Hello.

We want to upgrade from 5.2.5 to version 7.1.1 soon and I would like to hear from everybody about the new version, have you had any big issue with the new version, is it stable enough or should we wait a little longer? Are we going to have problems to transfer existing fex and Report Caster schedules to the new version?

Thanks for your feedback!

What system are you running it on?

Windows 2003 and Caster is using MSSQL

Am just installing 7.1 RS, Client and Dev Studio for evaluation on Win XP stand alone - before installing on the servers.

So looks good, a few configuration problems with the Tomcat install - but them I have never used it before.

If I find many 'gotchas' I'll try and add them here.

7.1 seems ok, as long as it is always talking to a 7.1 server. It falls down a lot when it needs to talk with an earlier version. There are also some annoying things in Developer Studio when doing HTML layout and dynamic fields.

FliPPer, it depends on the complexity your fexes. Nobody can answer that for you. there are killer differences in the way that embedded fexes are handled, there are differences in some functions, if you use sun jvm your developers in mre will have wicked probs, and microsoft has stopped making their jvm available (but you can get it from ibi); the caster logs are way different -- they spit out way too much(imho) information even when echo is off; on some sites every fex starts with an execution error foc1517;
css has now determined that 534+ is not compatible with win2003 server (its using iis6 and thats the prob). so good luck in your testing, and would you please keep us all advised on how you're doing? thanks FliPPer.

I have 7.1 installed on a Win 2k server. I have a number of graph intensive reports. I found that some of the Graph API commands no longer work properly such as Vertical positioning and using plot point shapes in the legend.

In general it seems pretty stable and the Coordinated PDF Layout tool looks good although I have been working with IBI due to a weird problem with it.

I am running it in Servlet mode under IIS with Tomcat as the App Server and it's doing OK. I have never used Tomcat. I will be switching to Weblogic shortly, though.

I am also having problems with the Report Caster starting. I am working with IBI on this but the problem is undetermined at this point. I always leave open the possibility that the Administrator (that's me) who installed it made a boo boo somewhere but nothing definitive at this point.

This is also the first time I am using WF in Servlet mode and have been pleasantly surprised.

I can't upgrade to it yet due to the Graph API problems but the new Graph output format SVG looks nice.

If I remember any more helpful info I will post it.

Thanks everyone, please keep posting your experience with version 7.


I'm a bit scared by Susannah's email, our fexes are sometimes quite complex and we have a lot of Report Caster schedules running on daily and monthly basis with emails and FTP distribution.

quote:

css has now determined that 534+ is not compatible with win2003 server

and we are not going to upgrade the servers soon. All servers (report and web, Prod and Dev) are Win 2003 and we are using Servlet mode. We have mainly SAP/BW Bex queries synomyms and MSSQL tables for metadata. We are not using any Graphs yet.

Our University has two set ups. We have 5.3.4 on a WIN2003 server as our production box at the central sight. Our use is twofold, depending on campus, we do a nightly batch process where a mainframe application kicks off a caster job with dstrun. We had issues with how the new version handled 'missing' in sql to our DB2 database. Also, gotcha's on code 'tightening' but the biggest issue was getting a mainframe printer solution. Users are MRE from UNO, powerreporter from UNL.

Our Omaha campus has 7.1 running on a RedHat LINUX using MySQL. The users are all MRE at the moment as advanced with edit capabilities. Still want to do it the old mainframe way.

We are just planning self service applications at Omaha now.

One item I found within minutes of loading Dev Studio is that in edit, when you run your fex the undo action is not available even though the auto save is turned off. The fex is not saved so you can exit without saving changes.

I raised a case with IB on this and they have accepted that it is a bug.

Another 'bug' (not yet accepted) is entering the text editor via the command menu. Opening up the fex in editor is OK but when you try and run it from that point you just get an error "Host not found in wfscom.xml(30006)" - but this is the same for 5.3.3 as well.

Install manuals are clear enough and using them to follow the steps for installing RS, Client and RC with Apache is good and I had a test installation completed using AD for authentication and authorisation within a short period.

Susannah,

quote:

css has now determined that 534+ is not compatible with win2003 server (its using iis6 and thats the prob).

