Dundas BI - Product Notes
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1. Overview
The Product Notes for Dundas BI contains information about features that may work differently or are currently unsupported and other notices. This includes browser and product limitations.
2. Browser
| Area | Notes |
|---|---|
| Internet Explorer | Internet Explorer is no longer supported starting with Dundas BI version 11 due to withdrawn support from Microsoft, a lack of updates for the browser since 2016, as well as reduced performance and other issues users would experience that do not affect other browsers. Support for Internet Explorer 11 in prior Dundas BI versions was primarily maintained only for viewing dashboards, reports, and other views, including options and interactivity accessible from view mode (Ticket 88138) A browser memory leak that could cause the browser to eventually crash after multiple navigations between complex pages may be avoided by opening URLs in a new window instead. (Ticket 66060) |
| Internet Explorer, Edge Legacy |
Table visualizations displaying many tens of thousands of rows or more may not scroll to the correct position. |
| Safari, Firefox | When Dundas BI is embedded using an iframe or the embed library on a page hosted from a different domain, Dundas BI 10 and higher uses the Storage Access API required by current versions of Safari and in some cases Firefox so that users can click to allow Dundas BI access to its own cookies for logging on without needing to disable cross-site tracking/cookie protection features. (Ticket 91131) Safari users may also need to click an Enable Application button before they can grant this access the first time. (Ticket 80774) |
| Safari | Safari versions prior to 13 (including iOS before version 13) do not correctly handle cookies with the SameSite header set as None, which could cause issues embedding Dundas BI on different domains over HTTPS. This issue is fixed in current versions of Safari. (Ticket 83769) |
| Google Chrome, Edge version 77+ |
Using a Chromium-based browser, holding down the Shift key prior to dragging an element prevents you from dragging (Ticket 71320). This is a known issue with the browser that can be avoided by pressing Shift after pressing the mouse button or beginning to drag rather than before. Embedding Dundas BI as an HTTP site rather than HTTPS in a cross-domain or cross-origin environment is not supported due to changes in Google Chrome. (Ticket 83769) Similar changes are tracked here for Microsoft Edge. To use an embedded instance of Dundas BI from a different domain or origin, ensure that your site can run on HTTPS. |
3. General / Application
| Area | Notes | Ticket |
|---|---|---|
| logon | If you have multiple instances of Dundas BI running on the same server, and the paths to these instances differ only by the port number, users will be logged out automatically when they navigate from one instance to another instance and log on. Returning to the previous instance requires the user to log on again. | 41499 |
| embedding, remote gateway | If you are using a reverse proxy, load balancer, or other network gateway that is remote (on a separate machine from Dundas BI), its IP address must be set in the advanced Dundas BI configuration setting Trusted Proxy IP Addresses. | N/A |
| embedding | Embedding Dundas BI on another webpage and applying the CSS display: none to the Dundas BI element or iframe will cause the browser to load the application without allowing its elements to render correctly. Dundas BI should be loaded when displayed, or you can use the alternative CSS visibility: hidden instead. | 87106 |
| user interface | If your web browser has a plugin installed that adds a toolbar or occupies a portion of the browser real estate, this will affect the coordinate system of Dundas BI and can result in various UI issues. | N/A |
| deployment, Linux | Support for deploying and running Dundas BI directly on Amazon Linux 2 has been discontinued. Consider deploying using Docker containers or another Linux distribution instead. | 86963 |
| deployment, cloud | Support for deploying to AWS Elastic Beanstalk by creating source bundles in the Deployment application is removed starting with version 10 of Dundas BI. Using Helm charts to deploy to Kubernetes is recommended instead for cloud deployments, and auto-scaling options are available. | 90312 |
| Log4j, Log4Shell | Dundas BI does not use Log4j and is not vulnerable to the Log4Shell exploit. Java is used by Dundas BI only for supporting optional JDBC drivers. If you have installed 3rd party software for use with Dundas BI such as JDBC drivers, check with the other vendor to confirm their status. | N/A |
4. Data Preparation / ETL / Analysis
| Area | Notes | Ticket |
|---|---|---|
