Fix Pack Releases: PA2 / V11 Series

[Alan Kirk]

As we've done with other versions, this post will be a repository for links to fix packs for Planning Analytics Local (PAL) 2.0 / Server Version 11. Posts will be made when a release is done but they'll be consolidated in this one.

PAL 2.0.9.1 (22 May 2020)
Release Page.
Key Fixes
The fix list run to 7 pages across all components of the product and on this occasion it would be really difficult to pick a highlights package.
New Features
There are no new features included.

PAL 2.0.9 IF2.1 (28 Mar 2020)
Release Page.
Key Fixes

• PLANNING ANALYTICS MICROSOFT FOR EXCEL: GENERATING SOME VIEWS FOR A SECOND TIME ARE TAKING AN EXTREME AMOUNT OF TIME
• SERVER CRASH IN STARGATE CREATION PROCESS::'FINALIZEINCATCHBLOCK()'
• TM1SERVER CRASH: DUE TO AN MDX POST HTTP REQUEST - INVALID POINTER
• TM1 ADMIN SERVER CRASHES ON THREAD CREATION DUE TO RACE CONDITION
• DEFUNCT 'SHAREMEMREADER' PROCESS CAUSES LOGGING FROM WRONG TM1 SERVER INSTANCE

New Features
N/A

PAL 2.0.9 (17 Dec 2019)
Announcement Page.
Key Fixes
A lot, actually, but some of the highlights:

• PH04090 [Stability] TM1 Server Crash due to stack overflow
• PH13327 TM1 SERVER INSTANCE CRASH DURING SAVE DATA ALL
• PH07473 TM1 WEB TIME OUT IN 1 MIN
• PH11910 TM1 SERVER CRASH CREATING MEMBERSET WITH SESSIONSET
• PH12018 TM1 SERVER CRASH DUE TO CORRUPT SUBSET
• PH12073 TM1SERVER CRASH WHEN RUNNING TI PROCESS THAT CREATES SECURITY GROUPS AND ASSIGNS THE GROUPS TO USERS, and who could forget my personal favourite...
• PH13327 TM1 SERVER INSTANCE CRASH DURING SAVE DATA ALL

New Features
The exclamation points are IBM's, not mine, though the dynamic shapes one is probably well worthy of it:

• Manage a list of TM1 databases on the TM1 Admin Server
  • In TM1 Server version 11.7.0, you can set up one TM1 Admin Server that refers to the active TM1 databases for a model. All your users can point to the TM1 Admin Server and you can rapidly switch over from one TM1 database to another TM1 database. The TM1 Admin Server doesn't need to be restarted, which means that you can completely automate the failover to the backup system if a crash occurs on a TM1 database.
• Use the ViewZeroOut TurboIntegrator function on MDX views
  • The ViewZeroOut TurboIntegrator function now works on MDX-based views. You can zero out the data of views with intersections that are unique to elements that exist only in hierarchies. For all views, including multi-hierarchy views, ViewZeroOut collects intersected leaf sets before it sets all data points in a view to zero.
• Use dynamic shapes and images in websheets
  • Customize your websheets! In TM1 Web, you can dynamically insert shapes and images anywhere in your websheet where you’d like the image to change when the value of a cell changes. You can dynamically insert logos, employee pictures, flags, product images, and more.
• Open a websheet on the active tab when you save a multi-tab websheet
  • If you have a websheet with multiple tabs in a book, Planning Analytics Workspace keeps track of the active websheet tab when you save the book. Then, when you open the book in Planning Analytics Workspace later, you are right where you left off in your work!
• Deprecation of TM1 Operations Console
  • Deprecated in v2.0.9 In Planning Analytics version 2.0.9, TM1 Operations Console is no longer supported. When you access the TM1 Operations Console URL, you see a general 500 error message that indicates that the URL is not available. You can use IBM Planning Analytics Administration to monitor databases in IBM Planning Analytics and IBM Planning Analytics Local.

Things that can potentially break, kill and mutilate your applications

• The change to the security evaluation order for MDX, which you can read about on the Quebit site here. As from 18 Jun there is now an IBM Technote here.

