ClearSCADA 2009 R1.4 Release Notes

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ClearSCADA 2009 R1.4 is the fourth service pack release of ClearSCADA 2009 R1. Its main purpose is to resolve a number of known issues with ClearSCADA 2009 R1 to improve performance and reliability.

Product Enhancements and Resolved Issues

SQL Query Processor

• SQL DML statements can no longer create objects with invalid names.

• Fixed the SQL query processor to output whole number real values as real values when re-generating the SQL statement.

• Fixed SQL CAST operations handling of NULL:

• Return NULL if the argument to the CAST is NULL

• Allow both leading and trailing white-space when converting strings to numeric values

• Return better error messages when CAST operations fail.

• Fixed historic queries to always test records against time constraints.

• Fixed a server crash that occurred when executing a correlated sub-query with no WHERE clause in the sub-query. For example: "SELECT ID FROM CDBOBJECT WHERE EXISTS (SELECT ID FROM CGroup)"

• Fixed a server crash that occurred when a data grid was converted to a data table while a query was executing on the data grid.

Logic

• Logic now discards the oldest entry from the logic execution queue when the logic execution queue becomes full. Previously Logic would discard the newest entry.

• Fixed logic program reference checking to not include indirect tag references.

• Fixed a possible crash in logic after importing a logic program that had broken references.

• Fixed a potential crash in the logic engine when a standby server transitioned to the main state. The crash was dependent on a specific sequence of editing actions on a logic program and its dependencies prior to a server change-over.

• Fixed a potential server crash when a logic program is executed with an invalid "Trigger" tag reference. Normally logic programs with invalid "Trigger" tag references are not executed.

• Fixed SQL queries, executed from logic on historic database tables, to return the correct results when filtered by time.

• Fixed integrity check error on the standby server when an object referenced by an 'On Input Processed' logic program is deleted, and the program still has some valid input tags.

• Fixed possible server crash in logic that could occur if an invalid DATE, DATE_AND_TIME, or TIME_OF_DAY variable was converted to a STRING. Fixed possible ViewX crash if attempting to examime invalid DATE, DATE_AND_TIME or TIME_OF_DAY variables in the Logic Variables window.

SCADAPack Modbus Driver

• Fixed SCADAPack Modbus remote connection interface so that it handles read coil/register requests correctly.

• The read flow run configuration process has been corrected for the SCADAPack Modbus RealFLO driver to ensure V-Cone configuration is correctly processed.

• Corrected minor fault in SCADAPack Modbus translator where it was using the incorrect value when checking to see if a packet came from a broadcast address or not.

DNP3 Driver

• The DNP3 driver has been corrected to ensure that it will always process valid data link frames including those with no transport data.

• Ensured that DNP3 driver doesn't try (and fail) to send application confirm after communications with outstation has terminated (and network connection has been closed).

• Ensured that one shot of PSTN DNP3 outstation and poll of 'on demand' DNP3 outstation with string points actually reads the string points. Previously the call ended or connection was closed before reading the string points.

Advanced Drivers

• A delayed start feature has been added to all advanced driver channels. This replaces a similar feature for PSTN fallback channels.

• Ensured that hysteresis is applied to both updates when a driver receives two logged data point updates for the same point with the same time stamp. Previously the second update would have a different state to the first if the values are within the hysteresis deadband of a limit.

• The start communications behaviour for outstations in advanced drivers when connected via TCP/IP has been corrected to ensure the start comms request is completed should the socket fail before any message is sent.

• Fixed a crash which could occur in all advanced drivers if the full path name of an object was at or near the maximum length.

• The advanced driver library has been updated to make sure drivers are blocked from attempting to write to Network connections before they have finished connecting.

• Fixed intermittent crash in drivers with PSTN channels when the driver is shutdown or the channel is deleted.

• Fixed a bug affecting all advanced drivers which could cause objects to "stall" if they were converted or taken out-of-service and then put back in-service very quickly. After a conversion, for example, the object would appear out of service and would require manual intervention to get it working again.

Web client

• Fixed a WebX upgrade issue, where WebX would not upgrade if a user browsed to a newer version of the server.

Kingfisher driver

• A new unsigned 32 bit integer type has been added to Kingfisher analogue point types.

• Kingfisher analogue and counter point types have been modified to store their values in double precision floats rather than single precision floats. This allows correct representation of 32 bit integer values.

• Improved validation of RawDataType field on Kingfisher analogue and counter points.

