ClearSCADA 2009 R2.1 Release Notes

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ClearSCADA 2009 R2.1 is the first service pack release of ClearSCADA 2009 R2. This release contains a small number of product enhancements. Its main purpose is to resolve a number of known issues with ClearSCADA 2009 R2 to improve performance and reliability.

Product Enhancements

Security Improvements

• ClearSCADA user authentication mechanisms have been strengthened to further boost system security. These improvements apply to ViewX, WebX and the ODBC interface.

Following upgrade, existing ODBC DSNs will lose configured passwords. This can potentially impact report generation using Crystal Reports and external applications that use the ODBC interface. After upgrade, use the ODBC Data Source Administrator to reinstate ODBC DSN passwords where required.

• Read access to Event Journal entries for deleted objects are now restricted by checking the current user permissions against the database Root Group.

Historian Improvements

The historian has been enhanced to allow point historic data to be configured for either stepped or interpolated modes. This impacts on default display modes on trends as well as historic aggregate calculations. The following new configuration fields have been added to the Historic tab on all point forms:

• A checkbox to define whether trends and historic data calculations use linear interpolation or stepped mode between raw data values.

• An integral multiplier field to specify the scaling applied to TOTAL and TIMEAVERAGE historic calculations. These calculations assume per second data. In the case of historic values such as litres/min, a multipler of 0.167 (1/60) would return the correct value for the historic aggregate.

Logic

• A new configuration field called 'ExecutionPrivilege' has been added to Logic programs. The ExecutionPrivilege field defines the privilege required to execute the Logic program. For new Logic programs, ExecutionPrivilege defaults to "Control". For existing Logic programs ExecutionPrivilege will default to "Read" to preserve backward compatibility.

It is recommended that this new field is configured for existing logic programs to ensure that users with only Read permissions cannot trigger the logic program execution.

• Logic Status reporting has been improved to indicate the reason why logic execution is disabled (Not In Service, Member of a Template, ExecutionEnabled is False etc).

• Logic programs are now able to execute after they are imported without needing to be re-compiled.

• Support has been added for 64 bit integer type for directly located variables in Logic. For example, "%M(#HIS.Raw.Total Data)".

• New option 'All Outputs (If Any Changed)' has been added to the Update Outputs drop down list for Logic objects. This option is in addition to the other options 'All Outputs (Always)' and 'Changed Outputs Only'. This will update any output where the value or quality changes, as opposed to 'Changed Outputs Only' which ignores quality changes.

Quality Factor for PSTN Channels

• The algorithm for selecting the best available PSTN channel has been improved. Each channel is now allocated a quality that is incremented with each good call and decremented with each bad call, within a low to high quality range of 1 to 'n'. The channels with the highest quality are considered the best channels. When several channels have the same quality, a round-robin algorithm is applied to cycle amongst them. The value of 'n' is configurable in the 'Global Parameters\Channels' section of the server configuration and is used as the starting quality when the channel is initialized within the driver.

This algorithm offers significantly faster response as a previously healthy channel begins to fail.

• An additional method has been added to the PSTN channel to enable the call quality factor to be reset to its default.

Diagnostic Logging Improvements

• New diagnostic classes called 'Journal New Records' and 'Historian New Records' have been added to log new event journal messages and new historic data records.

• DBClient logging has been improved to log the source IP Address when a client accepts an in-bound connection from a server.

• The exception handling thread has been improved to include the object Id in the exception report.

• Extra information has been added to the DNP3 slave driver log file to improve tracking events through the driver. The number of unread events (by the driver) on the value map is now visible on the value map object. The most accurate version of this data is available to clients connected to the main server. The value map object will also show whether it has had a buffer overflow.

Miscellaneous

• DBServer has been enhanced to better communicate with the operating system during system shutdowns and restarts. The operating system is now requested to delay it's shut down until DBServer has completed all pending actions. This ensures that very large systems have enough time to save all data and configuration to disk.

• New Server Registry settings called 'OldestClientVersion' and 'OldestClientBuild' have been added to allow system administrators to specify the minimum client version and build number that is allowed to connect to the server. The settings can be found in the Registry location HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Serck Controls\SCX6\Server.

• A new 'Display Sources' query has been added to the Mitsubishi slave driver channel to display the sources that are attached to the channel.

• New help document 'Drivers Guide' has been added to the Online Help documentation.

• A "WYSIWYG" printing method has been added to mimics, which draws into an internal bitmap the same size as the current screen mimic, and then prints the bitmap. This allows embedded lists to be printed in-place.