| data connectors | Discovery of scalar-valued functions and other non table-valued functions is not supported. | 40665 |
| data connectors | If you edit an existing non-relational or non-OLAP data connector, make some changes to it (e.g., via Define Structure), and then perform a re-discovery, previously discovered structures will remain under the data connector in Explore. If you then try to use these previous structures you may encounter connection errors. | 41508, 50426 |
| data connectors, Access | Crosstab queries and linked tables are not discovered. The crosstab queries and linked tables are available if using manual queries. Another option is to create parameterless SELECT queries to the crosstab queries or linked tables (which will be discovered as views). | 50856 |
| data connectors, ODBC, JDBC |
A 64-bit version of the ODBC driver is needed to work with Dundas BI's 64-bit application pool. Discovery of table and view definitions may not work for some ODBC and JDBC data sources. As a workaround, use data cubes based on manual SQL query. Discovery of table relationships (e.g., foreign keys) may not work for some ODBC and JDBC data sources. Stored procedures and functions are not discovered. |
41355, 68858 |
| data connectors, SSAS | Executing certain valid MDX in SSAS 2012 fails with Internal error: An unexpected error occurred (file 'mdmisc.cpp', line 945, function 'MDBulkSetScaIter::Start'). Try installing SQL Server 2012 SP2 to fix this issue. | 50521 |
| data connectors, SSAS, OLAP | The DRILLTHROUGH statement and other MDX queries that do not return a cellset are not supported. | 69064 |
| data connectors, Microsoft Dynamics | Some entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM/365 may not be supported, resulting in an error such as The 'RetrieveMultiple' method does not support entities of type... when using some tables. | 63329 |
|
data connectors, Microsoft Dynamics |
The Microsoft Dynamics CRM data provider provided in Dundas BI versions 9 and earlier may not be able to authenticate to Dynamics 365 online/cloud versions beginning in April 2022. If you are unable to connect before you can upgrade to Dundas BI version 10 or later, please contact Dundas Support for an interim option. | 84019 |
| data connectors, Access and DBF | The Microsoft driver used to connect to DBF files does not support FoxPro dBase 3.5. As an alternative, you can use an ODBC data connector to connect to the same files. | 66067 |
| data connectors, IBM DB2 | The IBM DB2 data provider may not be able to connect to certain versions of DB2 such as AS/400. ODBC or JDBC drivers can be used instead. | 73788 |
| date mapping, OLAP | If the OLAP hierarchy being mapped has a data gap, using the option to manually set the start date will yield the wrong results. Specifically, years after the gap will be incorrectly mapped. | 40681 |
| data cubes, warehouse storage | Strings longer than 900 characters (or unlimited length) cannot be indexed, which may cause performance issues when used in a data warehouse. Change the data type to a shorter set length to avoid this issue. | 53199 |
| data cubes, warehouse storage | The floating point values NaN and Infinity are not supported and will cause the data warehouse build to fail. | 53933 |
| data cubes, hierarchies, in-memory storage | Previewing a hierarchy in the Hierarchy editor may be slow if the underlying data cube is using in-memory storage. You may get better performance by using warehouse storage for the data cube instead of in-memory. | 50414 |
| metric sets, period over period | Period over period cannot be added to an existing period over period measure. | 50927 |
| metric sets, natural language assistant, Python | When Dundas BI is installed on some instances of Windows 10 version 2004 or higher, the Python machine learning engine may fail to start when users try to use the metric set assistant due to a Windows issue combined with NumPy version 1.19.4. Please note that only Windows Server is supported for production installations of Dundas BI. You can avoid the error by installing NumPy version 1.19.5 or later from the command line on the server (e.g., pip install numpy --upgrade) or with an update to Windows. |
86855 |
| metric sets, formatting | When Dundas BI runs on Linux or for versions 10 and up, standard numeric formatting is provided by .NET and will round midpoint values to the nearest even number (e.g., 1.65 rounded to 1.6 because 6 is even), which may not align with expectations. Custom numeric formats round away from zero instead (e.g., custom format 0,0.0 applied to 1.65 results in 1.7). You can also round midpoint values away from zero if needed in Dundas BI 10+ when calling Math.Round in a formula or calculated element, for example: Math.Round($Measure$, 1, MidpointRounding.AwayFromZero) | 90591, 91485 |
