Oracle Discoverer4i Plus and Oracle Discoverer4i Viewer
Release 4.1.33f for Microsoft Windows NT Release Notes

Oracle DiscovererTM
(c) Copyright Oracle Corporation, 2001
January 15th 2001
Release 4.1.33f

Perspective for Java licensed from Three D Graphics, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Three D Graphics, Inc.

Windows 2000
This version of Oracle Discoverer4i Plus and Oracle Discoverer4i Viewer is not certified for use on Windows 2000

Introduction

This document provides various installation and late-breaking product information for both Discoverer4i Plus and Discoverer4i Viewer.

Contents

1 A note on the disk space required for installation
2 Required version of Oracle9i Developer Suite for compatibility
3 New features in this release of Discoverer4i Plus and Discoverer4i Viewer
4 Oracle Discoverer User Edition name change
5 Notes on internationalization
5.1 List of languages for which translations are provided
5.2 Traditional Chinese support
5.3 Bidirectional support in Discoverer4i Viewer
5.4 Enhancements to export to Microsoft Excel feature in Discoverer4i Plus and Discoverer4i Viewer
5.5 Using parameters in the URL at login
6 An addition to the Discoverer4i Plus troubleshooting guide - using Microsoft Internet Explorer
7 How to setup backwards compatibility with Discoverer3i Viewer XSL
8 Setting the Netscape default character set when using Discoverer4i Viewer
9 ODBC support
10 Known issues and workarounds
11 Issues fixed in this release

1. A note on the disk space required for installation

Note that the installation of this software requires the uncompressing of self extracting archives. The Oracle Installer does not take this into account when it checks the disk space available. Please allow at least 300 Mb of free disk space for performing the install of both Discoverer4i Plus and Discoverer4i Viewer. Some of this disk space is recovered after the install.

2. Required version of Oracle9i Developer Suite for compatibility

Discoverer Administration Edition is used to create End User Layers and design business areas which are pre-requisites to running Discoverer4i Plus and Discoverer4i Viewer. Discoverer Administration Edition is shipped as a component of Oracle9i Developer Suite. The required version of Oracle9i Developer Suite for compatibility with this release of Oracle9i Application Server is 1.0.2.3

3. New features in this release of Discoverer4i Plus and Discoverer4i Viewer

- Ability to create graphs in Discoverer4i Plus and view graphs in Discoverer4i Viewer
- Support for Oracle analytic functions introduced in Oracle8i
- Support for Oracle8i materialized views and server query re-write
- Introducing firewall support for Discoverer4i Plus. Discoverer4i Viewer already supports firewalls.
- NLS support for Discoverer4i Viewer including bidirectional text display and page layout
- Workbook level parameters
- Change the layout of items in Discoverer4i Viewer
- Interactive pivot of items in Discoverer4i Viewer
- Modify the presentation of Discoverer4i Viewer (e.g., choose not to show the list of worksheets)
- Enhanced export to Excel
- Discoverer4i Viewer can make data available to middle tier applications in XML by using the "&fm=xml" option in the URL

4. Oracle Discoverer User Edition name change

Discoverer User Edition has changed name. The web version is now called Discoverer4i Plus, the client server version is now called Discoverer Desktop Edition.

5. Notes on internationalization

5.1 List of languages for which translations are provided

Translations are provided with Discoverer4i Plus and Discoverer4i Viewer for the following languages :

English, Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian French, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Thai, Romanian, and Slovak.

In addition, Discoverer4i Viewer provides translations in Arabic and Hebrew. See section 5.3 below for more information.

Please note that other languages and their corresponding territories are supported. The user interface and help text will be supplied in English. The full list is available from the login screen.

5.2 Traditional Chinese support

Discoverer4i Plus supports the Oracle ZHT16MSWIN950 character set. Discoverer now supports the Hong Kong Government Chinese Character Set (GCCS) as well as additional User Defined Characters that are used in either Hong Kong or Taiwan, but are not found in ZHT16BIG5.

5.3 Bidirectional support in Discoverer4i Viewer

Discoverer4i Viewer supports Arabic and Hebrew. It will support bidirectional text display and page layout. To obtain this support, the user must use a browser that supports bidirectional languages (such as Internet Explorer 5.x) using the "dir" attribute and must select a Hebrew or Arabic locale at login. It is recommended that users create their workbooks in Discoverer4i Plus, using a Microsoft Windows NT client. Any workbook that will be viewed in an Arabic or Hebrew environment should be created with default column alignment.