Resolved Issues

SCADAPack Modbus Driver

• The SCADAPack Modbus driver has been corrected to ensure that it does not exceed the 125 register limit. This occurred if a point spanned more than one register and the second, third or fourth register exceeded the register limit for the read.

• The SCADAPack Modbus RealFLO driver has been corrected to ensure that a manual DLOG poll on the outstation does not also perform an Hourly/Daily poll.

• An integrity error which occurred in the database when a Modbus address is specified on a SCADAPack Modbus point which is then configured as 'DLOG Only' has been fixed. Also corrected an integrity check failure that could occur if an invalid DLOG value is specified.

DNP3 Driver

• Heartbeating has been corrected in the DNP3 driver to ensure an incorrect response will not leave the outstation in an invalid state.

• A bug has been fixed in the DNP3 Slave driver which could cause it to stop sending unsolicited messages. This occurred when the processing of the application confirm coincided with the scan of the value maps.

• The DNP3 driver has been updated so that it sends the correct link status message for heartbeating requests on Network type channels using TCP. The DNP3 driver has also been updated to ensure that the application layer and data link layer states are reset following a TCP socket failure. The link state is also reset if the heartbeat or idle poll request fails.

• The OnDemand functionality in DNP3 driver has been corrected to ensure that the connection is dropped promptly once all the data has been collected and there is nothing else to do.

TMX Driver

• TMX digital point current values are reported as signed 8-bit integers. Negative values indicate various error codes, 0 = closed, 1 = open, and other values are undefined, but are invalid as far as the server is concerned. The validation of digital point current values has been changed to only accept 0 and 1 to ensure that invalid values are not stored in the database.

• Added validation to values reported during online session (for all point types) to match validation applied to current values retrieved during a one shot.

• TMX relational alarms 17 - 32 have been fixed. Previously this was being shifted up one channel (to 18 - 33), so the value of channel 17 was being stored in relational alarm 18 (if it had been configured) and so on.

Advanced Drivers

• A crash in Advanced Drivers has been fixed that could occur if a serial device signaled a write failure event when no write was actually in progress. This might occur, for example, when USB serial devices are unplugged.

• A crash in the Advanced Driver library which was caused by using long Host Addresses (DNS name) on TCP/IP type channels has been fixed.

• Parsing of entered values greater than 255 has been corrected when sizing SCADAPack E-Series Routes, BOOTP, IP Route and Modbus Route Map Tables.

• Ensured only one driver at a time uses a remote serial port to prevent collisions between responses from the outstations. Each driver now waits until any other drivers have finished with the port before it writes a message.

• Issues have been fixed in the PortServer associated with receiving more data from a driver (to be written) whilst the PortServer is writing data to serial port, which lead to delays within the PortServer.

• Parsing of messages within the PortServer has been fixed when a possible partial message is received on a serial port followed by an actual message. Previously the parsing would halt at the possible partial message, and not consider the remainder of the data, leading to the actual message not being recognized in a timely fashion whilst the PortServer waited for more data.

Web client

• An issue with mimic animations has been fixed where an expression evaluation failure would write and empty/zero value to the target property in ViewX, but not in the web client. If this happened for an animation on a shared embedded mimic, the instance that failed would retain the value from a successful evaluation of a previous instance.

• The trend Ruler in WebX will now display the correct value when the ruler is placed before or after the last data value.

• The web client has been modified not to reload the page when navigating to the same mimic.

• The web client has been corrected so that lines to bounding values in raw historic trends will be drawn if the bounding value is an inserted or modified value.

ODBC Client Driver

• The ODBC Client Driver has been modified to detect the following Oracle connection failure error codes:

• ORA-01073: Fatal Connection Error: Unrecognized Call Type

• ORA-01090: Shutdown in Progress - Connection is not permitted

• ORA-02010: Missing Host Connect String

• ORA-02018: database link of same name has an open connection

• ORA-03114: not connected to ORACLE

• ORA-03121: no interface driver connected - function not performed

• ORA-12154 TNS: could not resolve service name

• ORA-12203 TNS: unable to connect to destination

• ORA-12500 TNS: listener failed to start a dedicated server process

• ORA-12545 TNS: name lookup failure

• ORA-12560 TNS: protocol adapter error

• Installation of 64 Bit ODBC driver in client-only installations has been fixed.

