IBM i2 Analyst's Notebook Premium Release Notes

Description

Analyst's Notebook Premium 8.9.5 builds on the capabilities of Analyst's Notebook, providing single users a local analysis repository. Analyst's Notebook Premium collects, manages, and organizes information and intelligence. Data in the repository can be viewed and edited, without needing to put the content into a chart first. Using the analysis repository, it is easy to uncover relationships, pathways, and networks across data types. Adding Analyst's Notebook Premium to the IBM i2 Intelligence Analysis Platform provides extensive multidimensional analysis tools for use in a collaborative environment.

Important: IBM i2 Intelligence Analysis software at version 8.9 is not compatible with earlier versions of i2 software. Upgrading directly is not supported. To install IBM i2 software at version 8.9, you must first uninstall all of your existing i2 software, and then install the new versions. The program or programs that are covered by these release notes are designated for deployment.

Announcement

The Analyst's Notebook Premium 8.9.5 announcement is available at www.ibm.com/common/ssi/index.wss. See the announcement for the following information:

• Detailed product description, including a description of new functionality
• Product-positioning statement
• Packaging and ordering details
• International compatibility information

Release highlights

The following new features are available in this release:

• Product access management

This release contains an optional feature for managing access to the software. Product access management helps you to maintain compliance with the terms of your software agreement. For more information about access management, see the IBM i2 Intelligence Analysis Portfolio Product Access Management Guide.

New features in Analyst's Notebook Premium 8.9.3

The following new and updated features are available in this release:

• Continued enhancements to chart interactions
• Filtered expansion of items that are stored in the repository
• Configurable charting schemes
• Alerting on items
• A schema designer to help customize schemas
• Globalization

System requirements

For information about hardware and software compatibility, see the detailed system requirements document at http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27036199.

Installing Analyst's Notebook Premium 8.9.5

To install Analyst's Notebook Premium:

1. Extract the product files from your downloaded distribution, or insert the product CD into the computer optical drive.
2. Using Windows Explorer, browse the root of the distribution and run setup.exe. The Installation Manager opens.
3. Click Install, in the left menu to start the installation steps.

The Installation Manager guides you through the installation of:

• Analyst's Notebook
• Local Analysis Repository
• Analysis Repository Connector

Note: If you are planning to use Analyst's Notebook Premium with a Group Analysis Repository, do not install a Local Analysis Repository.

Upgrading to Analyst's Notebook Premium 8.9.5

If you have an earlier version of Analyst's Notebook Premium installed, you can use the Installation Manager to upgrade to version 8.9.5.

To preserve the data that is stored within Analyst's Notebook Premium an upgrade wizard will display the next time that Analyst's Notebook Premium is opened. This wizard guides you through the following upgrade steps:

1. Backing up data.
2. Adding a default time zone to existing date and time properties.
3. Upgrade the database.

Note: After the upgrade, you must update the schema to take full advantage of the new features.

Backup strategy

It is important to have a robust backup and recovery strategy in place for the Local Analysis Repository. Ideally, you should use your existing corporate backup solution, or schedule manual backups on a regular basis.

To back up the Local Analysis Repository completely, you must back up two subfolders of the repository folder in the user's profile. (By default, this is "[...]\AppData\Local\IBM i2\Local Analysis Repository 3".) The subfolders are:

• "Local Analysis Repository"
• "Analyst's Notebook Premium Charting Schemes"

For maximum reliability, ensure that Analyst's Notebook Premium is not running when backing up. For further information about backup options, including scheduled backups, see the LarBackup.properties. The LarBackup.properties is installed in "[...]\AppData\Local\IBM i2\Local Analysis Repository 3\ Local Analysis Repository Backup"

Known problems

Known problems are documented in the form of individual technotes in the Support knowledge base at https://www.ibm.com/support/entry/myportal/overview. As problems are discovered and resolved, the IBM Support team updates the knowledge base. By searching the knowledge base, you can quickly find workarounds or solutions to problems.

The following link launches a customized query of the live Support knowledge base: http://www.ibm.com/support/search.wss?&tc=SSXVMQ&atrn1=SWVersion&atrv1=8.9.3&rankprofile=8&dc=DA440+DB500+DB510+DB520+DB560&dtm.