5.4 Enhancements to export to Microsoft Excel feature in Discoverer4i Plus and Discoverer4i Viewer

When opening a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet exported from Discoverer for the first time, the language version of Excel should match the language version of the Discoverer session in which the workbook was exported. Also, the Windows regional settings should match the territory of the Discoverer session. For example, if a user selects the Italian - Italy locale at login, then the workbook should be opened in an Italian version of Excel and Windows regional settings should be Italian (Italy). After the workbook is saved, it can then be used in any language version of Excel that the user's OS supports.

5.5 Using parameters in the URL at login

When sending parameters in the URL at login, for best results the parameter values should be in ASCII characters. This is a known limitation of URLs.

6. An addition to the Discoverer4i Plus Troubleshooting guide - using Microsoft Internet Explorer

If you get a warning that Discoverer has detected too early a version (prior to 5.0.0.3186) of the Microsoft Java Runtime Environment / Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and that you should upgrade this component of your browser, download the latest version from the Microsoft website http://www.microsoft.com . At the time of writing, the latest version of the virtual machine could be found by going to http://www.microsoft.com/java then selecting the download link. Note that just upgrading your version of Internet Explorer will not necessarily upgrade your JVM.

Alternatively, try searching the Microsoft website using the phrase "java virtual machine download".

At the time of writing, the direct link to download the JVM was http://www.microsoft.com/java/vm/dl_vm40.htm

7. How to setup backwards compatibility with Discoverer3i Viewer XSL

If you have customized the Discoverer3i XSL file, the version 3i XSL can be plugged into the 4i servlet by altering the following entry in the disco4iv.xml configuration file :

Original file entry :

<application xml_version="viewer41"/>

Change to this :

<application xml_version="viewer33"/>

Also, the 'xsl_path' argument (also in the disco4iv.xml file) needs to be changed to point towards the 3i version of the xsl :

<argument name="xsl_path" type="href">http://MyMachine.com/Disco3_Http_Alias/disco3iv/disco3iv.xsl</argument>

Note, the settings 'MyMachine.com' and 'Disco3_Http_Alias' would need to be changed according to your particular configuration.

8. Setting the Netscape default character set when using Discoverer4i Viewer

To support a wide range of languages, Discoverer4i Viewer uses Unicode UTF-8 encoding. Some Netscape users may experience problems if their default character set is anything other than UTF-8. Common problems include text appearing as squares or random characters. Netscape users experiencing these problems should set the default character set to UTF-8. The steps are as follows :

a. In Netscape select View | Character Set | Unicode (UTF-8) from the menus.
b. Select View | Character Set | Default Character Set.

The Netscape fonts also need to be set for the Unicode character set encoding. The steps are as follows:

a. In Netscape select Edit | Preferences | Fonts menu
b. Select For the Encoding: Unicode
c. Set the Variable Width and Fixed Width font to a font that can support the user's preferred language. No special "Unicode font" is required.

9. ODBC support

9.1 Introduction

Oracle Discoverer Release 4.1 supports access to non Oracle Data Sources via ODBC. The implementation requires that the appropriate client software and ODBC Driver be installed on the machine running Oracle Discoverer. Oracle Discoverer allows the End User Layer to be created on the ODBC Data Source, alongside the data to be reported on. There is no requirement for an intermediate Oracle database to hold the EUL. Security on the ODBC Data Source will be used to control access to the created EUL and the data it defines.

To access an ODBC datasource enter ODBC:datasourcename as the connect string in the opening dialog, where datasourcename is the name of your ODBC source as set up in the Control Panel ODBC Data Source Administrator.

Available functionality will depend on the capabilities of both the Data Source and the Driver being used. Restrictions identified during testing are highlighted later in this document.

9.2 Supported datasources

Oracle Discoverer Release 4.1 has only been tested against the non Oracle Data Sources listed in this document. The implementation of support for ODBC Data Sources is intended to be as generic as possible and may allow other Data Sources to be accessed using the current release. However, it is possible that some functionality may not be available and Oracle cannot guarantee that the information returned by an untested Data Source will be correct.

