Release Notes, 4.5.0.0

Arcadia Enterprise Release 4.5.0.0

(ArcViz 4.5.0.0, ArcEngine 2.11.1)

This document contains release information notes for Arcadia Enterprise, and is accurate at the time of publication.

In this release, we have these enhancements:

To see our certification matrix, read Certifications.

To see the catalog of known issues, read Known Issues.

Upgrade to this Release

Arcadia Enterprise upgrades to Release 4.5.0.0 from the baseline of Release 4.2.X and Release 4.3.X. If you have earlier versions of the product, you must perform a two-step upgrade: to Release 4.2.1.1, and then to Release 4.5.0.0.

Enhancements to Datasets

Specify Dataset by SQL Query

This release introduces dataset modeling based directly on SQL queries, as described in Creating Datasets from a Query. You can specify datasets by directly restricting columns and rows, or through complex SQL joins and functions.

Inner Join Elimination

On Arcadia connections, you can improve performance by join elimination on inner joins, in addition to the previously supported outer left joins. See Join Elimination.

Additionally, default table visuals on the dataset display only the columns from the first table in a dataset with a join, up to the maximum number of columns specified in Table Style menu. See Table Visuals.

Enhancements to Visuals and Dashboards

Interactive Map Visuals

Interactive map visuals have significant changes in this release:

Map Visual

Map visuals with bubbles now support two measures. The new Color shelf specifies the first measure, and determines the color of the bubble, and the new Size shelf specifies the relative size of the bubble. The two shelves replace the single Measures shelves of the earlier versions of Arcadia Enterprise. See Shelves for Map Visuals: Color and Size, and one of the "bubbles" topics, such as Country Map with Bubbles, for a sample implementation.

Table Visuals
We changed the default behavior of table visuals to show only the fields of the first table in dataset with joins, up to the maximum number of columns specified in Table Style menu. See Table Visuals.
Viewing Detailed Data for Visuals

You can choose to enable or disable detailed data viewing in dashboard visuals. See Enabling Viewing Data in Dashboard Visuals.

Current Parameters Tooltip
In working dashboards, we enhanced the structure and depth of information that appears on the Current Parameters tooltip, which reports the filter settings for the dashboard.
Filter Styling in Dashboards

In this release, we added to existing dashboard filter style options by letting you control the position of filter labels, the visibility of the line separator, and the font and font size of the filter. See Filter Styles in Dashboards.

Visual Border Styling in Dashboards

In this release, you can specify the appearance of borders on visuals, at the level of the dashboard that contains them. You can choose to show or hide the borders of visuals, specify the color of the border, and adjust the curvature of the border corners (radius). See Visual Border Styles in Dashboards.

Choose Sort Order for Filter Values

You can select the sort order of filter values in a dashboard. There are different sort order options available on field-based filters and custom filters. See Configuring Sort Order in Filter Values.

Navigation Between Dashboards
When navigating between dashboards in real time, you can specify that the new dashboard opens in a new window. See Drill Through Data Discovery.
More Printing Options

We added an ability to print tabular reports, or save them, directly from the dashboard, while maintaining header and footer information, column titles, and custom page breaks.

As part of this effort, we added a Downloads menu to dashboard settings, and the following options:

Changing Line Styles

In a Line visual, you can display a different line style for each measure in the visual. See Changing the Line Style.

Downloading Maximum Number of Rows in CSV Files

Arcadia Enterprise enables you to save the data used in visualizations as CSV files. To avoid downloading large number of rows that are specified by the user at the visual level, you can now limit the number of rows to download at the site level. See Downloading Maximum Number of Rows in CSV Files.

Downloading Maximum Data Rows in Visuals

A new option, Maximum data rows for visuals at the site level, overrides the setting in the Maximum number of rows to fetch option in the Data menu of the Visual Designer. See Downloading Maximum Data Rows in Visuals.

New Analytic Functions

In this release, we enhanced the Analytic Functions interface, and significantly increased our support for the number of analytic functions. See Analytic Functions:

Direct Access

In this release, users can use SQL to directly access data on a connected cluster. This enables you to quickly examine the structure of tables build a query using a standard SQL interface, preview the results, and adjust the query as necessary. You can then create a dataset on the query, and develop dashboards and applications. See Using Direct Access.

Data Connections

Snowflake
Starting with this release, you can connect to Snowflake; see Creating New Snowflake Connections.
Google BigQuery
Starting with this release, you can connect to Google BigQuery; see Creating New Google BigQuery Connections.
Solr
We upgraded our Solr connection to support Solr 7.

Custom Style Management

Search Custom Styles

In dashboards and visuals, you can search custom styles by the Name and Modified By fields. You can also search by the content of CSS and JavaScript code. See Searching Custom Styles in dashboards and Searching Custom Styles in Visuals.

In the Manage Custom Styles interface, you can search site-wide custom styles by the Name, Description, Author, and Modified By fields. You can also search by the content of CSS and JavaScript code. See Searching Site-Wide Custom Styles.

Sort Custom Styles

In dashboards and visuals, you can sort custom styles by the ID, Name, Last Updated, and Modified By fields. You can sort in ascending and descending order. See Sorting Custom Styles in Dashboards and Sorting Custom Styles in Visuals.

In the Manage Custom Styles interface, you can sort site-wide custom styles by the ID, Name, Author, Modified By, Last Updated, and Used in Visuals fields. You can sort in ascending and descending order. See Sorting Site-Wide Custom Styles.

Analytical Views

Sequence-Based Analytical Views

Before this release, Arcadia Engine matched queries to partition-based analytical views to optimize their performance. This release adds a new type of analytical view construct, the sequentially-refreshed analytical view.

Analytical View Management in ArcViz

We made significant improvements to the Analytical Views UI, enabling you to group and order analytical views by database and table, and to quickly filter on database name, table name, and the state of the analytical views.

We also added bulk refresh and delete options, and enhanced reporting to provide feedback on the quality of the analytical view, the information on the underlying base tables and logical views, the information on the analytical view, and its SQL definition.

See Managing Analytical Views in the User Interface.

Storage File Format Support

Optimized Row Columnar (ORC) format

ORC uses block mode compression to store data in compact form. It uses on-file lightweight indexes to retrieve relevant data quickly and to skip complete blocks of rows that do not match the query.

For more information, see ORC in Supported Data Storage, and Using the ORC File Format.

Kudu Decimal Type Support

In this release, we added support for the Kudu DECIMAL numeric data type, with fixed scale and precision. The DECIMAL has the following syntax:

DECIMAL[(precision[, scale])]
  • precision

    The total number of digits, specified as an integer literal, regardless of the location of the decimal point. Range: between 1 and 38. Default: 9.

  • scale

    The number of fractional digits. Must be less than or equal to the precision, specified as an integer literal. Default scale is 0.

The default format of the data types is DECIMAL(9, 0).

For more information, see DECIMAL Data Type.

Security

Custom Arcadia Service Account

You can configure a custom Arcadia service account based on existing Hive Ranger Auditing settings. See Ranger Auditing on Kerberized Clusters with a Custom Arcadia Service Account.

Extended Impersonation

The new Technical User Name option in the New User and Edit User window modals enables the system administrator to specify an alternate name for connection access when using impersonation. See Creating New User Accounts.

Videos in Documentation

In this release, we collated all videos embedded in our documentation. See a complete list here: Videos.