Crystal Reports

• The Crystal Reports runtime components sometimes failed when multiple reports were attempted to generate at the same time. To protect against this failure, reports in ClearSCADA are now forced to use a single thread. The Thread Pool options in the server configuration dialog have been removed.

Logic

• The logic editor has been modified to allow users with read access to logic to view the program status.

• Incorrect references to 'User Defined Functions' have been removed from Logic.

• The error message reported when a Structured Text Logic program contains a built-in function call with non-constant arguments of different types has been improved.

• Changed the logic thread to prioritize processing configuration changes over scheduled execution.

• Out of Service logic programs will not be scheduled to execute.

• Logic programs in templates will not be reported as running.

• Overrun count of disabled logic programs will now not increase.

Query Processor

• The SQL query processor has been modified to not cache Historic View default start and end times during the prepare phase. An SQL query on a Historic View, with no time constraints specified in the WHERE clause and prepared once and executed multiple times, would return the same result on each execution. This has now been fixed.

• The SQL query processor will now return the correct results when multiple search conditions are applied to the same constraint column.

Templates and Instances

• A crash has been fixed which occurred in the server when the Area of Interest of the No Change alarm property was changed on abstract points in a template where instances existed with the points still in their abstract form.

• Template instance repair has been fixed to include ACL, colour palette & document content to ensure database consistency when a template instance is imported and merged into a database and the referenced parent template has been changed (after the export but before the import). Previously this could result in inconsistencies between the template and instance.

• Fixed template issues related to nested instances with an overridden TemplateId field.

• Property Overrides for metadata fields in templates that have been renamed will be updated correctly.

Miscellaneous

• DF1 Digital points have been modified to support a bit offset of 15.

• Issues relating to the use of indirect tags that reference mimic parameters, and then embedding multiple shared instances of that mimic on another mimic have been fixed.

Using indirect tags in this way is not recommended as it can drastically affect performance.

• The Main-Standby transfer has been modified to prevent duplication of historic records on the main server if more than one standby is configured.

• Accumulators now update correctly when a point in an Advanced Driver is overridden and subsequently released.

• A problem where drivers would fail to automatically start after a changeover when a new object is created has been fixed.

• Processed Historic traces have been modified to not return the 'Data Ended' flag for the first interval after the last record. This would cause the interval containing the last record to not be drawn.

• The server will be prevented from starting if errors are detected while loading the metadata XML file. The invalid metadata file will be preserved and will no longer be overwritten with an empty file.

• The Pick Action Wizard has been modified to create expressions for the arguments of a method/script action when argument values have been specified encoded in the action's parameter. Also, the arguments of a method/script action are now available via the Automation Interface.

• Ensured that the System column will appear in the correct position in the alarm banner when the client is connected to multiple systems.

• The ViewX client has been modified not to attempt to cancel asynchronous queries on servers that do not support asynchronous queries.

• The sizing of the time selection 'Go To...' option on the X Axis of trends has been changed to display all the options correctly.

• The Main-Standby transfer has been corrected to not omit records and duplicate other records when transferring historic data to the standby.

• Trends have been modified to support the display of future data from any historic source, not just from forecasts and profiles.

• The alarm list/banner pick menu options 'Locate in OPC Data Explorer' and 'Locate in Database Explorer' have been removed for license alarms.

• The performance of method calls in the DDK driver has been improved by calling the IsAvailable method only when the result of IsAvailable is relevant.

• The drop down height for type, reference and attribute fields in the Data Grid and Data Table property forms have been changed in order to display all the options available.

• The linearization algorithm for scaling analogue point Raw values to Engineering values has been changed to be less prone to rounding errors when the Raw range is much greater than the Engineering range.

This change may impact existing applications if they were relying upon these rounding errors.

• A crash in DBServer when ImportConfiguration is called from .NET API with ImportOptions.Merge has been fixed. This would happen if the top-level object cannot actually

be imported for some reason, e.g. an object with the same name already exists and cannot be converted.

• The 'Links' column of the Users status page for Guest and Web users in the Server Status application has been corrected to display the correct number of links.

• An intermittent ViewX crash when users log on or off, or when servers start up or shut down has been fixed.

• Fixed an issue where clicking 'OK' in the "Redirection Comment" dialog after the selected alarm has disappeared from the alarm banner while the dialog was on display would sometimes cause ViewX to crash.

• Object size logging in DB Start-Up log has been corrected so that it no longer displays negative numbers for very large databases.

Previous Versions

• Click here for Release Notes from ClearSCADA 2009 R2.

• 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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