Oracle Discoverer4i Plus and Oracle Discoverer4i Viewer Release 4.1.33f for Linux RedHat 6.0 Oracle DiscovererTM (c) Copyright Oracle Corporation, 2001 January 9th 2001 Release 4.1.33f Perspective for Java licensed from Three D Graphics, Inc. Copyright 2000 Three D Graphics, Inc. Introduction This document provides various installation and late-breaking product information for both Discoverer4i Plus and Discoverer4i Viewer. Contents 1 Required version of Oracle9i Developer Suite for compatibility 2 New features in this release of Discoverer4i Plus and Discoverer4i Viewer 3 Oracle Discoverer User Edition name change 4 Hardware requirements for graph feature in Discoverer4i Viewer 5 Running xhost command after installation 6 Notes on internationalization 6.1 List of languages for which translations are provided 6.2 Traditional Chinese support 6.3 Bidirectional support in Discoverer4i Viewer 6.4 Enhancements to export to Microsoft Excel feature in Discoverer4i Plus 6.5 Using parameters in the URL at login 7 An addition to the Discoverer4i Plus troubleshooting guide - using Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 How to setup backwards compatibility with Discoverer3i XSL 9 Setting the Netscape default character set when using Discoverer4i Viewer 10 Known issues and workarounds 11 Issues fixed in this release 1. 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 2. 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 Support for multiple ORACLE_HOME directories - currently Unix only 3. Oracle Discoverer User Edition name change Oracle Discoverer User Edition has changed name. The web version is now called Oracle Discoverer4i Plus, the client server version is now called Oracle Discoverer Desktop Edition. 4. Hardware requirements for graph feature in Discoverer4i Viewer Please note that in order to take advantage of the capability of Discoverer4i Viewer to display graphs, a graphics card is required on the machine where Discoverer4i Viewer has been installed. If your machine has a graphics card and you wish to display graphs with Discoverer4i Viewer, then please make the following change to the disco4iv.xml file : Original file entry : Change to this : After making this change, graphs will be shown in Discoverer4i Viewer. 5. Running xhost command after installation Before you can run Discoverer4i Viewer for the first time, you must run the following command from an xterm window on the machine on which you installed Oracle9i Application Server: xhost +hostname.domain where hostname.domain is the name and domain for the machine on which you installed Oracle9i Application Server. For example, if you installed Oracle9i Application Server on a machine called myserver.oracle.com, you would type the following: xhost +myserver.oracle.com Note that you only need to run the xhost command before Discoverer4i Viewer is used for the first time. 6. Notes on internationalization 6.1 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 4.3 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. 6.2 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. 6.3 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. 6.4 Export to Microsoft Excel feature is enhanced 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. 6.5 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. 7. 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 8. How to setup backwards compatibility with Discoverer3i Viewer XSL If you have customized the Discoverer3i XSL file, the Discoverer3i XSL can be plugged into the Discoverer4i servlet by altering the following entry in the disco4iv.xml configuration file : Original file entry : Change to this : Also, the 'xsl_path' argument (also in the disco4iv.xml file) needs to be changed to point towards the Discoverer3i version of the xsl : http://MyMachine.com/Disco3_Http_Alias/disco3iv/disco3iv.xsl Note, the settings 'MyMachine.com' and 'Disco3_Http_Alias' would need to be changed according to your particular configuration. 9. 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. 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://////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 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. 10.5 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. 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. 10.6 New preference settings need to be added when copying a Discoverer3i 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) 10.7 Possible Locator crashing after certain amount of usage (1543176) The workaround for this problem is to modify following entry in pref.txt file, to include the list of IP addresses of the server machines where you have installed Discoverer sessions even if there is only one server and apply the preference (using applypreference.sh). MachineIPs = "" 10.8 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 1555190 Discoverer3i preference settings set by user are not migrated to Discoverer4i 1543227 Client hangs when running on Solaris after entering invalid values in login dialogue box - Need to restart Discoverer 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 Discoverer3i 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 1395284 Numeric overflow when running query statistics workbook