The following Matrix shows which version of each Data Source have been tested, together with the ODBC Driver used and it's version :

Data Source Name | Data Source Version | ODBC Driver | ODBC Driver Version
SQL Server | v7.0 | Microsoft SQL Server | 3.70.06.90
SQL Server | v6.5 | Microsoft SQL Server | 2.65.0201
Sybase | 11.5 | Sybase | 3.01.00.00
Informix | 7.2.TC2 | Intersolv | 2.12.0000

Testing has been carried out against these versions only and using the ODBC Drivers identified below. Other combinations of Data Source version and ODBC Driver may work but Oracle cannot guarantee that the information returned by an untested configuration will be correct.

Other ODBC drivers will work against these data sources but some functionality may not be available. For example, SQL Server can be accessed via the Intersolv driver version 2.12.0000 but Administrators may find that locking is handled inefficiently

Note: For Discoverer to work correctly when connecting via ODBC to a Sybase 11 server, you should ensure that the server database option ddl in tran is set to TRUE.

9.3 Disabled Functionality

Some Features within Oracle Discoverer have been disabled when connected to any ODBC Data Source. Users will find the relevant Menu Options, Windows and Wizards of the User Edition and Administrator Edition will be unavailable. Features affected in this way include :

Feature | Reason
Batch | Requires Oracle PL/SQL to submit jobs for batch execution.
Summary Management(1) | Requires Oracle PL/SQL to perform management functions
Query Performance Prediction | Requires Oracle specific database objects and functions.
Date Hierarchies | Requires Oracle specific DECODE() Syntax.
EUL Gateways(2) | Requires checkpoints for partial transaction rollback.

(1) It should be noted that it is only the Management of Summaries which is disabled. External summaries can be created and managed by the administrator, and will be used when appropriate in query execution.

(2) EUL Gateways have been enabled for Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase as these databases support partial transaction rollback via checkpoints and have been tested as part of the Discoverer ODBC certification process. EUL Gateways are not available on other data sources as ODBC does not support a common syntax for "rollback to checkpoint". This includes some data sources which do have support for checkpoints but where the required data source specific syntax has not passed the Discoverer ODBC certification process.

9.4 Partial Functionality

Some features within Oracle Discoverer have been made partially available when connected to a non-Oracle data Source via ODBC. The implementation has been designed to leave as much of a feature in place as is practicable, while only disabling those aspects which ODBC cannot support. These include :

Feature | Implementation Restrictions
EUL Management | Users can create EUL's under their current user or an existing other database user. The facility to identify and create a new user is not available. Similarly, the tutorial data can only be created if the tutorial user has been created in advance.
Count All Rows | The facility to return a count of all the rows to be returned by a query will not work for all possible queries. Oracle Discoverer creates a new query to return this count and makes use of an Inline View to improve performance. As Inline View syntax is not supported by ODBC, it is necessary to "Flatten" the SQL before it is sent to the ODBC Data Source. This process is not possible when the query whose whose rows are being counted contains any aggregate function(s). In this case, a message will be returned to the user explaining that a count is not available on the current query.
Available Functions | Users can still create derived or complex items using the formula editor and combining items and constants with database functions. However, the list of available functions is not the same under ODBC as for Oracle. A restricted list is provided offering those functions for which an equivalent is recognized by the ODBC driver as being available on the current data source. For example, DECODE() is an Oracle specific function and is not available on ODBC, while SYSDATE will be replaced by the ODBC function NOW().

Users can still create derived or complex items using the formula editor and combining items and constants with database functions. However, the list of available functions is not the same under ODBC as for Oracle. A restricted list is provided offering those functions for which an equivalent is recognized by the ODBC driver as being available on the current data source. For example, DECODE() is an Oracle specific function and is not available on ODBC, while SYSDATE will be replaced by the ODBC function NOW().

9.5 Compatible ODBC datasources for saving workbooks in the database

The compatible ODBC Data sources are Microsoft SQL Server v6.5/v7.0, Sybase 11.5 and Informix 7.20.TC2. The drivers are listed in the previous table.

10. Known Issues and Workarounds

Below is a list of known issues and workarounds where possible.