By this do you mean that versions of WebFOCUS above 5.3.4 are not compatable with IIS v6? Also, who told you this? Where can I find more information?.....Kelly

Hi everyone,

Following is info with regards to some of the Dev Studio issues raised in this thread:
1. There are some cases where if a developer exits the product, they loose changes! This can happen for example if they open a procedure in the editor, make changes and accidentally close the product by pressing the close [x] icon in the main application toolbar. This is a bug related to the "Automatically Save Procedures� option and is addressed in 711 (tentatively scheduled for end of Aug 2005).
Save while exiting the product is corrected regardless if option to Auto Save is checked or unchecked (if unchecked product will prompt to save changes and continue to exit)
2. WebFOCUS and Dev Studio starting w/ rel 532 have been certified w/ Windows 2003 Server edition.
For Dev Studio we have customers using this O/S since 52x (although not certified) and we have made fixes to the product as of 526 to address customer reported issues.
As of 532, Dev Studio properly configures IIS v.6 that is packaged with 2003 Server including configuration of the internet guest account (IUSR_machine_name) to allow R/W to the IBI dir (configuration is performed for the default web server).
The install guide includes info on all configurations steps performed on a Win 2003 server.
Please open cases w/ CSS if issues are encountered while using Win 2003 Server from WebFOCUS or Dev Studio.
3. Unfortunately Undo is not available after saving the procedure contents or running the request. This is a bug and will be addressed.
4. I have not experienced the issue of creating and running a procedure from the Command/Text Editor... option where the following error occurs: "Host not found in wfscom.xml(30006)"
With my experience, request runs fine while it is executed from the editor or after it gets saved.
Please create a Dev Studio WFSCOM trace and open a case for this issue so it can be researched.

Thank you.

Regards,
Dimitri

In ver. 5.x this holds true:

Multi-select drop down list:
Html code snippet:

<select name="myvar" size="1" multiple id="myvar">
<option value="A">A - Antigua</option>
<option value="C">C - China</option>
<option value="U">U - USA</option>

FEX code snippet:
&myvar0 should give me the no. of selected/passed items
&myvar should give me A
&myvar2 should give me C
&myvar3 should give me U

- if i selected the 3 items.

It seems these ampersand vars don't work in 7.10 anymore except &myvar which is still valid but returns the last item which is U...

Any insights?

...update on below, IBI confirmed it a bug uhmmm or "overlooked issues" - and fixes coming in ver 7.1.1.

quote:

Originally posted by kerberos:
[qb] In ver. 5.x this holds true:

Multi-select drop down list:
Html code snippet:

<select name="myvar" size="1" multiple id="myvar">
<option value="A">A - Antigua</option>
<option value="C">C - China</option>
<option value="U">U - USA</option>

FEX code snippet:
&myvar0 should give me the no. of selected/passed items
&myvar should give me A
&myvar2 should give me C
&myvar3 should give me U

- if i selected the 3 items.

It seems these ampersand vars don't work in 7.10 anymore except &myvar which is still valid but returns the last item which is U...

Any insights? [/qb]

We just went into production with 7.1 and found a serious problem with the MS SQL adapter.
We have a case open with IBI.

The problem is if you are creating hold file from SQLOUT you could be losing rows without knowing it. A convert error happens that you might not see and rows are excluded.

This can happen if you are bring back a wide row and have a numeric column that brings back both numerics and NULLS.

The HOLD statement must be like this:

ON TABLE HOLD or ON TABLE HOLD AS ABC

If you use

ON TABLE HOLD AS ABC FORMAT ALPHA or
ON TABLE HOLD AS ABC FORMAT FOCUS you won't lose rows.

If you are using the MS SQL adapter and would like to see the code that can cause this to happen let me know. leonard_ward@invesco.com

Lenny

To Tinker AFB, re your question about wf being incompatible with win2003 server: wf is incompat with IIS6, there's a long long long thread on this board that will give you an example of code to run, to test the breaking point of a big job in iis6. the code is a simple read of the car file, but loops a zillion times, causing iis6 to break. The thread subject is about 53n. just look for the thread with over 70 comments.

The last post on this string was back on 10/10/2005. Any addtional news since then, specifically:

1.) Have the bugs been fixed by IBI?
2.) Any new bugs?
3.) Any experiences while beta testing 7.1.3?
4.) Are there substantial improvements available through the 7.1 series that were not available in 5.3.3?

TIA - Sandy

Hi Sandy,

Despite the promise that the edit fix was contained within 7.1.1 it didn't materialise! However, IB are on the case and promise it for 7.1.3 (hopefully).

T

p.s. Hope you're well, and much warmer than we in England are!! At least we are quite a bit warmer at -3C than our Russian friends -25C!

I have been testing WF 7.1.1 and right off the bat I can tell that the WFServlet is noticably faster. In general, DevStudio and MRE environment seem to be more stable as well. I haven't pushed the envelope with the new features yet so I can't comment on those.

