XENTIS Documentation -- Release Notes XENTIS 4.8 -- Released February 2002 XENTIS V4.8 Release Notes This document contains information about using XENTIS V4.8 and highlights features that are available in V4.8 that were not available in versions prior to V4.8. A. INSTALLATION AND GENERAL INFORMATION. 1. If you have a previous version of XENTIS already installed and you never installed an interim version, we recommend that you copy the release notes of these previous versions from saveset F on your release tape and review them. The following DCL command should retrieve these release notes and place them in your current directory: BACKUP/LOG tape_dev:XENTIS048.F/SELECT=[*...]*.REL*/SAVE_SET [] where 'tape_dev' is your tape drive. 2. Multiple versions of XENTIS may be installed and active at the same time. Please see section below for more information. 3. On VAX systems XENTIS V4.8 requires OpenVMS V5.0 at a minimum. Installation and operations has been tested on a OpenVMS V5.2 system, but it has not been tested on a OpenVMS V5.0 or V5.1 system. As result we recommend that users be running at least OpenVMS V5.2. On Alpha systems XENTIS V4.8 requires OpenVMS V6.2 or later. It is also important to install all the BASIC RTL patches available from Compaq. Without these patches, XENTIS will abort under certain circumstances. The patches are available from Compaq World Wide Web site: http://www.openvms.compaq.com. 4. Beginning with V4.2, CALLABLE XENTIS is a feature that is available only upon request from your vendor. It is no longer available in the standard release. CALLABLE XENTIS provides the ability for a 3GL program to call XENTIS (except /Dictionary and /Edit) in the context of the same process or image. XENTIS can still be executed in the context of a subprocess. Using XENTIS in a subprocess is not considered CALLABLE XENTIS. 5. If you are upgrading from V4.2 or later, please execute the XENTIS_UPGRADE.COM procedure found in XENTIS48$COMFILES:. This purpose of this procedure is to inform the installer of the names of the various XENTIS text files that have been modified by this site in the previous version. 6. If you are using XENTIS with the Oracle, Sybase, Ingres or Progress relational database, then you will need to relink XENTIS to support these databases. The following commands will perform this: a. Copy the object libraries from your tape or disk. For Vax: $ BACKUP/LOG dev:[dir]XENTIS048.G/SAVE/SEL=[*...]*.*; [] For Alpha: $ BACKUP/LOG dev:[dir]XENTIS048.H/SAVE/SEL=[*...]*.*; [] b. Relink XENTIS $ SET DEFAULT XENTIS48$PROGRAM: $ @XENTIS48$COMFILES:XENLINK.COM dev:[dir] where dev:[dir] is the location of the object libraries c. Restart XENTIS $ @XENTIS48$COMFILES:XENTIS_SHUTDOWN.COM $ @SYS$MANAGER:XENTIS48_START.COM $ PURGE XENTIS48$PROGRAM:*.* Make sure your database server is started prior to executing these commands. You will need the SYSNAM and the CMKRNL privileges to perform this procedure. This section does not apply if the relational database you use is Oracle Rdb, formerly Digital Rdb. B. INSTALLING AND USING TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS AT THE SAME TIME Beginning with version 4.3 XENTIS allows two or more different versions to be installed and active at the same time. This is accomplished by including the version number, in this case 48, with the logicals used by XENTIS and including the version number in many executable files. The information in this section describes how this is accomplished and what the customer needs to do to insure smooth operation of two or more versions at the same time. 1. All XENTIS logicals that previously began with XENTIS, now begin with XENTISnn, where 'nn' is the version number. Please note that symbols such as XENTIS$DICT and XENTIS$PASSWD have not changed. These symbols are unique to your process and do not need to be changed. 2. All XENTIS executable files that may get installed with the INSTALL utility now have the version number appended to the filename. This is because the INSTALL utility does not allow two or more files with the same name to be installed at the same time. Customers that have a limited user count license, or those that have a Progress database interface license must either install XENTIS executables with the SYSLCK privilege or must give each user the SYSLCK privilege. (The XENTIS startup procedure automatically examines the XENTIS license for these two conditions and installs the executables if appropriate.) Please note that due to a bug in Rdb, the XENTIS executables should not be installed if the Rdb interface is to be used. 3. None of the control files or data files that XENTIS uses have had their names modified for this purpose. The lone exception to this rule is the startup file that is executed during system startup. Its name is now XENTISnn_START.COM, found in the SYS$MANAGER directory, where 'nn' is the version number. 4. XENTIS version 4.8 may be installed and started, while a previous version is active and running. It may not be installed while another installation of V4.8 is active and started. The V4.8 installation procedure detects this condition and will halt its processing. 