At time of publication, the following problems were known:

Search highlighting multiple terms

Occasionally, search strings that contain multiple terms may not be highlighted within the search results. Note: Any matching result will still be returned and the correct scoring will be applied.

Connection issues

If the Local Analysis Repository entry appears in the Data Sources panel but does not connect automatically, close and restart Analyst's Notebook

Performance enhancements

In order to improve the performance of the Local Analysis Repository, ensure that any virus checking software that you have installed does not monitor the Local Analysis Repository folder, %LOCALAPPDATA%\IBM i2\Local Analysis Repository 3. For example, on Windows 7 this is C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Local\IBM i2\Local Analysis Repository 3.

RPC Server is unavailable

If, when starting Analyst's Notebook, you receive the following message: RPC Server is unavailable, restart the Analyst's Notebook process (ANB.exe). You need Administrator rights to perform this action.

Default location for local chart storage is incorrect in some instances

When working with an Analyst's Notebook chart that uses iBase records or ESRI® mapping, you might see the full file path to the temporary chart store when saving or closing the chart.

Analyst's Notebook Premium applications can operate incorrectly because of client security settings

In various circumstances, the security settings on computers running Analyst's Notebook Premium might prevent correct operation. To resolve this issue, ensure that the portal URL is added to the list of trusted sites in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Analysis Repository Importer places additional requirements on mandatory property groups

When a property group is marked as mandatory in the schema, one of the properties it contains must have a value. It is not important which property that is. If you will use the Analysis Repository Importer against the schema, however, you must additionally mark as mandatory one of the properties of a mandatory property group.

Resizing the grid of item versions can cause a selection change

When viewing item history, resizing the grid can cause the currently selected version to change.

Import performance

At this release, the Repository Importer performs extra validation on the data that is imported into the repository. Due to this, you might find that the performance of importing complex data into the repository is reduced.

Restriction on the amount of information that is stored in an item

With a large amount of information that is stored across a number of cards:

• Performance might be affected
• Information can be harder to find

For data producing more than a hundred properties on a single card, or hundreds of cards on a single item, consider changing the structure of your data.

Upgrading schemas

When upgrading the schema from an earlier version of the software:

• If you are using one of the three standard schemas, update the schema after upgrading your repository to take advantage of the new semantic information.
• If you are not using one of the three standard schemas, or have changed your schema in any way, extra steps are required to make it compatible with the latest release. For more information contact support.

Custom schemas require custom charting schemes

To be available for use in Analyst's Notebook Premium, all schemas require companion charting schemes.

If you customize one of the supplied schemas, the changes you make might not chart correctly unless you also customize the supplied charting scheme. If you create a custom schema, you must also create a charting scheme and store it in the same location as the schema.

For further information about editing and creating charting schemes, contact IBM support.

Supported search types

There are some limitations with exact and fuzzy matching in non-English language regions:

Western European Script (French, German, Italian, Brazilian, Spanish) – Exact matching produces successful results. Spelled like and matches based on synonyms can return less useful results, the degree of matching should be evaluated by the user. If the results for spelled like and synonym matching behaviors be less than favorable, they can be configured to through IBM Services. Contact support for more information.

East Asian Scripts (Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, Japanese) – Exact matching produces mixed results. The indexing process is heavily reliant on word boundaries (for example, a space). As East Asian scripts do not reflect the same word boundaries as western scripts, the exact matching can provide weak or no results for text fragments. Exact matching works however in whole character sequences for example, the equivalent to English sentences. Neither spelled like or synonyms returns usable result. If matches based on synonyms are needed, they can be configured to through IBM Services. Contact support for more information.

	Exact match	Spelled like	Synonyms
English	Good	Good	Good
Western European Script	Good	Configurable	Configurable
East Asian Scripts	Mixed	No	Configurable

Note: Mixed language matching is not supported.

Attempting to sort links by property value has no effect

When you are viewing search results in the Intelligence Portal, it is possible to sort a list of entities by their values for particular properties. The same mechanism is available for a list of links, but using it has no effect on the order of links in the list.

