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Xpress Insight 5 Release Notes

New in Insight 5.3.1

  • Security updates
  • Support for Xpress 8.14.2

Fixed in Insight 5.3.1

Fixed a defect preventing a user from setting the preferred execution service for an execution mode via the admin user interface.

New in Insight 5.3

This release brings custom interactive app support to the improved Insight 5 architecture. Some enhancements, which have been available in previous 5.x releases limited to the Compute Interface, are repeated here for the wider audience of interactive app users.

Migration

With a few notable exceptions documented in the "Previous features no longer supported in Insight 5.x" section below, Insight 5.3 replicates and extends the feature set of Insight 4. However, as a major release and a redesign of the Insight software, there are backwards compatibility considerations when migrating existing solutions to this version. Solution developers should review the release notes below and the chapter "Migrating from Xpress Insight 4 to Xpress Insight 5" in the Insight 5 Developers Guide for information on modifications needed to their solution implementation.

Importing a repository or app and retaining system configuration and user ownership information is not yet supported. Users who need to migrate over the historic scenarios for their apps from Insight 4 will require the next release. Insight 5.3 does not integrate with Tableau. Users with solutions that require Tableau visualization will require the next release.

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General

  • Supports a user-supplied MySQL 8 database for persistence. Support for PostgreSQL is discontinued.
  • A simple installation configuration is available for development and small scale usage which uses a file system based repository (not recommended for production use cases).
  • A deployment is now designated as production or non-production and the non-production lifecycle can have a custom display label e.g. QA, Staging which is shown as a watermark on the banner.
  • Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.
  • Single Sign On support (Service Provider initiated and IDP initiated SAML2). SSO is mandatory for production mode deployments, local account authentication is disabled.
  • REST API is now authenticated using client id/secret credential which can be generated by a logged-in user for their account via the user interface (drop-down menu under account name).
  • Silent/automated installation option.
  • System configuration is now edited in application.properties files for server and worker respectively.
  • Microsoft Edge is supported (replacing support for Internet Explorer 11).
  • Support for multiple browser tabs sharing the same session (previously, additional tabs did not receive events).
  • HTTP/2 support.
    • When HTTPS is enabled, Insight will use HTTP/2 over TLS (recommended for the best performance).
    • Without HTTPS, Insight will fall back to h2c (HTTP/2 over TCP).
    • If these cause problems on your infrastructure, you can configure Insight to use HTTP/1 instead.
  • Examples, offline documentation and authoring-time binaries are provided as a separate "Insight Developer Kit" download.
  • Support for app and scenario attachments up to 1gb (default configured limit is 300mb).
  • The run log for a scenario is now retained if results are cleared.
  • Bulk deletion is considerably more efficient. Deletion operations are performed in the background with apps, scenarios, folders etc are removed from the UI immediately and do not block further user actions. Nor do such operations lock the repository for other users.
  • Results data for a scenario is cleared on completion of a job, so if a job is cancelled its previous results will be retained.
  • Scenario operations that don't modify the scenario data are allowed while the scenario is queued or executing i.e. rename, clone, move, delete, share. Previous versions locked the scenario for execution such that no operations could be performed on the scenario by a user.
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Revised REST API
  • All endpoints of the REST API, including the interactive/scenario-centric operations, have now been revised to adhere as closely as possible to accepted REST/HTTP industry best practices. The revision includes major changes to the design of the API. Developers intending to integrate with the REST API or update an existing integration should read the "The Xpress Insight 5 REST API" chapter of the Insight 5 Developers Guide for foundation concepts and then use the live swagger documentation served from <INSIGHT_URL>/swagger-ui/, or the equivalent online reference docs, to understand the format of individual API requests. This applies to integrations with REST clients and also custom views and custom model code that make REST API calls to the Insight API.
    • The API is versioned using a major.minor versioning scheme.

      The current version is 2.1.