5. During system startup, the various versions of XENTIS should be started in order with the oldest version first and the newest version last. When shutting down XENTIS, it is best if the reverse order is followed; the latest version first. 6. Existing batch command files present a unique problem. Many or most batch command files created prior to version 4.3 contain a line in them similar to "RUN XENTIS$PROGRAM:XRP". Under the old scheme of filenames and logicals, this would always execute the current version of XENTIS. Under the new scheme of filename and logicals, this would execute a version of XENTIS that was previously installed. If it is desired for pre V4.3 batch command files to use version 4.8, then perform the following steps. a. Copy XRP48.EXE to XRP.EXE in the same directory. b. Define a logical as: DEFINE XENTIS$PROGRAM XENTIS48$PROGRAM Beginning with batch command files created under version 4.3 or later, you can control which version of XENTIS is used. This is done with the XEN_VER DCL symbol. To use version 4.3, set XEN_VER to "43"; to use version 4.8, set XEN_VER to "48"; etc. This symbol can be set in a user login file or the system login file, SYS$MANAGER:SYLOGIN.COM. If this symbol is not set, the current version will be used. 7. To remove an older version of XENTIS from your system, execute the XENTIS_SHUTDOWN.COM procedure for all versions in the order of most recent version first. (XENTIS_SHUTDOWN.COM was introduced in version 4.2.) Next, delete all the files from the older version. Next deassign the PKMSSHR logical. Next, execute the XENTIS startup files, found in SYS$MANAGER, in the order of most recent version last. C. NEW FEATURES 1. /Report and /Report modules (/File, /Word, /Model, /Update). a. XENTIS 4.8 now supports the Oracle8 relational database by using the Oracle8 Call Interface. XENTIS 4.8 can access an Oracle7 database only if the Oracle8 Call Inteface has been configured to access an Oracle7 database. By using the Oracle8 Call Interface users may now specify which Oracle8 database they wish to use. This is done by specifying ORACLE:database where 'database' is the name of the Oracle8 database for the data dictionary. If a database is not specified, then the default Oracle8 database is used. This change occurs because the Oracle7 Call Interface did not support the specifying of a database, whereas the Oracle8 Call Interface does support such. b. The SQL statements used to retrieve data dictionary information from the system tables now resides in a text file called XENTIS_SQL_LINE.DAT located in the XENTIS48$REPORT$DATA directory. This will allow customers to edit this text file should new versions of databases change their system tables. The databases supported by this file include: Rdb, Oracle, Sybase, Progress, and Interbase. Ingres is not supported with this feature because Ingres does not have a documented callable interface. c. A new setup parameter called DISPLAY-FILE-NAMES has been introduced to improve the performance of DISPLAY mode when a data dictionary has an excessive number of files. This parameter has valid values of Y and N. If set to Y, then XENTIS will display the file names of the files in the data dictionary at the various file name prompts. If set to N, then XENTIS will not display the file names. The default value of this parameter is Y. d. Oracle date fields are now treated as a native date datatype rather than a user written (foreign) datatype. This will improve performance while processing Oracle dates. e. The number of scrollable lines in the info (middle) window when using DISPLAY mode has been doubled. f. XENTIS/File now supports the ability to append records to an existing file defined by a Temporary Dictionary. This is accomplished by appending /DICT=APPEND rather than /DICT=TEMP at the "Output file" prompt. g. The Select-On-Subtotal feature is now available in XENTIS/File. This feature works the same as in XENTIS/Report. It is invoked by responding with a T at the "Detail or Summary" prompt. h. A new calculation function, FMTD2, provides for extensive user controlled formatting of date and time fields. This function provides an interface to the OpenVMS LIB$FORMAT_DATE_TIME system routine, and takes three arguments and returns a text field. The first argument is a date-time field. The second is a date format string. The third argument is a time format string. The date and time format strings should be identical to the format strings documented for the date and time format string associated with the LIB$FORMAT_DATE_TIME system routine, except that the exclamation mark (!) is replaced by a per cent sign (%). For example: NEW;20 = FMTD2(CONT_DATE,"%D0.%MN0.