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Release Notes - IBM Watson Explorer Foundational Components, Version 10.0

Release Notes


Abstract

This document describes new features, known issues and workarounds, and installation information for the foundational components of IBM Watson Explorer Version 10.0 and all Version 10.0 Fix Packs.

Content

Watson Explorer V10.0 Release Notes

 

Overview

IBM Watson Explorer Version 10.0 helps search, analyze, and interpret vast amounts of structured and unstructured information across many enterprise systems and data repositories. It also provides a cost-effective and efficient entry point for exploring the value of big data technologies through a powerful framework for developing applications that use existing enterprise data. IBM Watson Content Analytics is now part of Watson Explorer. Watson Content Analytics brings its powerful text analytics to Watson Explorer applications along with its advanced content mining capabilities. IBM Watson Explorer Version 10.0 also delivers enhancements to the Application Builder and Watson Explorer Engine modules of the Watson Explorer suite along with many other new and improved capabilities.



The IBM Watson Explorer Version 10.0 announcement is available here. If prompted to do so, select the appropriate values for the Home Country and Site Language fields and click Continue. You can then enter Watson Explorer in the search box and click Search.

See the announcement for the following information:
  • Detailed product description
  • Product-positioning statement
  • Packaging and ordering details

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Installation

For step-by-step installation instructions, see Installing and Integrating IBM Watson Explorer Foundational Components.


 

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System Requirements

For information about the requirements for installing any Watson Explorer component, see Watson Explorer Version 10.0 system requirements.

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Release Notes for Version 10.0.0.2

What's New in 10.0.0.2

IBM Watson Explorer Version 10.0.0.2 is a fix pack that introduces new features and provides enhancements to the existing product capabilities.

Watson Explorer Engine

The following feature has been introduced to Watson Explorer Engine in Version 10.0.0.2:

Lexical Analysis

Watson Explorer Engine 10.0.0.2 introduces the capability to add a lexical analysis (language support) language stream to a search collection on Windows systems. In Watson Explorer Engine 10.0.0.1, this capability was introduced for Linux systems. See What's New in Version 10.0.0.1.

 

The following updates and improvements have been made to Watson Explorer Engine in Version 10.0.0.2:

  • The Global Administration setting "HTTP Referrer allowlist" has been removed. This field was used to explicitly allow HTTP requests to be sent from hosts other than the Watson Explorer host. If you have any expressions listed in this field, you should save them prior to upgrading to 10.0.0.2 and determine if they should be entered in the new "Trusted URL allowlist" field.
  • The Global Administration setting "Trusted URL allowlist" has been added, which extends the functionality of the removed "HTTP Referrer allowlist" field to include URL redirects. This field can be used to explicitly allow HTTP requests from and redirects to hosts that match any of the listed regular expressions in addition to the Watson Explorer host. This field was added to make Watson Explorer less vulnerable to phishing attacks caused by URL redirection.
  • Fixed an issue where it was possible to access a previous user's Watson Explorer Engine administration tool session after they had logged out of Watson Explorer, but did not close Internet Explorer. This could happen if the session was selected from the browser history, the login request was resubmitted, and the browser refreshed.
  • Fixed an issue where Watson Explorer Engine administration tool sessions did not close properly after the user logged out.
  • Fixed an issue where a crash of any Watson Explorer Engine process occurred if an Engine process received an I/O error while trying to read the body of an HTTP POST request.
  • Watson Explorer now supports recent additions to the Unicode library, specifically, Unicode versions 5.2.0, 6.0.0, and 6.1.0. The characters available in this libraries can be found at the following URLs:

    http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/version/5.2/index.htm


    http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/version/6.0/index.htm
    http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/version/6.1/index.htm

    If your documents contain these characters, and this upgrade causes an incompatibilty with the existing index, you should recrawl your collections after upgrading to 10.0.0.2.

  • A new "Administrator Password" field has been added to the Overview tab when creating or updating a User. This field will prevent user passwords from being changed without verification, which can help prevent CSRF and XSS attacks. In addition, the permissions necessary to view and edit the XML tab have been changed to "Administrator", in order to prevent users who only have "View Users" access from seeing another user's encrypted password.
  • Fixed an issue where the velocity-startup script was not starting the Query and Scheduler services on Linux and returning a "Login failed" error message.
  • Fixed an issue where Java Converters were not killing long running processes because they were not getting the timeout values. An "Elapsed Time" option has been added to each converter in the converter function. Note that there are now three places where a timeout for converters should be set: Global converter configuration, converter Advanced options, and the new "Elapsed Time" option.
  • Fixed a date parsing issue in the viv:format-date function on Windows. This issue could cause the number of documents returned using faceting/binning to vary.

Several velocity commands have been updated.
For velocity-webserver, velocity-config, velocity-startup, velocity-cmd, and velocity-shutdown:

  • The '-version' flag no longer exists
  • Flags only require one '-' instead of two ('--help' is now '-help'; '--quiet' is now '-quiet')
  • Short-flags ('-I' instead of '-installation-dir') no longer exist (except for help '-h')

Additional update for velocity-config:

  • There is a new 'webserver/debug' option
  • Flags only require one '-' instead of two

Additional update for velocity-cmd:

  • The output format of '-list' is different
  • There is a new '-list-xml' option

Additional update for velocity-shutdown:

  • Curl is no longer a dependency
 

Watson Explorer Application Builder

The following updates and improvements have been made to Watson Explorer Application Builder in Version 10.0.0.2: There are no updates to report for this version.