    • Callers must use content negotiation request headers which allow for the API major version to be specified in the request.
    • The API base has moved from /insightservices to /api.
    • The API uses standard HTTP status codes from RFC-7231 and RFC-4918 to indicate success or failure of a request.
    • Timestamps are in ISO-8601 format in accordance with RFC-3339 and are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
    • The API now uses pagination for collection-type responses.
    • The API supports the OpenTracing standard used for trace context propagation.
  • The API now includes public administration endpoints for manipulating users, authority groups and execution service configuration.
  • REST clients use JWT token authentication to improve security and avoid persisting user credentials.
Real-time progress reporting from an executing scenario
  • A scenario can provide arbitrary data updates for progress feedback to the user while it is executing.
  • The default overlay, which obscures a view while a scenario is executing, can be disabled.
  • Data entities can be denoted as updatable during execution and UI components bound to these entities will receive updated values from the running scenario.
  • Several new progress-related VDL components are provided e.g. spinner, progress bar.
  • For more information see the "View API changed" section below, the Insight 5 Developer Guide and the new progress examples in the Developer Kit.
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View API changes
  • VDL 4.8
    • Added <vdl-action-cancel-job> for cancelling a job.
    • Added <vdl-action-job-message> for sending a message to a running job.
    • Added the default-execution-overlay option on the vdl top-level tag so the execution overlay can be disabled either for all executions or just progress execution modes.
    • Added the progress option to the top-level vdl tag so a view can subscribe to receive data updates during progress execution modes.
    • Added a top-level getUser() lookup function to VDL expressions. You can use this to convert the executionUserId to a user object and get the full name, for example getUser(scenario.summaryData.executionUserId).fullName.
    • Added scenario.summaryData.executionUserId to get the id of the user who requested the execution for that scenario.
    • Added scenario.summaryData.executionStartedDate to get the timestamp of the start of the most recent execution.
    • Added scenario.summaryData.executionDuration to replace scenario.summaryData.executionDuration.
    • Added scenario.summaryData.reservedForJob to test when a scenario is in the execution pipeline (queued, executing, completing etc.)
    • Added scenario.summaryData.executionMode.sendsProgress to test for whether the execution mode the scenario is executing with, supports progress updates.
    • Added scenario.summaryData.state, which returns a new ScenarioDataStatus enum.
  • JS API 4.8
    • Added getExecutionMode to ScenarioSummaryData. This will return an ExecutionMode object with details of either the current execution, if there is one, or the last execution on the scenario, if there is one.
    • Added View.sendJobMessage(scenarioId, message) method to send messages to executing scenarios.
    • Added the ViewConfiguration.receivesProgress option so a view can subscribe to receive data updates during progress execution modes.
    • Added ScenarioSummaryData.getExecutionUserId to get the id of the user who requested the execution for that scenario.
    • Added ScenarioSummaryData.getState, which returns a new ScenarioDataStatus enum.
    • Added ScenarioSummaryData.getExecutionStartedDate to get the timestamp of the start of the most recent execution.
    • Added ScenarioExecutionStatus.isReservedForJob to test when a scenario is in the execution pipeline (queued, executing, completing etc.)
    • Added ExecutionMode.sendsProgress to test for whether the execution mode the scenario is executing with, supports progress updates.
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Administration
  • Usernames can now be modified for existing accounts.
  • Users can be deleted.
  • Username is now only used for login, a user's id is now a uuid to align with apps, scenarios, folders etc.
  • Admin area is now an integrated part of the web client, no second login required.
Improved sharing/access model
  • A folder owner now has effective ownership of all items in that folder. Hence a folder owner has read and write access to that folder and everything it contains.
  • Folders shared as Full Access allow all app members to modify the contents of that folder, e.g. create, delete or move scenario but only a folder owner can edit the folder itself such as its name, owner and share status.
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Import/Export
  • Files can be imported/exported via a file system location configured on the server/network with no limit on the file size other than available file system storage.
  • Import/export operations are now background tasks which do not lock the user interface.
  • A new "Tasks" dialog is available from the "Show Tasks" option in the home page. This dialog lists the background operations requested by the user.
  • Exporting an app is possible via the UI.
  • Exporting the whole repository is no longer supported.
  • When importing a scenario, previous releases used the id from the imported scenario if it didn't exist already. Insight 5 always assigns a new id on import. Developers cannot rely on persistence of scenario IDs when importing a scenario.
Job Queue
  • The system retains a persistent history of executed jobs (previously this was ephemeral), limited to 500 records.
  • A user can cancel any job they have effective write access to.
  • Users can cancel all their own jobs with one operation, and those with both PROJECT_ALL and SCENARIO_ALL authorities can cancel all jobs in the queue.
  • The system enforces a limit on the number of pending jobs in the queue. The default limit is 1000 jobs. This can be modified in the server's application.properties file with an ultimate limit of 10000 jobs. The jobs page will show the first 500 jobs in the queue.
  • Users can see (redacted) information about jobs they don't have read permission for to give a better understanding of relative position in the queue.
Worker environment configuration
  • Aside from the following exceptions, the running model no longer inherits the global environment of the worker:
    • LANG
    • XPRESSDIR
    • XPAUTH_PATH
    • LD_LIBRARY_PATH
    • XPRESS_INSIGHT_LIB
  • To configure the environment variables available to the model, add entries to the worker application.properties file of the form: insight.worker.execution.environment.<VARIABLE_NAME>=<VARIABLE_VALUE>.
  • Multiple configuration profiles are not supported.
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Previous features no longer supported in Insight 5.x
  • REST API version 1.
  • Multiple configuration profiles for worker environment.
  • PostgreSQL support for persistence.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
  • Custom authorities defined via the UI.
  • Using parameters not defined in the model (the system will accept requests to set unknown parameters but they will not be passed to the model).
  • LDAP integration (replaced by SSO).
  • Server logs can no longer be retrieved via the UI.
  • User report.
  • insightcmd command line tool for import/export of apps and backup/restore of repository. Import/export of apps can now be performed via the UI. Backup and restore should be performed with standard MySQL tools.

Fixed in Insight 5.3

  • App upgrades for systems with large numbers of scenarios should no longer encounter issues. App upgrade applies schema updates lazily instead of during the upgrade, resulting in near instantaneous upgrades.
  • App upgrade no longer impacted by changes to parameters.
  • The Compute REST API no longer accepts creation of compute jobs with an ID containing upper-case letters.
Fixed in VDL 4.8
  • Fixed an issue with sorting of numeric indexes for vdl-chart-series.
  • Fixed an issue with using vdl-tooltip on a vdl-field select input, causing the tooltip to persist whilst the select dropdown was open.

