NetCharts Server 4.0.x Release Notes
NetCharts Server 4.0.x Release Notes
These are the release notes for NetCharts Server 4.0.x. They describe software and documentation changes of particular interest for users, developers and Administrators updating from earlier versions of NetCharts Server.
Release 4.0.3
| Title | Description |
| Enhancement Data size constraints in the Java and ColdFusion API toolkits | The size of the data submitted to NetCharts Server via the Java and ColdFusion Toolkits is no longer limited to 32000 characters. |
| Modification Pivot Data Aggregation | The behavior of the pivot data function has changed. If, as a result of a pivot operation, multiple data values map to a single cell in the pivoted table, those values will be aggregated. |
| Enhancement Point labels in charts | Line, Combo, XY, Radar and Stock charts now all support labeling of individual data points on a chart. The new CDL parameters are LineValueLabel, LineValueLabelBox and LineValueLabelStyle |
| Enhancement Table Data Aggregation | The table generation module is now able to aggregate data from a result set by BOTH row and column in addition to aggregating only by ROW or by COLUMN. |
| Table Column Headings | By default, the table generation module now presumes the first row of data in a result set represents the column headings. |
| Table Row Attributes | The table generation module now correctly interprets all ROW attributes. |
| Enhancement Font embedding in PDF and SVG images | NetCharts Server now allows users to specify whether fonts are embedded into SVG and PDF output files. The PDFEmbedFonts and SVGEmbedFonts properties control this behavior. The default value of each property is true. These properties can be changed in the Administrator’s console. |
| Administrative Console updates for image encoding | The administrative parameters that control NetCharts Server chart image encoding have been collected on a new input form called Image Encoding. |
| Duplicate charts on pages with multiple charts | An issue where the NetCharts Server occasionally incorrectly put duplicate chart images on a single HTML page has been resolved. |
| ColdFusion Toolkit updates | Several bugs have been corrected in the NetCharts Server ColdFusion toolkit. |
Release 4.0.2
| Title | Description |
| Enhancement Updated CDL Parameter – SliceLabelContent | The CDL (Chart Definition Language) parameter SliceLabelContent has been modified to allow chart designers increased control over piechart labeling. See the CDL documentation for complete details. |
| Enhancement Axis Autoscale Behavior | Previously, all three attributes of the Scale CDL parameter needed to be specified or the chart would be autoscaled. NetCharts Server now allows you to specify any of the three attributes of the scale. If you do not specify all of the attributes, NetCharts Server will use auto-scaling, but the specified components of the scale will now be used as part of the auto-scaling. |
| Enhancement Runtime Properties | NetCharts Server now allows Server Administrators to modify the default runtime properties used by the underlying chart rendering engines. This ability allows certain features of the rendering engines to be configured at runtime. The runtime properties are configured on the General Server Configuration Panel of the Administrator’s Console. See that panel for a list of currently supported runtime properties. |
| Enhancement Enhanced JPEG and TIFF generation | The quality of generated JPEG and TIFF images has been greatly improved. Both image formats are now generated with a 24 bit color depth. |
| Issues with large number of files in projects | The Developer’s console may operate very slowly on projects containing large numbers (100’s) of files. |
| Issues with server consoles in Netscape 4.7x | Certain hyperlinks in the Administrator’s and Developer’s consoles do not function in Netscape 4.7x browsers. |
| SVG output type requires SVG Viewer version 3 and greater | To view charts that include the “drilldown” or ActiveLabel functionality, version 3 of the SVG Viewer or greater must be used. If an older version is used, the error document.getElementByID(…) will be seen when hovering over an area with an assigned ActiveLabel. |
Release 4.0.1
| Title | Description |
| Administrator Password | The default Administrator login and password is “Admin”. This can be changed from within the Administrator console from the “Manage Users” panel. |
| Rollover Code Location | The JavaScript code that NetCharts Server generates and uses for client side interactivity must be included in your JSP or ASP pages within the HTML <body> element but should not be included within an HTML container element such as <div> or <table> elements. Also, we recommend for cross-browser support that the call to the getRolloverJavaScript() function to include the code occur after some other HTML code. Some browsers have issues with page layouts that include HTML <div> elements with hidden visibility. More information can be found within the Frequently Asked Questions page of the toolkit documentation. |
