IBM SPSS Analytic Server 1.0.1 Release Notes

Content

IBM SPSS Analytic Server 1.0.1 is available.

Contents

• Description
• System requirements and installation
• Known issues for Analytic Server
• Known issues for Analytic Catalyst

IBM SPSS Analytic Server is a solution for big data analytics that combines IBM SPSS technology with big data systems and allows you to work with familiar IBM SPSS user interfaces to solve problems on a previously unattainable scale.

System requirements and installation

For information on system requirements and installation, see the installation documents.

For information on downloading the product, see the Download Document.

For information on using the product, see the Information Center.

Known issues for Analytic Server

At time of publication, the following issues were known.

Problem: On a MapR Hadoop distribution, Analytic Server installation will fail with not enough permissions to write on HDFS.
Solution: Make sure that the user has the necessary permissions to write on MapR filesystem, and the local user has the same UID as the user on the MapR machines.

Problem: In the instructions for creating an archive for the R Engine, the PDF document gives the appearance of two spaces between the -d\ and the -f3 in the script, but it is actually a single wide space.
Solution: When copying and pasting this script from the PDF, be sure to insert the second space before executing the script.

Problem: In the Analytic Server console, if you encounter an error when creating a data source, you may be unable to create another new data source in the same session.
Solution: If data source creation fails for any reason, click Cancel to exit edit mode; you can then create another new data source.

Problem: A data source with an Excel file that has a large number of cells can cause out of memory errors.
Solution: Save the Excel file as a delimited file and define the data source on the delimited file.

Problem: Field names containing a backslash may cause jobs run on HDFS to fail.
Solution: Rename these fields prior to using them with Analytic Server.

Problem: When string data contains trailing whitespace, model building and scoring may fail.
Solution: Remove trailing whitespace using the following methods:

• configure the settings on file-based data sources to automatically strip trailing whitespace (set Trim white space to Right or Both)
• use a Filler node in a Modeler stream to remove the trailing spaces, before model building or scoring operations.  The expression to use in the Filler node is trimend

Problem: When there is a categorical target, a split field is present, and not all categories of the target are represented in each split, the predicted probabilities for categories of the target may be scored incorrectly.
Solution: Ensure that all categories of the target are represented in each split. This may require discarding or merging rare categories.

Problem: In the Statistics node, the mode is computed on a subsample of the data for continuous fields.
Solution: This is a limitation of the current version.

Problem: The Means node cannot produce a 95% confidence interval.
Solution: This is a limitation of the current version.

Problem: When using the Select node with the discard option, fields with null values are discarded in the result set. For example: if the criteria is to discard rows where where OCCUPATION = "Retired" all rows where OCCUPATION = "Retired" AND OCCUPATION = null are discarded.
Solution: The work around is to modify the selection criteria to add "not(field = undef)". For example: update the selection criteria to ((OCCUPATION = "Retired) and not(OCCUPATION = undef)). The result set will contain rows where the OCCUPATION field is null.

Problem: The Data Audit node cannot produce the mode for continuous fields.
Solution: This is a limitation of the current version.

Known issues with IBM SPSS Analytic Catalyst

At time of publication, the following issues with SPSS Analytic Catalyst were known. These issues are applicable only if you are using the SPSS Analytic Catalyst interface.

Problem: When using Internet Explorer, adding a data source fails or visualizations do not display properly.
Solution: It is recommended that you use a different browser. Chrome and Firefox are preferred. If you need to continue to use Internet Explorer, try the following:

• Internet Explorer 8: Install Flash and Silverlight.
• Internet Explorer 9: Install Flash. Do not use IPv6; you must use IPv4.

Problem: If a user of IBM SPSS Modeler updates a data source while you are also updating the data source, you will get an error.
Solution: Cancel your changes and update the data source after the SPSS Modeler user is done.

Problem: With Microsoft Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10, some visualizations will not display correctly.
Solution: Use a different browser.

Problem: Deleting a data source while another user is creating a project from the data source will cause an error.
Solution: Delete the data source after the project is created.