%Y4","%H02:%M0 %MIU") i. A pair of new setup parameters, POST-PRINT-PROC and POST-PRINT-FLAGS, are now available. These parameters are designed for the purpose of allowing a custom post-print procedure. If the POST-PRINT-PROC is non-blank then the POST-PRINT-PROC parameter should contain the filename of a DCL procedure. Upon completion of generation it's output file, XENTIS will execute this procedure in the context of a sub-process. Two parameters will be passed to this procedure, the name of the output file and the contents of the POST-PRINT-FLAGS setup parameter. If a location, device and/or directory, is not specified for the procedure, then XENTIS will look for the procedure in the XENTISnn$REPORT$DATA directory. The default user-modify flag for the POST-PRINT-PROC parameter is set to N for security reasons. The ALLOW-SPAWN flag must also be set to Y. This new feature allows the user to convert the output file into a different format. One example would be to convert the output file into a Portable Document Format (PDF) file that can be read by Adobe Acrobat Reader. j. For those sites that make extensive use of Compiled Command Files (XCC), there is now a DCL command procedure that will compile all XENTIS Command Files (XCF) found in a particular directory into Compiled Command Files. The name of this procedure is XENTIS_RECOMPILE_COMMAND.COM and can be found in the XENTISnn$REPORT$DATA directory. A review of the comments inside this procedure will document how it works. 2. XENTIS/Dictionary a. The format of processing messages in the 'Copy a XENTIS file description' has been improved for long filenames. D. KNOWN PROBLEMS AND RESTRICTIONS XENTIS has several known problems and restrictions. Some of these are known bugs in the XENTIS software, some are known bugs in other software that XENTIS uses, such as Rdb, while others are limitations placed upon XENTIS by the operating system. 1. Print frequency U (for Unique) and the setup parameter ACCUM-IF-UNIQUE may not always work when multiple primary files are being used. This is because two records in different primary files may have the same record pointer (RFA in RMS files). After sorting, these two records may get sorted next to each other. As a result, XENTIS thinks they are the same record, because they have the same RFA. 2. If the user enters a prompted literal, then backs up and makes a correction to the prompted literal, the user may be prompted for the first literal even though it is no longer part of the report. This happens because literals that were entered and then changed during the report definition, remain in the internal literal pool. This problem will automatically disappear when the report definition is saved and the report is reexecuted after exiting. 3. A problem may occur with XENTIS Dictionaries created prior to XENTIS V3.1. In some cases the prefix entry in the file record was not created correctly. Due to enhancements made to the processing of prefixes, the incorrect data stored in such prefixes may cause reports or /Edit to work incorrectly. This problem is resolved by running "Edit a Data Dictionary" from the XENTIS/Dictionary menu and selecting "Change" "File" followed by changing the prefix value from spaces to null. Running the program XDFIX_PREFIX found the images directory will also correct this problem. 4. The sizes of all records from all input files, plus calculations, sort records, and literals, cannot exceed 32767 bytes. Under most circumstances this restriction is not a problem. However, should this limitation be reached, it is possible to avoid the limitation by restricting the record size of certain files. This is accomplished as the following example illustrates. $ DEFINE RECSIZE_LIMIT_SALESHIS 12000 If the above DCL command is entered, then XENTIS will limit the SALESHIS file to 12000 bytes. 5. /Update does not allow the same data file to be used twice, unless those files are used only to perform selection and/or calculations. This means that you cannot modify a field or delete a record if that field or record is located in a file that is used two or more times in a single /Update run. This restriction is placed due to problems involving record locking, rereading records by RFA, and RMS not being able to keep track of where the next record is located. This restriction may cause certain existing XENTIS command files to no longer work; receiving the error message "Same physical file update not allowed". These XENTIS command files may not have been working correctly. The solution to this problem is to perform this operation in two passes; the first being a SELECT function where the desired records are selected and their pointers are saved into a pointer file, followed by a REUPDATE where the selected records are read after retrieving their pointers from the pointer file. This restriction was effective with V3.6 of XENTIS. 6. When using a MAXCIM ECB data dictionary, only one version of a data file is allowed. Specifying a version other than the most current version will be ignored. Using the ACTUAL/GENERIC syntax does not get around this restriction. The LIST FILES command will display the filename as the user entered the filename and the name of the file that was actually opened by the software. 7. The DROP-PRIV setup file parameter has no effect with MAXCIM V4 or later files. This is to conform to the MAXCIM security mechanism. 8. Calculations-on-totals should not use more than one occurrence of the same data field in the same report. An easy work around is to specify a calculation such as: AMOUNT3 = AMOUNT(3) 9. There is no support in the software for descending keys. They may, however, work under certain limited circumstances where the ascending/descending nature of the key is not used. 10. Entering a print mask using dual leading dollar signs or dual leading asterisks without including a trailing minus sign is accepted. Printing negative data will thus erroneously print as if it were positive, with no error indicated. 