Release 5.0

ADVIZOR Analyst Edition 5.0 Release Notes

Release Notes Updated: October 17, 2005

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

• New in this Release

• Platform Notes

• Installation Instructions

• Databases Supported

• Useful Notes

New in this Release

Features and Enhancements

• Descriptive & Predictive Analytics (in Analyst/X only - feature purchase required): Key Field Analytics, Target Values Prediction, and Missing Values Prediction are integrated into ADVIZOR.

• Heat Map: A space filling heat map chart showing 2-level nesting of items, sized and colored by data. This is useful for understanding how items group together.

• Summary Sheet: A grid-like chart similar to the Data Sheet that supports one categorical dimension field and multiple aggregated measures. It provides sum, average or ratio calculations for measures.

• Enhanced display of negative values in aggregated charts: Net mode display on bar and pie charts. This provides better indication of negative and positive contributors to an aggregation. This complements the current signed mode display.

• Filters: Define visual filters and associate them with dashboards to limit the data view for various user groups. Filters make the job of creating multiple dashboards with different data easy – without the hassle of defining multiple data queries.

• Data Calculations: Create new fields within the ADVIZOR Data Pool via an "Expression Builder". Create fields on the fly without having to create new queries or data manipulation outside of ADVIZOR.

• Date Parser: The "Expression Builder" also allows you to create new fields parsed from a date field, on the fly. You can create fields for "month", "day", "year", etc without having to create new queries or data manipulation outside ADVIZOR.

• Data Source Editor: Edit Data Source Definitions and metadata making it easy to associate dashboards with new datasets.

• Backend Integration: Associate web based dashboards with a custom web service for backend processing. User selections can be exported to the web service for further custom processing.

• Server Side Security: Support user authentication to Server AE dashboards by making use of existing security mechanisms within IIS and Windows OS. Usage information tracked and available.

• Data Connectors: Added support for MySQL and Pervasive (in addition to current connectors and ODBC interface)

Fixes

• Bar Chart: Custom Titles ignored when you choose a "Y" field and use "Averages" or "Ratios" (8387)

• Bar Chart: Stacked colors are turned off after switching measure from average to sum (8703)

• Server page scroll arrows don't retain position & the right scroll arrow sometimes disappears from view (8721)

• Server: Where Am I does not update when selected data is changed in the client browser (8759)

• Exception in Data Hierarchy wizard during configuration if you perform an illogical step (8864)

• Data Sheet sort order is not preserved after Publishing (8891)

• Publisher should preserve Data Sheet column widths when project is saved (8903)

• Published Line Chart forgets "Original" order setting (8923)

• Bar Chart: in ratio mode, can't set view title from Properties dialog (8970)

• Color Workshop, Field Populate [4.1, 5.0] - does not allow field to have null values (9003)

• ADV menu takes too long to open and may result in timeout errors between IE and ASP.NET (9005)

• Get "Object required" error when running dashboard if color not set in project (9063)

• Export to .ppt, .doc & other formats, results in RH images clipped, losing data (9105)

• Renamed field names in Data Wizard for Analysis Services sources does not apply new field names (9178)

Platform Notes

ADVIZOR Analyst Edition 5.0 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

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

• IIS 5.0 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

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 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/X	5.0.2110.22172
ADVIZOR 5.0 Server AE	5.0.2110.22174
ADVIZOR 5.0 Analyst	5.0.2110.22175
ADVIZOR 5.0 Desktop Navigator	5.0.2110.22176

Installation of ADVIZOR Server AE 5.0

1. If you are installing the ADVIZOR Server AE product, make sure IIS is running when you install.

2. 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:

• Microsoft ODBC for Oracle - MSORCL32.DLL

• Oracle in OraClient10g - SQORA32.DLL

• SQL Server - SQLSRV32.DLL

• Pervasive ODBC Client Interface - W3ODBCCI.DLL

• Pervasive ODBC Engine Interface - W3ODBCEI.DLL

• 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

• 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:

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

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

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

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

  • 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