• Validation of analogue and counter points address field when using 32 raw data types has been corrected so that it excludes invalid address 0.

• Corrected processing of 16 bit register events to ensure points configured with signed raw data types are handled correctly.

OPC Driver

• Fixed browsing for OPC servers when the OPCEnum service is not installed.

• Defining of OPC Subscriptions and groups are now retried if the initial attempt fails.

OPC XML DA Driver

• The OPC XML DA driver now correctly processes "100 continue" responses from the source data server.

IEC-60870-5 Driver

• Single character acknowledgements are now supported for the IEC60870-1-101 protocol.

SimaticS7 Driver

• Fixed a bug in Simatic S7 drivers handling of multiple connections to one PLC, which caused communications failures.

Simple MODBUS Driver

• The MODBUS simple driver now supports command 3 and 4 read responses which contain twice the data of a standard modbus response, allowing operation with some flow computers that return these non-standard responses.

ICMP Driver

• The ICMP driver has been corrected to ensure that events in the driver are triggered for the correct point. This mainly caused a problem when the driver was started and was particularly visible if new points had been created since the driver was last started as the points would remain in 'Waiting for initial Data' state.

SNMP Manager Driver

• The SNMP Manager driver has been modified so that it will continue to poll for an OID value on an agent after an error has been received. Additionally if we have previously received a successful response from the agent the quality will now be updated as Sensor Failure. The driver will still set the quality to Configuration Error and raise an alarm if it fails after the very first poll.

Driver Development Kit

• Fixed possible server crashes and memory leaks with DDK object containing alarms, references and Area of Interest references.

• Fixed server crashes and memory leaks with DDK object containing optional and multichoice aggregates.

• Correct potential crash in server when DDK Scanner objects connected to a channel are deleted.

• Fixed memory leak in DDK driver when point configuration changes are made.

ViewX

• Fixed crash in Pick Action wizard method arguments page when trying to display tooltip for an argument with no description.

• Fixed crash in ViewX when resizing print preview window for a list.

• Fixed problem with OPC Historic navigator not releasing links properly, resulting in side effect of user's remaining logged on until ViewX closed.

• Fixed a ViewX crash when attempting to write an OPC data value during server change-over.

• Fixed ViewX SVG Import to accept all versions of SVG file. Display a warning about accuracy of import if the version is not 1.1.

• The "Save to Document Store" dialog no longer allows a System node to be chosen as a location for storing the document.

• Saving a mimic to a .drw file now ignores any configured script. Likewise, any script found when loading a .drw file is ignored.

• Modified script forms to appear centered over the main window instead of always appearing on the primary monitor.

• Fixed ViewX lists to correctly handle special attribute columns (e.g. Id, Foreground) containing an empty value because they are used in a left join.

• Fixed crash in the X-Y Plot Settings dialog when trace tag is entered manually rather than browsed for.

• Fixed handling of Ctrl+F4 keyboard shortcut in property forms.

• Modified the way the "Window" menu is updated in ViewX, to prevent it flickering when a list is updated while the menu is open.

• Fixed a ViewX crash that could occur if an action was confirmed while the target server was changing state.

• Fixed a ViewX crash that could occur when clicking on the Database navigator context menu during a server change-over.

• Mimic pick action menus using the "custom" style are now constrained to the monitor that the user clicked on to display the menu.

• Fixed a ViewX crash that could occur if a user opened a trend when there were too many windows open.

• Improved speed of navigation between mimics when the embedded mimic cache is full.

• Fixed potential ViewX crash that could occur if ViewX was closed when the embedded mimic cache was full.

• Fixed mimic bug, where renaming a parameter group did not update animation expressions that reference children of the group.

• Fixed crash caused by closing a mimic containing a non-shared embedded mimic with a tag animation on a parameter.

• Fixed memory leak related to mimics that use parameter groups, embedded mimics, converting pipes to and from polylines, TrendSpec trends, and file upload reports.

• Fixed issue with ViewX where navigating to a particularly complex mimic with lots of animated items could prevent the source mimic being left open behind the new mimic.

• Fixed a small memory leak associated with ViewX Mimic Animations.

• Fixed issue with debugging mimic scripts where breakpoints would not be hit the first time the script is debugged after toggling from design mode to run mode. Toggling debug mode off then on would fix the problem, as would opening the mimic in run mode. The global script was not affected.

• Ensured object menus are up-to-date when taking then releasing exclusive control on separate ViewX clients.