PAL 2.0.8 (17 Jul 2019)
What's New Page
Key Functionality Changes

• Removed relational database sources for TM1 Web. Removed Data Server Driver for JDBC and SQLJ 4.17 (10.5.0.2).
• Removed IBM Cognos Package Connector
• Save confirmation dialog for TM1 Application Web was removed; changes are automatically changed.
• Various logging, API and other enhancements.

PAL 2.0.7 (Local and Cloud) and Server 11.5 (29 Apr 2019)
What's New Page

PAL 2.0.6 (11 Oct 2018)
What's New Page

PAL 2.05 (25 Jun 2018)
What's New Page

PAL 2.04 (16 Feb 2018)
What's New Page

PAL 2.0.3 (19 Sep 17)
What's New Page.

PAL 2.02 IF4 and higher(21 Sep 17)
Cannot be downgraded to an earlier version. See this post.

PAL 2.02 (04 Jun 17)
Release Announcement.
Fix List.

PAL Interim Fix 16 (17 Mar 17)
Release Announcement.
Fix List.

• Error in cell widget
• Error Banners are stacked and require multiple clicks to clear

PAL 2.0.1 Refresh 1 and PAL 2.0.1 Refresh 1 Interim Fix 1 (24 Feb 2017)
Release Announcement.
Fix List.

• (Refresh1): Formulas giving #VALUE in certain cases.
• (Refresh1): Copying from Excel to CAFE Subset editor not working in some cases,
• (Refresh1): CAFE: Flex View not refreshing.
• (IF1) Server crash caused by internal floating point rounding error during MDX axis calculation

[Alan Kirk]

Version 2.02 has now been released; see the main post for the links. This will be stickied for 30 days.

[Alan Kirk]

IMPORTANT: There has been a change in the data structure in PA 2.0.2 IF4. The effect is that if you apply that interim fix or higher you can no longer downgrade to an earlier version. Details can be found here.

[aph1985]

Hi all,

I just saw that PA 2.0.3 has been released. Anyone know where to download it from?
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgece ... 2_0_3.html
Cheers,
A

[Alan Kirk]

Hi all,

I just saw that PA 2.0.3 has been released. Anyone know where to download it from?
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgece ... 2_0_3.html
Cheers,
A

They may have published the release notes but that doesn't necessarily mean that they've released it yet; there was nothing in this morning's notifications e-mail about it. If they've put the notes up then the download probably isn't far behind but my blood pressure is not up to trying to find where they've hidden the download pages this week. Honestly, has anyone ever seen a more useless site than the Passport Advantage one?

Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. A thousand million useless words about what Passport Advantage offers, and not a single link to anything even remotely useful among them. I'll come back to it when I have half a day to waste.

[aph1985]

It's available for download now.

[mcamargo]

v2.0.3 has some problems with TM1 Applications, I have tested it on two servers and it crashes and do strange things on both, I was on 2.0.1 and now I can't downgrade to that version, I will install 2.0.2 IF4 to see if that works, but for now I strongly recommend you to beware of 2.0.3.

[Steve Rowe]

Hi mcamargo,

Could you elaborate on the crash and strange things please? It would be good to know some details of the use case so that we can determine if we are likely to be impacted.

Many thanks,

Steve

[Alan Kirk]

There has been a new release; 2.0.4.

This is the end of the line for the 32 bit server. It will cease to be in the 2.0.5 release. (Actually I'm surprised that it has lasted this long. I don't imagine that trying to run PAX or PAW from a 32 bit box would be a pleasant experience.)

There will also be no 32 bit installer for the classic clients (Perspectives / Architect), but the way I read it they can still be installed from the 64 bit main installer.

[Alan Kirk]

George Tonkin brought to my attention the fact that I hadn't updated this for the release of PA 2.0.5. I thought I had, but clearly not. Thanks, George.

The Release notes can be found here.

The various headings for the What's New information can be found here.

[Alan Kirk]

I missed posting another one (hat tip to Paul Segal); 2.0.6. Which is odd, since it is in fact my version.

The What's New summary will be found here.

The most significant of these (for certain values of significant) is:
"IBM Planning Analytics Local 2.0.6 is the last release with support for Java TI."

Well, that was fun while it lasted. I hope that nobody has put TOO much effort into building calls to Java.

[Alan Kirk]

A link to the 2.0.7 release has now been added. In the depreciation list, I noted:

IBM TM1 Top utility
The TM1 Top utility is scheduled for deprecation.

