ClearSCADA 2007 R1 Release Notes

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ClearSCADA 2007 Release 1 is a minor release of ClearSCADA 2007. This build contains a number of new features as well as some significant performance improvements.

New Features and Product Enhancements

Support for Windows Vista

Added support for Windows Vista (Business, Enterprise and Ultimate versions).

• Security changes within Vista have resulted in numerous changes to the names and locations of files within the system. See ClearSCADA 2007 R1 Changes To File Locations for details.

• The server icon in the Windows Task Bar is now run as a separate application independent of the server. Run the icon from the Windows Start Menu.

Performance Improvements:

• Improved main/standby initial synchronization times by up to 15 times faster by using file modified times rather than file CRCs. The improvement will be noted on the second sync after upgrade.

• The status bar has been modified to only display "Tracking" events by default. Tracking events are used to log operator actions. Simple events, which include things like point updates, will not be sent from the server to client by default. This leads to a reduction in network traffic and server load. On large systems this would have provided a negative performance impact. If required, this can be re-enabled from the Tools -> Options dialog.

• The memory overhead required by the historian has been reduced from 88 bytes to 72 bytes per historic file. On a fully populated historian on a 32 bit platform containing 10,000,000 files, this represents a 160MB reduction in memory foot-print.

• The propagation speed of configuration from templates to instances has been increased by at least 30%.

• Improved the load speed of mimics in WebX where embedded mimics were used by combining multiple requests into a single transaction. This could lead to mimic loading speed recuctions in the order of 4 times faster on complex mimics.

• Improved the Web Server's memory usage management to reduce the amount of memory needed to format data to send to the clients.

Security Improvements:

• Added support for pre-expired passwords to force users to change their password the next time they log on.

• Added support for a user to change their password using WebX.

• Added support for Privilege Restrictions, which enables the server to mask out permissions on clients connecting to the server.

• Made improvements to the security editor:

• Added a checkbox to indicate when an object's access control list is inherited from its parent, which must be unticked to set an explicit access control list. Ticking the box for an object that has an explicit access control list will remove it.

• Changed the wording of the 'Replace Permissions on Descendants' checkbox to 'Remove Explicit Permissions From Descendants'. Checking this has the same effect as manually editing the permissions on each child and ticking 'Inherit From Parent'.

• When doing a recursive change, and the access control list of an object can't be changed because of security or template property overrides, this is now reported as a warning instead of failing the entire change.

• Added support to generate the Certificate Signing Request required to obtain a security certificate for the web server.

User Interface:

• A Mimic Navigator has been added that allows invalid animations to be located on a mimic. This also allows items within groups to be edited without breaking the group.

• Added support for ViewX head expressions. Where ViewX can run up to 5 heads, these expressions return which head ViewX is running on and perform different operations based on that if required. These also differentiate between ViewX and WebX.

• Added support for super favorites. This allows users to add multiple windows to the same Favorites link.

• Added support to override the OPC Offsets. This allows the OPC characters to be offset in calculations. For example, D[06:00] specifies that the day starts at 6am rather than 12 midnight.

• An extension to the server client-scripting object has been introduced that allows SQL commands to run internally against the current database rather than creating a second data access connection.

• The Alarm Severities Configuration tool has been enhanced to control actions that are allowed on the Alarm List/Banner.

• Added support for passing parameters for a mimic via hyperlinks.

• Added registry settings (ViewX\MDIDefaultWidth & ViewX\MDIDefaultHeight) that control the default size of new MDI child windows in ViewX, as a percentage of the MDI client window. If either setting is 0 (default), that dimension will be set by Windows.

• Added a key color property to pie charts on mimics.

• Added a vertical scroll bar to combo boxes on mimic script forms.

• Fixed problem where WebX sometimes doesn't instantiate properly and Internet Explorer shows a white box with a red X in the corner, when hyperlinking from a page that also shows the control.

• Added the 'Navigate' event to mimic scripting, which is fired when a mimic is navigated to from a hyperlink.

