Analytica 4.2 beta Release Notes/Changes in 4.2.2

Patch Release 4.2.2

This page describes the changes in patch release 4.2.2 since the release of 4.2.1.

Patch release 4.2.2 is a bug fix release. We recommend all users of 4.2.0 or 4.2.1 to upgrade to this patch.

The dependency bugs described below have the potential to mislead you into viewing calculated results that aren't correct given your model inputs, and are thus pretty important to patch.

We do not believe that patch has potential to impact the ability to run existing models. The only notable enhancement is a new and revised Chapter 5 of the Tutorial.

Downloads

The patch can be downloaded from:

• Analytica 32-bit
• Analytica 64-bit
• ADE 32-bit
• ADE 64-bit

If you've previously activated a 4.2 license, just leave the activation key blank when running the installer. The previous activation will still be valid.

Licensing and Activation

• If you have previously activated a license for 4.2.0 or 4.2.1, no license activation is required to install this patch. Simply run through the installer with default values, leaving the activation key field blank. It will pick up the previous activated license. No new license and no new activation is required!

• For people activating for the first time, the 4.2.2 installer can now make use of a proxy server to communicate with the Lumina activation server and user registration server. This will eliminate the need for manual activation for people who are behind firewalls but with internet access via a proxy server. If your Internet Explorer or Google Chrome browsers are configured already to use your proxy server, Analytica will find the proxy server from those settings. If those do not contain the proxy server info, then you should set the environment variable HTTP_PROXY to proxyServerName:port. For example, if your proxy server runs on the computer named Watermelon on port 808, then set the environment variable HTTP_PROXY to Watermelon:808 prior to running the installer. Again, this is necessary only if your Internet Explorer or Chrome browsers are not already configured for your proxy server.

• The CheckForUpdates utility can now also makes use of a proxy server when checking whether new releases have become available. The same details from the previous bullet apply for locating (or configuring) the proxy server location.

• The display of your user name in the Update License... dialog is no longer preceded by "user=". Several people experienced failures with manual activation after entering their user name as "user=johndoe" rather than just "johndoe". Hopefully with this removed, this mistake will no longer occur.

Dependencies

• The dependencies to a table from its table indexes were not being recorded. Thus, if the indexes changed, in some cases the tables (and thus downstream results) did not adjust correctly.

• When entering an expression into an edit table cell, dependencies from the variables used in the expression to the table variable were not being recorded. This corrected itself if the model was reloaded (or if you dirtied the table definition in expr view). As a result, after such an edit table change had been made, a change to an input would not invalidate all downstream results correctly.

Linked Modules

• A substantial amount of work was done to improve handling of linked module relative paths in cases where a model had nested linked modules in different directories. In many cases when linked modules (or linked libraries) were nested inside other linked modules, and all module files were in different directories in the file system tree, the relative paths would get interpreted incorrectly.

• The way the FileInfo attribute is maintained was changed, so that while a model is in memory, the attribute contains the absolute path to the linked module, linked library or model. When the file is saved, the relative path is written to the file for the include statement. This change facilitated a solution to the next couple problems.

• When a linked module object containing other linked module objects is changed to a non-linked module, the file path of linked modules contained within must now be changeed to be relative to the parent linked module or model. This conversion did not happen automatically, causing some misalignment of relative paths when linked modules where nested and in different directories.

• When you use File → Save As... to save your model to a different directory, the relative paths of any linked modules contained within your model need to be adjusted, since the relative locations may change as a result. This did not previous occur, but now these are adjusted appropriately.

• When loading a model containing multiple linked modules, if one linked module file is not found and you don't select another (either because you are loading in ADE, or because you pressed Cancel in the Find File dialog), 4.2.1 would abort the remaining load, but this patch continues loading the remaining model and linked module files, as 4.1 used to.

• When saving a model, if one module cannot be written for some reason, such as a file permission problem, and you cancel when prompted for a new location (or are using ADE's CAEngine::SaveModel), the save operation continues for the remainder of the model and remaining linked modules. In 4.2.1 it would terminate.

• If you use Add Module... to add a model file (rather than a module file) to your model, it will now ask you whether you want to import the system variable settings (see Adding Model file as Module... dialog).

• When the same linked module is included twice (such as when a library is linked independently by two different linked modules), the second inclusion would be skipped. The problem is that this would effectively remove the shared library from the second module. If that second module were used by another model, it could break the other model. Now, the second inclusion introduces a special module alias, so the shared module appears in both linked modules, and when they are saved, the saved linked module files contain include statements, so that both continue to include the shared module. Thus other models that use the second module continue to import the shared library.

• When you use a standard Analytica library (one from Analytica's installed Libraries directory), Analytica now stores a flag with the file information indicating that it was from the standard library directory. If you then share your model with someone else, who happened to install Analytica to a different location, it knows to look in the standard Libraries directory for that module. So it will find it even if the relative and absolute paths are different.

• When using Add Module..., if you don't explicitly type the file extension, it previously wouldn't find the corresponding *.ana file, but now it does.

• When you set the class of an object contained inside your model to Model (as opposed to Linked Module), this will now save all system variable settings (Time, Run, preferences) along with the file written. If you don't want that, you should set its class to Linked Module instead. That distinction -- whether the system variables settings are saved with the file -- is the only distinction between the Model class and the linked module class. The fact that it didn't previously save the system variable settings was a bug.

OLE linking

• When Analytica is the data source for an OLE link, and you press "Open Source" in the client app, previously nothing would happen (or you'd get an error message indicating that the app cannot be opened). Now it opens Analytica to the table containing the linked data.

• When you copy a variable that is defined as an OLE-linked table, the copied not is now an active OLE link to the same data.

User Interface

• The [Wiki Help] button is now enabled on the Object Finder (Definition→Paste Identifier...) even if you did not enter Wiki credentials when running the installer.

• When viewing the inputs and outputs attributes in the attribute pane, the list of objects would accumulate rather than just showing the input or outputs for the selected variable.

• The Recent File listing shows directory information when two files with the same file name (but different directory locations) appear on the list so that these can be easily disambiguated.

• If you select a file on Recent Files that doesn't exist (i.e., because it had been moved), you are asked to find the file. After you find the file, the entry on the recent files list is replaced with the file you just selected.

• When the TemplateInput or TemplateOutput attribute contains a non-existant identifier (an error), an attempt to duplicate the node would fail.

• When an invalid definition (one that could not parse due to errors) had just been entered into the attribute pane, it would not let you delete the object while the definition was still showing.

• The default file extension when you save a model without specifying the extension explicitly is now *.ana (lower case) rather than *.ANA (upper case).

• Double clicking on an output node (label part) jumps to the object window. It did this in 4.1, but wasn't working in 4.2.1.

Miscellaneous

• A crash was fixed that occurred when the process ran out of memory while attempting to update certain parts of the user interface.

• A crash was fixed that occurred when the process ran out of memory at a particular point when an allocation for a text value was being attempted.

• When the ShowHier system variable is changed from typescript or button script, the open diagram windows now adjust to the change. Previously currently open windows didn't react.

• Removed a few archaic system variables (SchedulePublish and Q_inFromRec).

• A crash was fixed that occurred after using SpreadsheetSetRange().

• Fixed a glitch in the Attributes... dialog in which the "Create New" button would get out-of-sync and would crash in some instances.

Tutorial

• An all new Chapter 5 -- coverage of arrays and array abstraction.

User Guide

• Fixed an incorrect parameter name shown in the function MdTable in the UG.

Example Models

• Removed the "Foxes and Hares.ana" file. This has been superceded by "Foxes and hares act III.ana", and the presence of the previous version was confusing.