Fixed in JS API 4.8

Fixed an issue where ScenarioObservers would receive notify callbacks after events on scenarios they were not registered with.

New in Insight 5.2.1

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  • Browser support policy

    Microsoft has announced that Internet Explorer 11 will be officially retired by June 15, 2022. For upcoming releases, Xpress Insight will drop support for IE11. Going forward, Xpress Insight 4 and Xpress Insight 5 will support Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.

Maintenance
  • Various security updates.
  • When retrying a failed request, there is no longer a delay before the first retry.
  • The default value of the dmp_max_retries parameter has changed from 8 to 9.

New in Insight 5.2

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Revised Compute REST API
  • The Compute REST API has been revised to adhere as closely as possible to accepted REST/HTTP industry best practices. The revision includes major changes to the design of the API. Developers intending to integrate with the REST API or update an existing integration should read the Compute Interface REST API chapter of the Insight 5 Compute Interface Guide for foundation concepts and then use the live swagger documentation served from <INSIGHT_URL>/swagger-ui/, or the equivalent online reference docs, to understand the format of individual API requests.
  • The API is versioned using a major.minor versioning scheme.
  • The current version is 2.0.
  • Clients must use content negotiation request headers which allow for the API major version to be specified in the request.
  • The API base has moved from /insightservices to /api.
  • The API uses standard HTTP status codes from RFC-7231 and RFC-4918 to indicate success or failure of a request.
  • Timestamps are in ISO-8601 format in accordance with RFC-3339 and are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
  • The API now uses pagination for collection-type responses.
  • The API supports the OpenTracing standard used for trace context propagation.

New in Insight 5.1.1

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Maintenance
  • Various security updates.
  • Support for Xpress 8.12.

New in Insight 5.1

Job Queue
  • Users can cancel all their own jobs and those with both PROJECT_ALL and SCENARIO_ALL authorities can cancel all jobs in the queue.
  • System enforces a limit on the number of jobs in the queue. The default limit is 1000 jobs. This can be modified in the server's application.properties file with an ultimate limit of 10000 jobs.
Compute jobs
  • When submitting a compute job using the REST API, a priority can optionally be supplied. Jobs are then executed in the queue in priority order. The priority can range from -100 to 100 with 0 being the default
Execution services
  • An execution service can now be marked as requiring authorization. If it requires authorization, only users belonging to authority groups which grant access to the execution service can submit jobs to run on the service.

Worker Mosel environment

Aside from the following exceptions, Mosel no longer inherits the environment of the worker:
  • LANG
  • XPRESSDIR
  • XPAUTH_PATH
  • LD_LIBRARY_PATH

To configure Mosel environment variables, add entries to the worker application.properties file of the form: insight.worker.execution.environment.<VARIABLE_NAME>=<VARIABLE_VALUE>.

Insight 5.0

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General
Important: Version 5.0 is not yet a replacement for Insight 4 and uploading or migrating custom apps is not supported. Existing users of Insight 4 should upgrade to the latest minor release of 4.x.
  • A deployment is now designated as production or non-production and the non-production lifecycle can have a custom display label e.g. QA, Staging which is shown as a watermark on the banner.
  • Single Sign On support (Service Provider initiated and IDP initiated SAML2). SSO is mandatory for production mode deployments, local account authentication is disabled.
  • REST API is now authenticated using client id/secret credential which can be generated by a logged-in user for their account via the user interface (drop-down menu under account name).
  • Simple installation configuration is available for development and small scale usage which uses a file system based repository.
  • MySQL support for more demanding deployments (database server to user-supplied). PostgreSQL is no longer support on premises.
  • Silent/automated installation option.
Compute Interface
  • Implements an interface for solving LP/MPS/Mosel jobs. REST API for submitted LP/MPS optimization problems and Mosel models as jobs via web services.
  • Integrated with Xpress for remote solving via Optimizer, Mosel and Workbench tools.
  • Progress Events API for receiving job status updates and callback notifications.
  • Drag and drop interface for submitting jobs interactively.
  • Enhanced job queue view with persistent history.
  • LP/MPS jobs can include a basis and/or starting mip solution.
  • LP/MPS job results can include solution, final attribute values, basis, IIS, save file.
  • Jobs can have dependencies on common files that can be pre-uploaded.
  • Support for solver callbacks with the option of querying current attributes and solution, and deciding whether to continue the remote solve or interrupt it.
  • Integration with Credentials Manager (Windows), KeyChain (MacOS) and OpenSSL (Linux) for the secure management of client credentials
  • Jobs can specify a named execution service. An execution service is a logical sub-set of execution resources which can be configured via the Insight administration interface.
  • A clean up service can be scheduled to delete jobs older than a set age. This avoids the service performance being affected by the accrual of a very large number of historic jobs, and is an alternative to the client taking responsibility for deleting the jobs.
Parent Topic Release Notes

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