Again.

[Wim Gielis]

PAL 2.0.8 has been made available last week:
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgece ... 2_0_8.html

A moderator can remove this post in the thread, it is just a general notification to the community.
When the links are added above, this post is no longer necessary.

[Alan Kirk]

PAL 2.0.8 has been made available last week:
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgece ... 2_0_8.html

A moderator can remove this post in the thread, it is just a general notification to the community.
When the links are added above, this post is no longer necessary.

There's no reason to remove it; I post the replies for the same reason (to ping that there is fresh content) but there's no particular need to remove them afterwards especially fo the post makes reference to one of the features.

On which point, I like the change to the rollback logging.

Normally I'm the one who posts them but my receipt of IBM notifications has become distinctly sporadic of late. When I logged in to check my subscription, though, I found that while I was still subscribed to "TM1", there are new(ish) subscriptions for three different variations of the name "Planning Analytics" that I wasn't subscribed to. Hopefully I'll be back to getting notifications of these things.

[gtonkin]

PAL 2.0.9 released yesterday, available on Fix Central. Fix list

[Alan Kirk]

This has now been released:
PAL 2.0.9 IF2.1 (28 Mar 2020)
Release Page.
Fixes:

• PLANNING ANALYTICS MICROSOFT FOR EXCEL: GENERATING SOME VIEWS FOR A SECOND TIME ARE TAKING AN EXTREME AMOUNT OF TIME
• SERVER CRASH IN STARGATE CREATION PROCESS::'FINALIZEINCATCHBLOCK()'
• TM1SERVER CRASH: DUE TO AN MDX POST HTTP REQUEST - INVALID POINTER
• TM1 ADMIN SERVER CRASHES ON THREAD CREATION DUE TO RACE CONDITION
• DEFUNCT 'SHAREMEMREADER' PROCESS CAUSES LOGGING FROM WRONG TM1 SERVER INSTANCE

[Alan Kirk]

This has now been released:
PAL 2.0.9.1 (22 May 2020)
Release Page.

Fixes:
The fix list run to 7 pages across all components of the product and on this occasion it would be really difficult to pick a highlights package.

[Alan Kirk]

There is a potentially important change in 2.0.9 which Mike Cowie's Quebit has uncovered (and many thanks to Moby91 for pointing me to it), though it doesn't seem to be in the release notes and there doesn't seem to be a full technote on it yet.

In short, it used to be that MDX would execute then check security. Now it checks security then executes. What difference does that make? Suppose that one of your applications uses an MDX expression which drills down from your Total element for that dimension. Your average plebeian users do not have access to the Total element.

Previously it didn't matter because they'd end up seeing only the elements that they have access to.

From 2.0.9, however, the execution will check their security first, determine that they don't have access to the Total element and BOOM, your application is lying in pretty little shards of error messages scattered across the floor of the screen.

In application development, we know this phenomenon by the technical name "A. Bad. Thing."

You can read the whole of Quebit's analysis here.

[Alan Kirk]

There is a potentially important change in 2.0.9 which Mike Cowie's Quebit has uncovered (and many thanks to Moby91 for pointing me to it), though it doesn't seem to be in the release notes and there doesn't seem to be a full technote on it yet.

IBM has now released a technote, which can be found here. I've shifted discussions about this to a separate thread which will be found here, so that the fix pack release thread doesn't get cluttered with a single topic.

[Alan Kirk]

In case anyone missed this:

A defect had been identified in the IBM Planning Analytics 2.0.9.4 release that can prevent the ViewZeroOut TurboIntegrator function from working correctly. No error message is provided to indicate the ViewZeroOut function or the TurboIntegrator process has failed.

The root cause of the defect has been identified and corrected. A new version of IBM Planning Analytics 2.0.9.4 that contains a correction for this defect is now available on IBM Fix Central.

One would think that if this is a "new version" it should have a different name. But then one would ALSO think that the latest version should be downloadable from Passport Advantage rather than having a 2.0.8 version which then has to be upgraded through Fix Central, or at least that's my experience. Oh, but wait, the download file for the above fix is named tm1_winx64h_2.0.94.51_ml.tar.gz, so I suppose that it's 2.0.9.4.51 even though it's actually named 2.0.94.51, with the .51 release replacing the pulled .24 one.