| metric sets, Oracle | Oracle Character Large Object (CLOB) data used with a parameter compares only the first 2000 characters. This may cause extra rows to be returned. | 41741 |
| metric sets, OLAP | In cases where Dundas BI does the aggregating, you may need to change the aggregator from Provider to a specific alternative to avoid missing values when the measure comes from an OLAP cube. For example: when a formula is added based on the measure and the Collapse All option is used on a hierarchy. | 67000 |
| metric sets, dynamic hierarchies, dynamic measures | Dynamic hierarchies and measures are not meant to replace editing a metric set for performing analysis, and have more limited filtering and sorting options. | 50657 |
| metric sets, dynamic hierarchies, period over period | Period over period cannot be used with a dynamic hierarchy selected as the time hierarchy. | 50824 |
| metric sets, dynamic hierarchies | The No Selection token is provided for dynamic measures only and is not supported for dynamic hierarchies. | 57994 |
| formula metric sets, dynamic hierarchies | If a dynamic hierarchy is used in a formula visualization, its level should be set the same as in the original metric set. | 83469 |
| formula metric sets, expand and collapse | The expand and collapse functionality is not supported for hierarchies or members in formula visualizations/formula metric sets. | 49485 |
5. Views
| Area | Notes | Ticket |
|---|---|---|
| filtering | The Single Number filter should only be used to filter integer data values. To filter decimal type data, use the Range Number filter instead. | 39329 |
| reports, scorecards, small multiples | Reports, scorecards, and small multiple views do not support metric sets with data retrieval format set to Raw Data. These are metric sets created when you drag a database table directly onto the canvas. | 41089 |
| reports, scorecards, small multiples | Reports, scorecards, and small multiple views do not support the Frame component. | 39702 |
| reports, scorecards, small multiples | Zooming and scrolling (scrollbars) are not supported for charts appearing in a scorecard, report, or small multiple. | 39215 |
| reports | When viewing reports directly within Dundas BI, if a single row expands to fill more than one page, its pages may display contiguously without separation from page margins, headers, or footers. This does not affect reports once exported to PDF. | 77113 |
| dashboards | Drag-and-drop of files onto the dashboard canvas from outside the browser does not work in certain situations in Windows 8. | 42075 |
| dashboards | Positioning items outside of the canvas and moving them in through script is not supported. Consider using layers or the hidden property instead. | |
| dashboards, data input | When setting up a data input interaction, writing to a data input transform in an inherited data cube is not supported and will not be available as a selection. | 62144 |
| PDF export, image export | A state indicator that displays an image may appear blurry when exported to a PDF or image file. This is due to a known issue with the Chrome browser relied on for all exports. Using a data image instead can avoid the problem. | 61752 |
| Excel export, OLAP | Exporting to Excel with the measure format set to OLAP will not include the number formatting. | 63034 |
| Excel export, table | When exporting columns using Group Text, the first grouped column's group header settings are applied in Excel. | 73198 |
| Excel export, table | Table columns using a color rule with distribution set to Round Interval or Round Continuous are treated as Equal Interval and Continuous, respectively, when applied to the spreadsheet's cells when exporting to Excel. | 79870 |
| Excel export, table | When multiple states from different state groups apply to the same cell, only one state may be applied in the export file. | 93377 |
| Excel export, table | Each measure or hierarchy displayed in a table visualization will be exported to Excel only once. | 93851 |
6. Data Visualizations
| Area | Notes | Ticket |
|---|---|---|
| re-visualizing | When re-visualizing a data visualization from one kind to another, only the underlying metric set is maintained and not any visualization-specific properties. This is because a table does not support chart-specific styles, for example. To get the original visualization and its styling back when viewing, reopen the file or use the Revert To Original re-visualize option. When editing, use undo in the toolbar, or first check in the file, use the Update button on the Data Analysis Panel, or save a style. | 42018 |
| table | When the row header mode is changed to Single Indented Column in a table visualization, totals are required and will be enabled automatically on the metric set. | 49787 |