| Developer Session | The developer console uses a session object to maintain state for a variety of parameters. Some confusion can occur if the developer invokes a new browser window from an existing browser window, and then navigates to a different project than the first browser window. To avoid this issue, invoke new browser windows from the operating system, not the existing browser. |
| Using More Than One Toolkit | If more than one toolkit type (e.g. Cold Fusion, ASP), is used to request the same chart, the cached server generated image object may not be appropriate for the requesting toolkit. A workaround is to copy the project to a different name for use by the second toolkit. |
| Port Forwarded Firewall | In some cases it is desirable to put the NetCharts Server behind a firewall, yet allow outside clients to access it by providing a firewall proxy. In this situation, NetCharts Server may have a different server name and port for clients inside the firewall than those outside the firewall. This may cause some troubles for referenced chart elements like background images. These chart elements must have absolute URL’s that are accessible to the inside clients (like NetCharts Server). Active Label’s should use relative URL’s. |
| java.util.zip.ZipException | The error log may show messages like: Error unable to create jar cache in /tmp directory : java.util.zip.ZipException: error in opening zip file. This report is being generated the underlying Apache engine but does not adversely affect NetCharts Server. |
| Project File URL Case Sensitivity | NetCharts Server allows projects to be browsed outside of the developer console. This browsing of project directories will work regardless of case sensitivity. However, if a Java Server Page (JSP) is selected while browsing with the improper case, a 404 error will be reported. We do not recommend browsing the directories in this way – the developer console should be used instead. |
| Documentation Set | The documentation set for the NetCharts Server 4.0 release will be updated periodically on the Visual Mining Documentation website. |
| Anonymous User | If you’ve previously installed NetCharts Server 4.0 and you’ve explicitly added the anonymous user to a user group, that entry is no longer valid. The name of the anonymous user has changed from AnonymousCWSUser to AnonymousNCSUser. |
| NetCharts Font Specifications | NetCharts Server charts uses the “bold” style of a font by default. Users may override this behavior by adding the word “Plain” to the end of a font specification. See Font Selection in the Examples section of the distribution for a demonstration of the fonts supported on your specific platform. |
| Hypersonic SQL Demo Database | NetCharts Server uses the Hypersonic SQL database to provide a demo database platform. When using the NDS Wizard, only one database, “Examples” will be shown. You may add your own HSQL databases, and then map them by modifying the contents of the HSQLdbs.properties file located in the |
| Netscape 6 Issues | The system report chart, found in the Administrator console, cannot be viewed in Netscape 6. This is an issue related to session-cookie lookup in Netscape 6. This issue should not affect any resources (charts, tables, etc.) from NetCharts Server Projects. Earlier and later versions of Netscape do not have this same limitation.
The use of “in-line” stylesheets in tables may cause problems for Netscape 6.x in reports containing charts and tables. The workaround is to move the stylesheet definition out of the table definition and into the element.Right clicking over an image to save it in Netscape will not show the correct filename or file type. If the filename and type is entered manually by the user the save image will be stored correctly. |
| log4j JAR | The commons-httpclient.jar that supports the Java/JSP remote toolkit has a dependence on log4j version 1.2. If you have a version of the log4j classes in your application server/servlet engine, it must be at least version 1.2 of log4j. JBoss 2.4.4 for instance, comes with log4j 1.1.3. |
| HTTP Session/Cookie Usage | When using an API toolkit to generated pages that include charts, an HTTP Session is used to store and retrieve the generated image to return to the client. This scenario requires that a client-side cookie be saved. When cookie-blockers such as AdSubtract are used to block cookies from the site serving the chart image, the client will not be able to view the image and will instead show a broken image. To fix this issue, enable cookies for the site serving the image. |
| Printing Images served by an API toolkit | When using an API toolkit to generated pages that include charts, the img element produced contains a src attribute that points to either the gncsimage.asp page or a getimage servlet. The URL referenced serves the image to the client utilizing a HTTP Session. When printing images straight from the browser window, or copying the image to paste into another program, the availability of the image depends on the caching configuration of the browser. If the browser is configured to always retrieve the page or image source and not use any caching, then the image will not print properly. To correct this issue, modify the cache settings of the browser to utilize the cache in some manner. This will cause the browser to pull the image data from the cache and will allow for printing and copying. |