Release Notes for system:inmation 1.86

The system OPC UA Server now reports its capabilities as required by the OPC UA specification.

The OPC UA Server now exposes Engineering Units and EU range properties when connecting via an external client.

The OPC UA Datasource Client now allow the user to set the locale that will be used during sessions. The Datasource also uses a unique Session Name which can be used to distinguish between connections to an OPC UA Server from multiple inmation Datasources.

Various minor improvements made to the History Transfer Chain.

Issue fixed with the sequence in which the Batch Tracker processes timestamps that could lead could lead to Operations being recorded after the Batch End condition timestamp.

Improvements made to fix problem with numeric MESNames causing MSI central mapping to fail.

The onFocus event hook in the Advanced Form Widget for a numeric input field will be a number and not a string as in previous versions.

The improvements to the handling of event filters can change the previous behaviour when subscribing to event notifiers using external clients. For example, warnings that could potentially be issued by UaExpert when subscription to ModelChangeEvents is enabled, will no longer be triggered.

There are changes to the Server object from its behaviour in versions <1.84, due to the improvements to the OPC UA Server event support functionality. After installation/upgrade a hierarchy of objects with the following path "<SERVER_PATH>/Types/EventTypes/ForwardedEventType" is created in the Server Model to represent the new EventType. Also, event objects are exposed as nodes when connecting to the UA Server with an external UA client. In versions <1.84 they were exposed as variables.

The OEE functionality requires Mongo version 4.4 or above to be fully functional. Updating your system does not automatically update the existing MongoDB version so it must be upgraded manually. Please see the upgrade note below for more details on how to do this.

Custom Time Series/Event Data Stores or Generic Buffers created in versions <1.84 which are subsequently updated to the latest version will have the Disabled SaF Mode set to "Keep" after update. In versions <1.84, the behaviour of disabled Custom Data Stores/Generic Buffers matched the "Keep" setting so the update will maintain consistency. Please change the property to "Discard" after update if you wish change the setting to the default behaviour for newly created objects in the latest version.

Event Stream objects (Event Stream, Internal Event Stream and Script Events, Redundant Event Stream) created in versions <1.84 with Event historization selected will be updated with the Archive Selector property configured to "All Event Stores" (this means the data will be stored in any custom event stores that exist in the tree above the object AND the System Event (A&E) Data Store). In versions <1.84, the behaviour of historized Event Stream objects matched the "All Event Stores" setting, so the update will maintain this consistency.

From 1.84 onwards, the Audit Trail properties ObjectAuditTrailStrategy and ComponentAuditTrailStrategy no longer exist but have been carried over into the AuditTrailStrategy.

In existing installations, if a Local Core is already assigned to the parent S95 EM Site objects, the Code Execution property for this S95 EM Area object can not be configured.

The Code Execution Component property is not configurable in DataStudio for KPI Model Site, S95 EM Site and S95 EM Area objects created in 1.78 or earlier. Please contact the support team for more information on configuring this property in your existing system.

From 1.80 onwards, a new installation of the system requires that a non-default authentication profile and password be specified for Web API communication to the Core. If using an older Web API version (that is not updated together with a Core on the same host) to communicate with a newly installed 1.80 or above Core service, the Web API might not be able to communicate using the default profile. It is recommended to update the old Web API service and reinstall using the new authentication profile and password.

Introduced in 1.80, the password policy related to Profile objects and component communication passphrases will still be compatible with existing passwords on existing deployments. However, it may have an effect on custom deployment scripts. If those scripts automatically change such password/passphrase properties, they might fail due to violating the new policies.

From 1.86, AspenTech Inmation is shipped with MongoDB version 5.0.8 (previously 4.4.10 with 1.78.3 and 4.0.2 in older versions), this will be installed for new installations. For existing installations, MongoDB will not be upgraded automatically. To perform the upgrade manually, please visit the MongoDB upgrade instructions for Standalone, Replica Sets or Sharded Clusters depending on your own installation.

The system allows the user to control component updates and configure how these component updates are verified when the Core service itself is updated. The system also provides a level of Backwards Compatibility and defined user states for objects with mismatched class versions. However, it is not recommended to leave Core/component versions unaligned for extended periods of time as this can potentially lead to communication issues between the components. Maintaining objects under components with different class versions to the Core could also lead to unexpected behavior. PLease see the documentation for more information.

Connectors and Local Cores with versions <1.74 will be unable to forward historical data or events to parent Cores versions 1.74 or newer. This affects only the systems where said components are configured for the manual-permissive software update mode. The data will be stored locally at the outdated component (within the configured storage limits) until the component is updated, then the previously stored data will be forwarded normally.

The previous way of returning classic OPC COM events in getvalue as a flat list of key/value pairs (version 1.76 and older) is deprecated. The defaults switch introduced in 1.78 is now the default.

In 1.76, the AdministrativeGroup Property of the Profile class changed from a boolean datatype to integer with codings available in the AdministrativeGroup Coding Group. This is only an issue if upgrading from versions older than 1.76.

The Password Property of the Profiles class can now be null. Existing Lua scripts that use getvalue with this property need to be able to handle the case that the returned value can be nil. A login with a profile with a null password is not possible.

The Lua os.setlocale library function was deprecated in 1.76. Although the function will still work in this release, it will be replaced or removed in a future release.