• Fixed ViewX status bar to show correct type for all unsigned word, unsigned long and unsigned byte form fields.

• Updated the database schema and ViewX status bar to show special 'either sign' long fields.

• Modified ViewX status bar so that form field name and type aren't truncated for long names/types.

• Fixed crash in ViewX when displaying the filter dialog for a query that references an aliased column by its fully qualified name.

• Fixed ViewX and WebX list displays to correctly handle the RecordId column.

• Enabled the trend range to be applied properly on the Y axis of Historic Trends in WebX.

• Fixed a a possible ViewX crash when closing ViewX.

• Non-continuous trends no longer become continuous after printing.

• Fixed crash in ViewX when an array value is passed to an embedded mimic parameter.

• Fixed issue with mimics where certain tags on embedded mimics were not removed from the OPC subscription when the embedded mimic was inactive. The affected tags are: indirect tags, tags on pick action arguments, tags on embededed trends or plots.

• Fixed ViewX to not report spurious errors after a user changes their password.

• The maximum number of rows/fields in a data grid was not enforced by the data grid editor in ViewX (only the automation interface) and therefore data grids with 'too many' rows / fields could be created. This is now enforced.

• Fixed issue with mimics where an update to the PickDisabled property of an item didn't cause a redraw.

• Fixed memory leaks in ViewX when navigating between mimics with scripts enabled.

• Fixed ViewX crash when invoking a method on an object from VBScript and an argument to the method has value 'nothing'. Allowed value 'nothing' to be used for array method arguments (equates to an empty array).

• Fixed issue with remote bitmaps on mimics where the request queue could get stalled if more than 10 requests were added in rapid succession.

• Fixed crash in ViewX when changing edit mode in the mimic editor while defining a path for an item and no path segments have been added.

• Fixed ViewX crash when a user attempts to edit database metadata during a server change-over.

• Fixed the incorrectly appearing drop-down selector of the 'flash rate' and 'go to time' combo box.

• Fixed ViewX to apply disconnect timeouts fully when responding to network failure.

DBServer

• Fixed a server integrity check error that could occur when creating an instance of a template, and the template contained a logic program that was configured for "On Input Processed", and one or more tag references of the logic program did not exist in the database.

• Fixed crash when querying a search key field after converting an instance that contains objects that have values for the search key field.

• Fixed a possible server crash when importing configuration containing one or more historic points when two or more standby servers are connected to the main server.

• Fixed the 'EndLast' historic calculation algorithm to return the correct quality.

• Modified the functions in server side expressions to return NULL if the first argument is NULL. For example ROUND( NULL, n ) will now return NULL. Note: Server side expressions are available for use in Method Calls and Data Grids.

• DBServer now waits for all drivers to shutdown during server shutdown or controlled change over.

• Prevent non-printable characters being used in database object names.

• Fixed a potential server crash that could occur during controlled change-over.

• Fixed a potential server crash if a mounted archive object was deleted.

• The web server now does not return any data if returning a "Not Modified" response.

• Fixed mounting archive volumes which contain historic data for objects with an ID greater than 999,999 (i.e. more than 6 digits).

• Improved the standby server to check the main server version and refuse the connection if the main server is a newer version than the standby server.

• Fixed a possible standby server crash that could occur when deleting an object that was referenced in one or more schedule action arguments.

• When inserting multiple comments into the event journal all associated with the same event and the event has the exact same timestamp as other events the comments were all allocated the same comment number (of one) preventing the correct order of the comments from being determined. The comments are now allocated sequential comment numbers in the order they are inserted.

• Fixed a possible main server crash that could occur when starting a standby database while a large database was being imported.

• Fixed an issue when looking up strings for list metadata fields, where some items would be returned as "Entry X", X being the value of the entry.

• Fixed bug that prevented execution of schedules with an interval greater than 24 days.

• Fix to ensure that alarm displays on clients connected to standby servers are properly updated when taking exclusive control of AlarmObject, (as another user), on client connected to the main server.

• Fix to ensure that when taking exclusive control of a group, children marked as excluded from exclusive control are actually excluded. Ensured that marking a group as excluded from exclusive control excludes its children regardless of whether they are explicitly marked as excluded themselves.

• Fixed taking or releasing exclusive control to prevent updating 'AlarmLastUpdateTime' property.

• The database object memory usage calculation has been modified to ensure that an incomplete calculation is not displayed in the server status tool or in snapshot files.