Note: The PDF below contains the release notes for version 8.9.1 of IBM i2 Analyst's Notebook Premium. The release notes for version 8.9.5 are as above.

Description

Analyst's Notebook Premium 8.9.3 builds on the capabilities of Analyst's Notebook, providing single users a local analysis repository. Analyst's Notebook Premium collects, manages, and organizes information and intelligence. Data in the repository can be viewed and edited, without needing to put the content into a chart first. Using the analysis repository, it is easy to uncover relationships, pathways, and networks across data types. Adding Analyst's Notebook Premium to the IBM i2 Intelligence Analysis Platform provides extensive multidimensional analysis tools for use in a collaborative environment.

Important: IBM i2 Intelligence Analysis software at version 8.9 is not compatible with earlier versions of i2 software. Upgrading directly is not supported. To install IBM i2 software at version 8.9, you must first uninstall all of your existing i2 software, and then install the new versions. The program or programs that are covered by these release notes are designated for deployment.

Announcement

The Analyst's Notebook Premium 8.9.3 announcement is available at www.ibm.com/common/ssi/index.wss. See the announcement for the following information:

• Detailed product description, including a description of new functionality
• Product-positioning statement
• Packaging and ordering details
• International compatibility information

Release highlights

The following new and updated features are available in this release:

• Continued enhancements to chart interactions
• Filtered expansion of items that are stored in the repository
• Configurable charting schemes
• Alerting on items
• A schema designer to help customize schemas
• Globalization

System requirements

For information about hardware and software compatibility, see the detailed system requirements document at http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27036199.

Installing Analyst's Notebook Premium 8.9.3

To install Analyst's Notebook Premium:

1. Extract the product files from your downloaded distribution, or insert the product CD into the computer optical drive.
2. Using Windows Explorer, browse the root of the distribution and run setup.exe. The Installation Manager opens.
3. Click Install, in the left menu to start the installation steps.

The Installation Manager guides you through the installation of:

• Analyst's Notebook
• Local Analysis Repository
• Analysis Repository Connector

Note: If you are planning to use Analyst's Notebook Premium with a Group Analysis Repository, do not install a Local Analysis Repository.

Upgrading to Analyst's Notebook Premium 8.9.3

If you have an earlier version of Analyst's Notebook Premium installed, you can use the Installation Manager to upgrade to version 8.9.3.

To preserve the data that is stored within Analyst's Notebook Premium an upgrade wizard will display the next time that Analyst's Notebook Premium is opened. This wizard guides you through the following upgrade steps:

1. Backing up data.
2. Adding a default time zone to existing date and time properties.
3. Upgrade the database.

Note: After the upgrade, you must update the schema to take full advantage of the new features.

Backup strategy

It is important to have a robust backup and recovery strategy in place for the Local Analysis Repository. Ideally, you should use your existing corporate backup solution, or schedule manual backups on a regular basis.

To back up the Local Analysis Repository completely, you must back up two subfolders of the repository folder in the user's profile. (By default, this is "[...]\AppData\Local\IBM i2\Local Analysis Repository 3".) The subfolders are:

• "Local Analysis Repository"
• "Analyst's Notebook Premium Charting Schemes"

For maximum reliability, ensure that Analyst's Notebook Premium is not running when backing up. For further information about backup options, including scheduled backups, see the LarBackup.properties. The LarBackup.properties is installed in "[...]\AppData\Local\IBM i2\Local Analysis Repository 3\ Local Analysis Repository Backup"

Known problems

Known problems are documented in the form of individual technotes in the Support knowledge base at https://www.ibm.com/support/entry/myportal/overview. As problems are discovered and resolved, the IBM Support team updates the knowledge base. By searching the knowledge base, you can quickly find workarounds or solutions to problems.

The following link launches a customized query of the live Support knowledge base: http://www.ibm.com/support/search.wss?&tc=SSXVMQ&atrn1=SWVersion&atrv1=8.9.3&rankprofile=8&dc=DA440+DB500+DB510+DB520+DB560&dtm.

