It's been just one month since our last major release of TimeXtender, but we already have a new release ready for you. This release, however, is all about consolidation. It doesn't contain a lot of new features. Instead, we've been busy improving the existing features and fixing various bugs.
Improved
- Easier selection for data source connections: When you set up a new data source connection in the Portal, you can now choose the provider and the version of the provider from separate lists, which makes it much easier to get an overview of the provider list. With the possible exception-to-prove-the-rule, the TimeXtender-branded providers will be the best choice when multiple providers are available for the same data source. For that reason, we've also created a Recommended category in the list for our "homemade" providers.
- More complete data lineage with improved UI: Data lineage now traces through aggregate tables, measures, and lookups. We've simplified the UI to give more space to the actual content and a dearly missed feature from the 20.10 branch returns: You can now double-click an object to jump to that object in the main window. To facilitate that, the Data Lineage window is now non-modal, which means that it can be opened and used next to the main window.
- Links from Desktop to Portal for better integration of the two: In TimeXtender, you sometimes need to go back and forth between the Desktop and the Portal a lot, especially when you set up new data sources. To make the Desktop and the Portal feel more integrated, we've added links in Desktop that open the relevant page in the Portal, e.g. for adding a new data source connecting, managing environments, adding a new instance, and managing semantic model endpoints.
- REST API table builder: Taking data from a REST API and transforming that into a table structure can be a bit of a hassle unless you really like writing XSLT scripts. Our REST API data source provider now includes a tool that can generate the script for you. You just need to drag-and-drop the structure you'd like.
- Some data sources that uses a connection string when connecting to a data source (eq. ODBC, OLE DB, TimeXtender SQL, TimeXtender Oracle) now has support for adding additional connection string properties.
- You can now use the TimeXtender REST data source when you use Data Fabric as your ODX storage.
- You can now set the background job timeout in the TimeXtender SAP Table data source.
- The TimeXtender Oracle data source now supports the ODP.NET provider which has improved performance.
- It's now possible to change the security filtering direction on semantic relations for Tabular/PowerBI.
- The character limit on FormatString in a calculation group item on a semantic model has been increased to 1000 characters and is now a multiline textbox.
- We've improved the Tabular model generated by the Tabular semantic endpoint to have better efficiency and reduce the size of the model.
Fixed
Portal
- Password fields were unmasking incorrectly.
- Fixed an error that would occur when accepting the license agreement.
- Fixed an issue where Connection cache was duplicated
- Data source connections with a null category would fail to render.
- Error messages for transferring instances have been improved in case of timeout issues.
- Optimized calls to retrieve instance lists on the Portal frontend.
- Optimized calls to retrieve data source connections on the Portal frontend.
- Fixed password field on the Add/Edit Semantic Instance page not showing correct string when unmasked
Desktop
- SSL: Previously decimal fields were being deployed as double. This has been corrected.
- SSL: Removed the option to include other tables and fields in a Custom Field script, than the table the field is being created on, as it didn't work and would just be empty anyway.
- MDW: Using an aggregate table on SQL Synapse would fail during execution due to a wrong script. This has been corrected.
- TimeXtender SAP Table Data Source: Fixed issue where subtraction settings were not applied on incremental transfers
- Fixed an issue where deployment would fail when disabling physical tables on Snowflake data warehouse
- Fixed issue where ODX transfer tasks were blocking other tasks from running concurrently during bulk inserts
- Desktop proxy settings were not parsed from Execution Service to TimeXtender
- Fixed issue where open tabs did not refresh on Save and Reload