• Fixed a possible standby server crash that could occur if an OPC DA Write transaction was executed via a standby server and at the same time the link to the main server failed.

• Ensured that comments inserted into the event journal are allocated the same sequence number as the event to which the comment relates so there is a link between the comment and the event.

• Changed the default sort order for event journal lists to show the comments in the order they were inserted (when more than one comment is associated with an event). Any Crystal Reports, embedded lists etc. that query the event journal will need to be similarly modified to ensure that comments are shown in the correct order.

• Changed the receipt time of an event journal comment to be the time the comment was inserted, not the receipt time of the event associated with the comment.

• Every time the server was restarted the event journal sequence numbers would start again from zero, therefore leading to multiple events with the same sequence number. The sequence numbers now continue from the last event before the server was stopped.

• Fixed a server crash that could occur when two or more users export configuration at the same time.

• Fixed a server crash that occurred if an OPC XML DA client requested a refresh with a blank subscription handle.

• Fixed possible server crash that could occur if a small integer (Word or Byte) is written to a reference field.

• Fixed integrity check failure caused by defining search key metadata fields.

• Modified processed historic calculations to propagate raw data quality through the calculation.

• Fixed upgrading a server from old-style registry metadata to new-style XML format metadata, where the "ExtraDataField" data field values would be lost.

• Fixed integrity check failure caused by changing a metadata field from a search key to a non-search key.

• E-mail alarm redirection fixes:

• Fixed memory leak when sending an alarm redirection e-mail.

• Removed embedded alarm view from HTML e-mails and replaced with hyperlink. The embedded ActiveX control isn't compatible with all e-mail clients and many clients block ActiveX controls for security.

• Fixed quoted printable encoding in HTML e-mails.

• When generating plain text e-mails from HTML, replaced any named character entities with corresponding character (rather than just removing completely).

• Ensured that all text in STMP e-mail header is using US-ASCII encoding (as specified by RFC). Previously used ANSI encoding which varies between computers and users and thus gives inconsistent results.

• Fixed HTML e-mails containing Unicode characters by ensuring all parts of multi-part e-mail (plain text and HTML) use UTF-8 character set. Some e-mail clients (e.g. Outlook 2007) apply the character set from first part to all subsequent parts. This also required changing plain text version of HTML e-mail to use quoted printable encoding.

• Ensured hyperlinks for alarm view correctly replace dots in object name with slashes.

• Ensured copyright message in SMTP e-mail header uses OEM copyright notice.

• Fixed logging of supported authentication streams (mixing ANSI and Unicode).

• When generating plain text e-mail with alarm view hyperlink, hyperlink is omitted if it can't be encoded as 'US-ASCII' 7-bit as otherwise the link will be invalid.

• Fixed server memory leak that occurred when an OPC XML DA subscription was cancelled.

• Fixed the cause of 'Aggregate is missing from index' integrity check errors when an optional aggregate is disabled in a template but enabled in an instance, and the template object's configuration is modified in one of the following ways:

• The object is Import & Merged

• The object's document is saved e.g. mimic, logic (not form save)

• A method is called on the object that modifies its configuration e.g. Enable/Disable on a point, PutRowCount on a value map

• The object is deployed from a configuration permit

Miscellaneous

• Fixed CPU identification to report the correct description for Pentium IV CPUs.

• Fixed data access only installation to include missing 64 bit dependencies. This problem prevented 64-bit ODBC applications from functioning correctly.

• Fixed resource handle leak in OLE DB driver.

• A configurable delay has been added to advanced and simple drivers which make use of Comtrol DeviceMaster serial ports. This delay defines how long to wait after calling Comtrol's FreePort before attempting to open the port. This is configurable in the Channels sections of the server configuration.

• The Safenet dongle drivers included in the installation have been upgraded to version 7.6.1.

• The bottom pane in QueryPad no longer disappears when the application is minimized and then restored.

• Added checksum and transaction ID checking into the client-server protocol, to improve resilience. If either the checksum or transaction ID do not match the expected values, the connection is closed.

Previous Versions

• Click here for Release Notes from ClearSCADA 2009 R1.3.

• Click here for Release Notes from ClearSCADA 2009 R1.2.

• Click here for Release Notes from ClearSCADA 2009 R1.1.

• Click here for Release Notes from ClearSCADA 2009 R1.

• For Release Notes from earlier versions of the product, please refer to the Release Notes pages that can be found in the ClearSCADA Releases section of the Control Microsystems Resource Center.

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