11. The COBOL to XENTIS dictionary transfer does not support sequence numbers in columns 73 through 80. Sequence numbers are typically used in older punched card source files. If you have sequence numbers, you must remove them. In addition sequence numbers in character positions 1 through 6 are not allowed. If they exist you must remove them. Using a 'Box Cut' with the TPU/EVE text editor is an easy way to accomplish this removal. 12. The Rdb interface converts Rdb VARCHAR fields to CHAR fields. This means that VARCHAR fields will have spaces appended to the end of the field to fill out the field to its maximum size allowed. If a VARCHAR field is used in an index, which is usually not wise, and two or more tables are joined using the /NOSQL qualifier, then you will probably have to specify a sub-field as your 'field to build key' field. For example: if the desired index to file B is using datatype VARCHAR(5) but only two of the five characters are really being used, then you should use only the first two characters of the input field from file A. 13. When displaying the output of a report to the screen, there is a limit of the number of lines available. If a detail contains more than the limit, then one or more printed lines may scroll off the top of the screen. 14. The FMTNM function does not support the blank-when-zero feature of print masks, designated by the ampersand character, the trailing DB if negative feature, the trailing CR if negative feature, or the surrounding parenthesis if negative feature. 15. The minimum version of Ingres that is supported is version 6.3. This allows XENTIS to support groupids of the Knowledge Management Extension to Ingres. 16. The Rdb interface does not support the catalog and schema features of Rdb V4.1 and later. When XENTIS/Report attaches to a multischema database it specifies that the multischema capability will be turned off for the duration of the attachment. If a multischema database is used, then the RDB-USE-ATTACH setup parameter must be set to Y. 17. When entering a CDD pathname and you do not want CDD$DEFAULT applied, be sure to start the pathname with _CDD$TOP rather than CDD$TOP. In other words, start the pathname with an underscore character. 18. XENTIS/File does not work when the output file is an Rdb table and the table contains computed_by fields, or virtual fields. 19. Calculation expressions may not include the vertical bar character (|). If you need a vertical bar character, the following calculation expression will yield one: BAR;1 = CHR(124.) 20. Due to a bug in Rdb, the Rdb interface for XENTIS does not work if XENTIS is installed with privileges. If you have a limited user license key, give all XENTIS users the SYSLCK privilege and define the XENTIS48_PRIV_LIST to NOINSTALL before executing the XENTIS startup procedure (SYS$MANAGER:XENTIS48_START.COM). 21. The minimum supported version of Rdb is version 4.0 on Vax systems and 6.0 on Alpha AXP systems. 22. The minimum supported version of Oracle is version 8.0. To use Oracle8 contact your XENTIS vendor as a relink is required. 23. The only supported versions of Progress are 6.2N and 6.2L on VAX systems and 6.2N on Alpha systems. 24. The Info File Creation program does not work with Rdb V4.0, but it does work with later versions of Rdb. 25. XENTIS version 4.3 and later cannot coexist with version 4.2 on Alpha systems. Version 4.2 was a temporary version and uses translated images. Remove version 4.2 from your Alpha computer system. 26. The CENTURY-ADJUST setup parameter when used with foreign dates, also known as user written dates, is applied only after a valid date is retured from the customer maintained foreign date routine. Once a valid date is returned, if the year, when ignoring the century, is less than the value of the CENTURY-ADJUST parameter, and the year is less than 2000, then XENTIS will add a century to the date. One effect of this is that since the foreign date routine cannot return a date of 29-Feb-1900, a resulting date cannot be 29-Feb-2000. Once again, it is the responsibility of the customer maintained foreign date routine (XENTISnn_USER_PACK) to return a valid date. E. PROBLEMS FIXED IN XENTIS V4.8. 1. Sort-On-Totals now works when a Select-On-Total is not used. This problem was introduced in version 4.7 and fixed in 4.7A. 2. The special date literals of YESTERDAY, TOMORROW, FIRST, LAST, BEGIN, and END were not always processed correctly when the CENTURY-ADJUST setup parameter was set to a non-zero value. This problem was introduced in version 4.5. and fixed in 4.7A. 3. DAS files were not accessible. This problem was introduced in version 4.4 and fixed in version 4.7A. 4. The Double Integer datatype used by DAS files was broken in version 4.4 and fixed in version 4.7A. 5. If an excessive number of tables were defined in a database XENTIS would abort when operating in DISPLAY mode. This problem was introduced in version 3.2 and fixed in version 4.8. 6. XENTIS/Report did not detect a break if your break field was a date field, the output was back to the user's terminal, and the DISPLAY-NOW setup parameter was set to Y. This problem was introduced in version 3.3 and and fixed in 4.8.

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