• Modified trends to display all key columns in the trace color instead of just the Name column.

• Added the ability to have additional columns in the alarm list and banner to show the alarm response and acceptance comment.

• Made improvements to the color palette editor:

• Added a checkbox to indicate when an object's palette is inherited from its parent, which must be unticked to set an explicit palette. Ticking the box for an object that has an explicit palette will remove it.

• Changed the wording of the 'Replace Permissions on Descendants' checkbox to 'Remove Explicit Permissions From Descendants'. Checking this has the same effect as manually editing the palette on each child and ticking 'Inherit From Parent'.

• When doing a recursive change, and the palette of an object can't be changed because of security or property overrides, this is now reported as a warning instead of failing the entire change.

• Allowed users to configure standard alarm comments for selection from the alarm response and manual redirection dialogs.

• Added the ability to animate the parameter of individual items in an advanced pick menu. This allows each entry of a custom menu to be modified based on the results of an expression.

Crystal Reports XI Release 2

• Crystal Reports XI Release 2 is available as a free download from Business Objects for users who purchased a valid Release 1 licence.

• Crystal Reports XI Release 1 licenses can be reused for Release 2.

• Reports generated in Release 1 can be viewed, displayed, exported etc in ClearSCADA 2007 R1 with no changes.

• To configure reports in ClearSCADA 2007 R1, you must install Release 2.

Integration Tools:

• The Core Command Executor has been added. This replaces the engine for the logic SYSTEM command. With this feature included, a system command can be executed via:

• Logic Program using in-built SYSTEM function.

• Alarm Redirection using System Command option.

• Execute method of a System Command database item.

• System commands can now be monitored in the server status dialog.

System commands have an execution limit of 15 seconds (by default). Triggering applications or long running operations should be performed using a batch file as described in the online help.

• Added support for data tables. Data tables are an expansion of ClearSCADA that allow a 2D table to be stored in the data stream of the system rather than as configuration. On large tables or where the content is often changing, this is much more efficient than data grids.

• Allowed alarm redirection method actions to include trip characters in method parameters.

• Added support to structured text to allow SQL to be used to write data to a table in ClearSCADA.

Language Support:

• Added multi-language support to WebX.

• Integrated Hungarian translations.

• Integrated Polish translations.

• Added support for dictionary files for a language other than those supported by the core product.

DNP3 Driver:

• Extended DNP3 driver to support double-bit binary input points.

• Added range limit check to "Maximum size of Data Link Frame" and "Maximum size of Application Fragment" fields on the DNP3 page of the server configuration.

• Added support to the DNP3 master driver to optionally read the current time from the outstation during static (current) data reads (using g50v1). This allows event and static data time stamps to be synced off the same clock (the outstations) rather than a mix of the outstation and the master station. Added support to the DNP3 slave driver to return the current time if it is requested in a read (g50v1). Note: This feature can only be used if it is supported by the outstation.
  

SCADAPack Modbus Driver:

• The SCADAPack Modbus RealFLO driver has been modified so that it no longer uses the Scanner Command Timeout to fail a request that has got stuck waiting for the command response registers to change in a controller. It now uses a new setting to define how long it should wait for a response. It will now also wait for any pending replies before failing the request.

OPC Client Driver:

• The OPC Driver has been modified to handle configuration changes incrementally. If a new point is added, changed, or deleted, only the tags that correspond to the point are affected. All other points are not affected.

• Implemented background logging support in the OPC driver to store points data values in the historian at a configurable rate.

Other Miscellaneous Changes

• The port number of a Modbus TCP slave channel is now configurable.

• Added a new scan parameter to configure the line speed of an advanced driver communications channel. This is used in transmission time calculations instead of the baud rate to allow for networks consisting of different components in the field.

• Added a feature to PSTN outstations to track the number of incoming calls in a configurable period, and raise an alarm or log an event if too many incoming calls occur.

• Ensured that logic programs and scripts can only change object properties in template instances if the property override allows it.

• Added support for permanent standby servers with more than 14 characters in the node name.

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