RAM

• CPU

  • Processor speed

  • Processor architecture/technology

    • Amount of cache

    • Number of cores

in that order. Multiple cores are currently only used by ADVIZOR Server.

When deciding on a computer to use or buy, opt first for as much RAM as possible within economic constraints; however, once the amount of RAM has been decided, opt for the fastest and most powerful CPU that satisfies economic constraints.

The amount of RAM required is highly dependent on your application data. The minimum amount of RAM is determined primarily by:

• The amount and type of data being loaded into memory

  • The number of rows

  • The number of fields

  • The type of data in each field

    i. Alphanumeric (string) ii. Numeric or Date

• Your particular ADVIZOR Analyst application design

As a rough estimate of the amount of RAM required for your data, find the file size of each data file you intend to load when the data is in the form of a text file and sum the file sizes. Additional RAM will be required for your intended ADVIZOR Analyst application; however, in most cases the RAM required for data will be the most significant contributor. Beyond these general guidelines and within economic constraints, more RAM and faster processors will almost always maximize your ADVIZOR Analyst application's performance. Consider provisioning any PC or laptop with future expansion in mind.

Server Requirements

Operating Systems

• Windows Server 2003

• Microsoft Server 2008

Use of the 64 bit versions of server operating systems is strongly encouraged for increased memory support.

Other

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

Hardware

• Any current, server class computer, with multiple processor cores.

• At least 4GB of memory is preferred. On 64 bit servers, at least 8GB of RAM is recommended.

  • Each distinct project accessed by users requires its own memory space

    • RAM should be increased as the number of distinct projects accessed grows

  • Multiple users accessing the same project do so with minimal additional RAM overhead

• No graphics display processor is required

• Segmenting projects to additional servers must be considered as the user and project load grows.

We recommend that the ADVIZOR Server software run on its own server hardware.

Beyond these general guidelines and within economic constraints, more memory and more and faster processors will almost always maximize your ADVIZOR Server's performance. Consider provisioning any server hardware with future expansion in mind.

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.

Databases Supported

• MS Excel (see note below)

• MS Access (see note below)

• SalesForce.com

• MS SQL Server (version 7.0 or later) (see note)

• Oracle (version 9i or later)

• ODBC interfaces to databases:

  • NOTE: ODBC DSN configurations must be defined as "System DSNs" through Windows prior to trying to use them in ADVIZOR.

• Microsoft ODBC for Oracle - MSORCL32.DLL

• 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)

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

Known Problems and Hints

• Microsoft Office data formats (Excel, Access) can only be read with the 32 bit version of ADVIZOR.

• Tables connected by Selection Links are always updated as if they are in "replace" mode. If the tables are unmatched (not all keys appear in both), creating an "unmatched bar" in a Bar Chart will maintain the unmatched values between the tables when a selection is made.

• When using "Data Integration" on ADVIZOR Server, the tooltip on the data integration button in the published dashboard is created from the description that you provide when you publish. If you do not include a description, there will not be a tooltip.

• Do not publish using different versions of Analyst/X or Analyst and Server AE; use the same versions of each product.

• Some database products, like Microsoft 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 database server.

• As a troubleshooting aid, any logging information may be written to "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\ADVIZOR Solutions\<product name>\error.log". The operating system's "Application Event" log may also provide useful information.

• Additional information (available on request)

  • Guide on advanced publishing

  • Guide on branding

  • Guide on audit logging

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 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:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\ADVIZOR Solutions\<product name>\error.log, if it exists (replace with Analyst or AnalystX, etc. as applicable to your product)

  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

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 contact us:

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