10.1 Changing start page in web browser disables access to help

1485700 - The Discoverer4i Plus applet is downloaded by clicking on an icon of a magnifying glass in the html page with the title 'Discoverer Start Page'. If this 'start page' is changed to another page then certain functionality will not work until the browser page is returned to the 'start page'. This functionality includes access to help topics and automatically opening up Excel when exporting to an Excel spreadsheet or opening up the web browser when exporting to a web browser.

10.2 Problems finding config XML file if not using default port on HTTP server

There may be a problem with locating the disco4iv.xml file if not using the default port on the HTTP server. The workaround is to modify the 'Aliased Servlet Init Parameters' section of the zone.properties configuration file to use the file:/// protocol. See below for an example of where to make the changes in the zone.properties file (which can be found in the location ...\Apache\Jserv\Servlets\)

Example of original file entry :

servlet.disco4iv.initArgs=config=http://MyMachine.com/disco4iv/html/disco4iv.xml

Change to this :

servlet.disco4iv.initArgs=config=file:///<drive>\<oracle_home>\<ias_home>\disco4iv\html\disco4iv.xml

10.3 NLS and Netscape - need to manually refresh page if incorrect characters displayed

If using Netscape in a language other than English, then incorrect characters may be displayed even if the character set is UTF-8. The workaround is to perform a manual refresh of the page.

10.4 Possible "Out of fetch error" message or "Network error" on query cancellation

The workaround for this issue is to set the value of the "OutOfFetch" parameter defined in the [session manager] section of the pref.txt file. If the parameter is not present, then add it to the file in the [session manager] section of the file. The default value is 0. The workaround is to increase the "OutOfFetch" parameter to 1 and apply the preference (using applypreference.sh). The client session would need to be restarted. If the issue still occurs after setting this parameter to 1 then increase to 2 and repeat the procedure to apply the preference.

10.5 New preference settings need to be added when copying a Discoverer3 i pref.txt file for use with Discoverer4i (1555205)

When copying an existing Discoverer3i pref.txt file for use in Discoverer4i, the following settings, which are new in Discoverer4i need to be added :

To be added to the [Application] section of the prefs.txt file :

NonAggregableValue = ""

To be added to the [DATABASE] section of the prefs.txt file :

DisableAutoOuterJoinsOnFilters = 0 # Turn off Automatic Outer Joins on filters (0 = on, 1 = off)
MaterializedViewRedirectionBehavior = 0 # 8.1.6 Materialized View Redirection (0=always when available, 1=always when
summary data not stale, 2=never)

10.6 Required Support Files (RSF) Upgrade

Discoverer installs RSF 8.0.6.0.0 but they need to be upgraded to 8.0.6.1.1 or later in order to solve the following issues.

1040536 NLS: ZHT16MSWIN950 character set conversion causes errors.
Discoverer server can not connect to the database of which character set is ZHT16MSWIN950.
729977 NLS: "Date format not recognized" error occurs using date format mask
Non-English language users may experience errors with date type data. This manifests itself in the error "Data format not recognized" and no list of values.
770803 NLS: Linguistic sort causes unexpected results
If data to be sorted includes punctuation (e.g. a full stop or a comma) then incorrect results can be generated by performing a sort.

10.7 Miscellaneous

1427941 NLS: Excel export has a garbled worksheet name
1489852 NLS: Excel export of date format mask with non ASCII characters does not work properly

11. Issues fixed in this release

1371615 Printing page items truncates at edge of page
1319295 Discoverer doesn't split the page item in more than 1 row when printing
1354389 Apps model EUL - problems when log in with incorrect responsibility
1373518 Viewer isn't able to choose on which hierarchy to drill
1421545 Parameters are re-entered for multiple pages if value in lower and not upper case
1459731 Unable to retrieve data that includes comma in Discoverer3i viewer
1479497 Parameter form appears when you open a scheduled workbook in Discoverer 3i Viewer
1488342 Discoverer3i Viewer incorrectly displays Greek
875222 NLS: Discoverer server can not handle server message under code conversion
The NT Discoverer Server can now run on an OS of any language we support and support clients of any language.
(Note: This bug never occurred on Solaris or the other Unix ports)
1201816 NLS: Number format with comma as a decimal separator : sometimes numeric format is literal resulting in datatype mismatch