At time of publication, the following problems were known:

Search highlighting multiple terms

Occasionally, search strings that contain multiple terms may not be highlighted within the search results. Note: Any matching result will still be returned and the correct scoring will be applied.

Connection issues

If the Local Analysis Repository entry appears in the Data Sources panel but does not connect automatically, close and restart Analyst's Notebook

Performance enhancements

In order to improve the performance of the Local Analysis Repository, ensure that any virus checking software that you have installed does not monitor the Local Analysis Repository folder, %LOCALAPPDATA%\IBM i2\Local Analysis Repository 3. For example, on Windows 7 this is C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Local\IBM i2\Local Analysis Repository 3.

RPC Server is unavailable

If, when starting Analyst's Notebook, you receive the following message: RPC Server is unavailable, restart the Analyst's Notebook process (ANB.exe). You need Administrator rights to perform this action.

Default location for local chart storage is incorrect in some instances

When working with an Analyst's Notebook chart that uses iBase records or ESRI® mapping, you might see the full file path to the temporary chart store when saving or closing the chart.

Analyst's Notebook Premium applications can operate incorrectly because of client security settings

In various circumstances, the security settings on computers running Analyst's Notebook Premium might prevent correct operation. To resolve this issue, ensure that the portal URL is added to the list of trusted sites in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Analysis Repository Importer places additional requirements on mandatory property groups

When a property group is marked as mandatory in the schema, one of the properties it contains must have a value. It is not important which property that is. If you will use the Analysis Repository Importer against the schema, however, you must additionally mark as mandatory one of the properties of a mandatory property group.

Resizing the grid of item versions can cause a selection change

When viewing item history, resizing the grid can cause the currently selected version to change.

Import performance

At this release, the Repository Importer performs extra validation on the data that is imported into the repository. Due to this, you might find that the performance of importing complex data into the repository is reduced.

Restriction on the amount of information that is stored in an item

With a large amount of information that is stored across a number of cards:

• Performance might be affected
• Information can be harder to find

For data producing more than a hundred properties on a single card, or hundreds of cards on a single item, consider changing the structure of your data.

Upgrading schemas

When upgrading the schema from an earlier version of the software:

• If you are using one of the three standard schemas, update the schema after upgrading your repository to take advantage of the new semantic information.
• If you are not using one of the three standard schemas, or have changed your schema in any way, extra steps are required to make it compatible with the latest release. For more information contact support.

Custom schemas require custom charting schemes

To be available for use in Analyst's Notebook Premium, all schemas require companion charting schemes.

If you customize one of the supplied schemas, the changes you make might not chart correctly unless you also customize the supplied charting scheme. If you create a custom schema, you must also create a charting scheme and store it in the same location as the schema.

For further information about editing and creating charting schemes, contact IBM support.

Supported search types

There are some limitations with exact and fuzzy matching in non-English language regions:

Western European Script (French, German, Italian, Brazilian, Spanish) – Exact matching produces successful results. Spelled like and matches based on synonyms can return less useful results, the degree of matching should be evaluated by the user. If the results for spelled like and synonym matching behaviors be less than favorable, they can be configured to through IBM Services. Contact support for more information.

East Asian Scripts (Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, Japanese) – Exact matching produces mixed results. The indexing process is heavily reliant on word boundaries (for example, a space). As East Asian scripts do not reflect the same word boundaries as western scripts, the exact matching can provide weak or no results for text fragments. Exact matching works however in whole character sequences for example, the equivalent to English sentences. Neither spelled like or synonyms returns usable result. If matches based on synonyms are needed, they can be configured to through IBM Services. Contact support for more information.

	Exact match	Spelled like	Synonyms
English	Good	Good	Good
Western European Script	Good	Configurable	Configurable
East Asian Scripts	Mixed	No	Configurable

Note: Mixed language matching is not supported.

Attempting to sort links by property value has no effect

When you are viewing search results in the Intelligence Portal, it is possible to sort a list of entities by their values for particular properties. The same mechanism is available for a list of links, but using it has no effect on the order of links in the list.

Note: The PDF below contains the release notes for version 8.9.1 of IBM i2 Analyst's Notebook Premium. The release notes for version 8.9.3 are as above.