ACP Server License

ACP Data Flow

ACP is played in a internet browser program (e.g. Internet Explorer, Fire Fox, Chrome ...) in a web page. The browser must have Adobe Flash Player installed. The web page loads ACP's ShockWave files (*.swf). Both the browser directly and the ACP shockwave communicate with the server. ADE can also optionally connect to databases that installed on the same server or remotely. ADE using ODBC to access databases, so installing an ODBC server for your particular database software maybe necessary.

ACP Security

You can configure ACP to run using HTTP or HTTPS. The latter is secure and provides the industry standard for transferring data encrypted information over the internet. It's the same protocol used for example for online banking. Note, to use HTTPS, you will need to purchase and install the SSL certificate for your server first.

You can also encrypt your model files if you want before uploading them to ACP. This is a feature in Analytica. Open your model in Analytica and from the File menu select 'Save a copy in...' menu item. This will display the dialog shown here and you simply need to check the 'Lock and encrypt the copy' checkbox.

ACP users' credentials are setup the same way as ACP on AnalyticaCloud.com. ACP maintains an internal database with the users' credentials stored. the internal database is actually an Analytica model file. The passwords are encrypted using a one-way encryption algorithm. The encryption algorithm was written as an Analytica user defined function by Lonnie Chrisman here at Lumina. What this means is that the passwords are encrypted and can be only used by ACP to see if sign-in credentials are correct, but cannot be viewed. If a user forgets their password they must use the 'Reset Password' feature to create a new one.

ACP is currently not setup to use other authentication systems like Windows or Kerberos authentication.

Server Requirements

The Analytica Cloud Player requires:

• Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2012, XP, Vista, 7, or 8.
• Internet Information Server (IIS), 7.0 or later preferred, with ASP.NET
• Minimum 4GB RAM. 16GB+ recommended.
• You will need a 64-bit Windows operating system if your model requires more than 3GB of memory to run.
• (Optional) If you want to use HTTPS instead of HTTP, you need to have an SSL certificate installed.

The Microsoft .NET framework 3.5 or later will also be installed if not already present during ACP installation.

Installing ACP

Installing ACP on your server involves a few steps. This section is mainly for you or people in your organization that may have questions about the ACP installation. Typically the ACP installation is done via remote desktop connection by someone at Lumina along with you or a member of your organization with admin privileges on the server.

1. Install and Configure ADE

The first step is to install Analytica Decision Engine (ADE). You can download the ADE installer from the Lumina at http://lumina.com/support/downloads/ Usually you will want to use the ADE 64 bit edition. However if your server is 32 bit (rare these days) then you will need to use ADE 32 bit.

When installing ADE you will need a valid Activation Code which Lumina will provide you. Important, if your models use Analytica's Optimizer functions then you need an Activation Code for ADE with Optimizer.

Once ADE has been installed, you need to configure the server to allow IIS to launch ADE. From the windows start menu, run dcomconfig.exe and then give the IIS user name (usually DefaultAppPool) permission to launch ADE. Here's an screenshot from a Windows 2008 Server illustrating the process.

2. Configure IIS

Internet Information Servcies (IIS) is the Window's web server and ACP is installed as an "application". Here's an example of doing this on Windows 2008 Server with IIS 7.

3. Install ACP Bundle

The ACP files required are distributed as a "bundle" which is typically a compressed archive like a "zip" file. The bundle will be made for your particular server. When configuring IIS, a folder for installing ACP was chosen. You will extract the zip files into that folder.

4. Set Windows Security

Usually, you will need to set access permissions for users to the folder in which you have installed ACP. Here is an example of setting up access permission in Window's Explorer, to give all Users access to the ACP folder:

Updating ACP for a New Release

Lumina periodically issues new releases for ACP with new features and bug fixes. For as long as you have active maintenance and support (included free for 12 months when you purchase an ACP license or subscription), Lumina will provide you free updates. We will provide instructions on how to perform each upgrade. Generally, the update consists of a few files to be copied into the ACP directory.