Mickey - thanks for that response. Meanwhile, has anybody out there done Beta testing for 7.1.2 or 7.1.3? I understand that 7.1.2 comes out in February 2006 (begins tomorrow).

Major question for those in US - how many of you are going to be doing WebFOCUS work on Sunday, February 8?

Feb 8 is a Sunday?

yikes, I just started testing WebFOCUS 7.1.1 going against a SQL database. Put everything in a hold file and I get the correct number of records. Then TABLE FILE HOLD and ask for all the records with one BY field (alphanumeric) and it drops all the fields that have a blank in that field. Not off to a good start!

My problem appears to be with a DEFINEd field.
However, testing is not going well.

We are starting to test 7.1.3...and have found some issues with editing something within the fex and then running it right there within the fex...doesn't like slashes /. Anyone have any other editing issues?

The undo I mentioned above as not working in either 7.1 or 7.1.1 has been fixed in 7.1.3 Dev Studio - thankfully. Being a hand coder I tend to rely heavily on the editor rather than the GUI and I feel that Dev Studio is moving more towards everything being done in the GUI rather than manually .

Note also, another posting regarding the multiple &variable problem.

T

Yes I rarely use the GUI either...and they do seem to be pushing us to do so...What's a long time Focus Programmer to do....

Prarie,

The answer is to hang on in there. All the time there is a form of FOCUS/WebFOCUS the old coders will always be needed

Liken it to the time when everything was done in assembler, or if you are really sad - yes I own up to this one - coding in hex!! Assembler programmers are still in demand - albeit to a lesser extent nowadays.

Keep the chin up!

T

7.1.3 looks pretty good to us. We did uncover a few problems during testing, mostly as a result of tighter syntax enforcement or corrected errors:

Using SQL pass through, DB2 VARCHAR fields are written to HOLD as AnnV. This caused a –READ error for us. We fixed the problem by adding ENGINE DB2 SET VARCHAR OFF to the server profile. It looks like the default changed in 7.1.3 (or the setting was not available in 5.3.2 – I forget which).

CTRAN no longer works if you specify a data length that actually exceeds the length of the data.

In 5.3.2 the extra (non-display) field(s) created by explicit reformatting are incorrectly counted when figuring column position using C notation in stylesheet (COLUMN=Cn). 7.1.3 correctly excludes them from the calculation. Of course, our programs had to be adjusted, as they were compensating for the problem.

In 7.1.3 we found that a multi-page compound report sometimes came back completely empty. Running the same exact same report over and over, we sometimes got a correct, fully populated report, and sometimes we got a report with nothing but blank pages. The problem only occurred using Adobe 6.0. Switching to Adobe 7.0 solved it
We found one other, very odd, way to solve this problem. The report in question contains a drill down. We found that if we shortened the length of the drill statement by removing a variable (any variable), the problem disappeared.

We have a UI that allows the user to select multiple instances of a variable (call it &X). In 5.3.2, when the user selected only one value, WebFOCUS would create &X. When three variables were selected, it created &X, &X0 (number of variables), &X1, &X2, &X3. One of the values the user might select is ‘ALL’. Naturally, when specifying ‘ALL’, only one variable is selected. When processing this variable, our code first checked for &X = ‘ALL’. If true, WHERE processing was bypassed. And &X was always present, no matter how many values were supplied by the user. In 7.1.3, however, this technique does not work, because &X is not present when multiple values are selected.

My favorite issue.

Save a fex that contains a line with only a dash in it and see what happens. (Make sure you save everything else before you do this.)

Try this code out:

-* File test.fex
-

I beleive this only happend in 7.1.3, I think 7.1.0 and 7.1.1 worked fine.

Another "gotcha" - reading variables from save file e.g.

....
ON TABLE SAVE AS TEMPVARS FORMAT ALPHA
END
-RUN

-READ TEMPVARS &MyVar.A20.
....

Whereas in 5.3.2, if your variable length was actually 12 then the read would only read a complete line. Now in 7.1.3 (Windows), it will read beyond and onto the next line. Therefore your first &MyVar would contain the 12 chars from the first row of SAVEd output, plus the first 8 chars from the next line.

i.e. If your saved output was :-

ENGLAND_____
FRANCE______

Your first &MyVar will contain "ENGLAND_____FRANCE__"

Other consequences will be that if you perform a repeat using &LINES then your fex will error due to reaching EOF prematurly.

This is not a bug but (IMHO) pure interpreter tightening, as you should always ensure that you know the length of record you are holding. However, it is worth bringing to the communities attention because we all know that sometimes we forget to check

T