Release Notes, 4.0.0.0

Arcadia Enterprise 4.0.0.0

(ArcViz 4.0.0.0, ArcEngine 2.5.4)

This document contains release information notes for Arcadia Enterprise.

It is accurate at the time of publication. Arcadia Data updates release notes periodically after the software release.

For the rest of the changes, see the following sections of these release notes:

Home Page

In this release, we added some helpful information directly to the default home page, including an overview of the number of visuals and other items, quick navigation to frequently used visuals, recently created visuals, sample dashboards, and so on. An introduction to the key new features of the most recent release is available when you click What's New in Arcadia Enterprise 4.0.

See our Home Page article for more details.

Connectivity

MS SQL Server Connection
Starting with this release, you can connect to data on the Microsoft SQL Server. See Creating New Microsoft SQL Server Connections.
Result Cache

Some of the powerful data caching that is automatically enabled for Arcadia Engine connections can now be seen on other connection types.

Starting with this release, you can enhance performance for other connections types by enabling a periodic refresh though the Result Cache option.

  • To affect all datasets on a connection, make this selection in the Connection Editor. See Specifying Cache on Arcadia connections, as an example.
  • For finer control, make this selection for individual datasets in the Dataset Detail interface.

This feature requires the Create and Manage Dataset privileges.

Please note that while this improves performance significantly, Arcadia Engine connections are the only ones that feature Data Coherent Caching, refreshing the MetaStore whenever the data or the schema change.

Locale Settings
When importing a CSV file, you can now specify the locale, or localization parameters. See Changing the Locale Setting of an Imported File.

Visualizations

This release introduces a significant improvement and ease to working with visualizations.

Terminology

We updated some key terminology:

  • Visuals are charts that deliver direct insights by representing your data visually.

    Choose from one of our 29 out-of-the-box visualizations. See our Visual Type Catalog.

  • Dashboards combine multiple visuals with interactive filtering on the same 'page', for full dynamic interoperability.

  • Apps are groups of dashboards and visuals. We designed Apps so you may launch our visuals and dashboards as stand-alone, branded applications.

Inline Settings
The New Visual Designer uses inline settings and styling options for Visuals and Dashboards.
In-Dashboard Editing of Visuals
You now have the ability to create and edit visuals directly in the dashboard. With the dashboard open in the Visual Designer, simply click the edit button or double-click on a visual to edit it.
Network Visual

We introduce this visual type to represent connections and relationships in systems and structures. Two dimensions represent start and end notes, and are connected by the value of the measurement.

See Network Visuals. For customization options, see Network Settings.

Dendrogram Visual

This visual type expresses hierarchical relationships in data. Its two dimension provide the start and end points of the connection, which is the aggregate measure.

See Dendrogram Visuals. For customization options, see Dendrogram Settings.

Rich Text Visual

Using the Rich Text Editor, you can add visuals with formatted text and images to dashboards and applications.

See Rich Text Visuals.

Field Statistics Visual

This visual provides automatic statistics about each field of the dataset. It includes a histogram or top K visualization for distribution of values on each field. There are no configurable shelves.

See Field Statistics Visuals. For customization options, see Field Statistics Settings.

Static Assets
Starting with this release, you can upload static assets (such as image files, CSS definition files, and JS definitions) and use them in your visuals, dashboards, and applications. See Managing Static Assets.
Aggregate Functions
In this release, we expanded our range of previously supported aggregate functions (Sum, Count, Approx Distinct Count, Exact Distinct Count, Minimum, Maximum, Average, and String Concat) to include statistical functions Approx Median, Standard Deviation, Variance, and Population Variance.
See Aggregates.
Enhanced Email Notification
In this release, we considerably extended the email sharing options. In addition to enriching the options available when preparing ad-hoc emails, you can now schedule regular email jobs.
You can also set up email notifications that are triggered when data meets a particular threshold.

See Emailing Dashboards, Sheets, and Visuals, and the three email types:

Data Discovery

Drill
Drill into data details by clicking on visual elements, such as individual bars. This enables you to view the subset of the data, as any dimension of the dataset.
Bars, Areas, Lines, and Grouped Bars visual types show the Drill functionality. To use the Drill feature, be sure to enable the Display Context Menus within Visuals.
Filter All
Filter across all visuals in a dashboard.

Administration

Job Scheduler

Starting with this release, users can check the status of their jobs, re-run them, pause, re-start, and so on, from the Jobs interface, as described in Managing Jobs.

  • All jobs can be monitored and managed from the Job Log interface.
  • Scheduled emails and Analytical View refreshes can be monitored and managed from the Scheduled Jobs interface.
  • Schedule intervals may be created, customized, monitored, and altered (by users with administrative privileges) from the Manage Schedule Intervals interface.
Visual Migration

The new Migration feature provides a graphical user interface for migrating visuals and related assets from one environment to another. See Importing and Exporting Visual Artifacts.

We also provide a REST API to facilitate a programmatic approach to migration. See Migration with REST APIs.

ArcEngine Logs
Starting with this release, users with administrative privileges can ArcEngine logs through a graphical user interface, which also displays ArcViz logs.
Visual Performance Profile
To view query performance information for visuals and dashboards, simply click the following combination of keys: control + shift + G.
Table and Column Statistics
The Connection Explorer shows Table and Columns statistics for the selected source table.
Data API Keys
To authenticate with the system for some administrative tasks, the user must have API Keys. See Managing API Keys.
Performance Profile
In this release, Arcadia Enterprise exposes the time it takes to perform the individual components of a request: measure the time it takes to process the dataset, run the query, load the static assets, and finally render a visual in a browser. This enables the user to identify the exact operations that can be optimized to improve overall performance.
Admin API
Arcadia Enterprise provides URL access to ArcViz server objects through the Admin API.

Security

Ranger

Starting with this release, Arcadia Enterprise supports Apache Ranger authorization for Hortonworks installations.

See Authorization with Ranger.

RBAC Improvements
Starting with this release, users have Manage Dataset (modify/access) permissions for datasets they create.

Arcadia Engine

AWS3 Storage Support for Analytical Views
Starting with this release, Arcadia Enterprise supports analytical views based on tables with storage in HDFS, in S3, or both. We can also store the analytical views on S3.
Derived Data Queries

Queries that use derived data are partially or fully routed to analytical views.

Refresh Analytical View

This release introduces many performance improvements, such as:

  • Analytical view refresh is faster due to grouping partitioned insert statements.
  • Regex-based functions are optimized to run faster.
Matching Analytical Views to Analytic Functions

Arcadia Enterprise has improved matching of analytical views over logical views with analytic functions in queries.