Analytica 4.3 beta Release Notes/Changes in 4.3.1.2

This page details changes in the 4.3.1.2 build, the final release build, since the previous beta 4.3.0.25 build. Numerous bugs, including several crashes that were found during beta testing, were fixed but not included here in this listing.

Licensing and Installation

• This is now a release build, rather than a beta build. Hence, a release license is required.
  • For users with active support, a valid 4.2 license installed and internet connectivity, the installer will automatically acquire a valid 4.3 license at installation time.

• We've (obviously) increased the patch number for the release, so that 4.3.0 were beta builds, and 4.3.1 is the first 4.3 release.

Optimizer

• When you double click on a «LP», «NLP», etc., object (the result of DefineOptimization):
  • The status is now included in the list of items displayed. This may save you from having to include an OptStatusText node.
  • Fields, Extrinsic indexes and Intrinsic indexes are shown. When you click on the «ref» cell for these fields, it shows you where each extrinsic or intrinsic index originated from. When you are debugging your model formulation, trying to figure out why a particular index is showing up as extrinsic (or intrinsic), this leads you to the source -- the particular decision(s), constraint(s) or objective.
  • The objective type is shown (maximize, minimize, find feasible).
  • Enhanced so that expanding an «LP» or «QP» works gracefully when the matrices are huge sparce matrices. You'll now see some of the cells appear as «ref+». These cells haven't computed their contents yet, but will do so when you click on them. These appear where potentially huge sparse arrays are involved.

• The local indexes returned by OptInfo which index the vector of scalar decisions has been renamed from .Vars to .DecisionVector. Similarly, the local index for the vector of scalar constraints has been renamed from .Constraints to .ConstraintVector.

• Local decision variables were not appearing in the result of OptInfo(..,item:'decisions') but now are.

• OptWrite has been sped up. It was slow on extremely large models.

• OptRead, OptWrite and OptWriteIIS functions now infer the format from the file extension when you don't specify the «format» parameter. Specifically, *.lp, *.mps and *.lpfml map to the formats "LP", "MPS", and "LPFML".

• Optional boolean parameter «maximize» added to OptRead. For use primarily when reading "MPS" formats from other optimization software, since the "MPS" file specification doesn't include information about whether the problem is a minimization or maximization.

• The «SetContext» parameter can now be used effectively on context variables that are downstream of decision nodes. You do this when you want to remove the extrinsic dimensions from that node onward during an optimization (which you can do if you can guarantee that no node downstream between the context variable and any constraint or objective node operates over the extrinsic indexes). It is still recommended for greatest efficiency to select context variables that are not downstream of decision nodes, but this enhancement allows things to work correctly if you do select one that happens to be downstream.

Optimizer Manual

• New chapter covering use of Dynamic and uncertainty in the context of optimization models.

• Substantial edits on content there previously.

Domain

• A domain bounds warning is now issued (and was not previously) for a variable with a boolean domain that evaluates to a text value. Similarly, when you're model logic contains a comparison of a boolean-domain variable to a text value, it also issues a warning about a potential error in your modeling logic.

Influence Diagrams

• Copying 32-bit images from Word now preserves transparency.

• Copying/pasting images from Excel and Power Point does a better job at preserving the actual size.

ADE

• Methods such as CATable::GetDataByElements that may retrieve text values will translate the tick character (ascii 147) into unicode 8317 correctly. Previously it would come back as unicode 147, which wasn't the same tick character when viewed in C#, etc.