Watson Explorer BigIndex

The following updates and improvements have been made to Watson Explorer BigIndex in Version 10.0.0.2: There are no updates to report for this version.

Watson Explorer Results Module

The following updates and improvements have been made to Watson Explorer Results Module in Version 10.0.0.2: There are no updates to report for this version.

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Known Issues in 10.0.0.2

At the time of publication, the following issues are known to be unresolved in the Watson Explorer foundational components:

Watson Explorer Engine

  • When upgrading to Watson Explorer Engine 10.0.0.2 and above, it is recommended that you perform a parallel installation.
 

1. Install Watson Explorer Engine 10.0.0.2 in a different directory than your current installation. See Installing Watson Explorer Product Modules for instructions.

2. Copy your search collection data, any modified files (modified files in your current installation that were originally installed by the Watson Explorer installer), and all manually created files from your old installation directory to the new installation directory. Most modified and manually created files will be stored in (but not limited to) the following directories:

  • install_directory/Engine/data/axl-pools/*
  • install_directory/Engine/data/dictionaries/*
  • install_directory/Engine/data/fonts/*
  • install_directory/Engine/data/key-match/*
  • install_directory/Engine/data/pears/*
  • install_directory/Engine/data/reporting/*
  • install_directory/Engine/data/repository-supplements/*
  • install_directory/Engine/data/sessions/*
  • install_directory/Engine/data/static/*
  • install_directory/Engine/data/su-tokens/*

These files may have been modified also:

  • install_directory/Engine/data/repository-internal.package
  • install_directory/Engine/data/ISYS-license

Search collection data is stored in the directory listed below by default:

  • install_directory/Engine/data/search-collections/*

Changing the location of this directory is common. For information on how to change the location of a search collection directory, see Relocating Collections. Note: It is recommended that you perform regular backups of Watson Explorer Engine. See Backing Up Watson Explorer Engine.

3. Verify that the new installation is working.

4. Uninstall the old version of Watson Explorer Engine and delete the search collection data. See Uninstalling Watson Explorer Modules for uninstall instructions.


	#search-primary table.form tr.search-inputs {
	display:block;
	z-index:1000;
	position:relative;
	}
	
	#search-primary table.form tr.below {
	display:block;
	position:relative;
	z-index:0; }
  • When upgrading from Watson Explorer 9.0.0.3 or earlier, if you applied the 9.0.0.3-WS-WatsonExplorer-Windows-HF001 hotfix posted on Fix Central prior to March 23, 2015, you will need to perform an additional step during your 10.0.0.2 installation. This is because the MD5 checksum values that were documented in that hotfix were incorrect, and as a result the files listed in the hotfix will not be deleted during the uninstallation of Watson Explorer 9.0.0.x. To work around this issue, do one of the following before starting your installation of 10.0.0.2:
    • Manually delete these files from your system after uninstalling the 9.0.0.x software.
    • Before uninstalling 9.0.0.x, go to Fix Central and reapply the hotfix. The MD5 values listed in the version posted on March 23, 2015 will delete the files correctly.
  • Installation Manager might crash when run on Red Hat Linux 6.5 because of an issue with out-of-date graphics libraries. To work around this issue, either modify the IM/IMLinux/install.ini file in the offering directory (see IBM Installation Manager can not start from GUI mode for instructions) or upgrade the Installation Manager libraries (see IBM Installation Manager and IBM Packaging Utility GUI crashes while advancing through wizard screens on recent updates of RHEL 6). Alternatively, you can use the console installer to completely bypass this issue.
  • Only an Administrator should start IBM Knowledge Center. If a non-Administrator starts an instance of the service, that instance might not be detected during an uninstall.
  • On Windows, there can be an issue deleting data on a search collection if the file path is longer than 260 characters. To work around this issue, keep collection names as short as possible, but descriptive (for example, "docs" instead of "crawled-documents") or shorten the path to the installation directory (or the collection's data directories if located elsewhere). Contact IBN Software Support if you see errors (for example, in system reporting) regarding an inability to delete files and those file paths are >= 260 characters.
  • When using lexical analysis language streams, the following options are not supported. For more information about using lexical analysis, see Indexing.
    • Term expansion
    • Stop words
  • If the Maximum JVM Idle Time is set to 0 and you enqueue a large number of documents, such as 50 or more, in quick succession, many of the enqueues are rejected with the following error: [JAVA_CONVERTERS_REMOTE_JVM_COMMUNICATION_FAILED] There was a problem connecting or communicating with the JVM used for running Java converters. Last system error was: Connection refused. To work around the issue, increase the maximum JVM idle time to a value greater than 5.
  • The template Java converter that is described in the tutorial for the Java converter might not compile with some versions of Apache Ant. The Java converter tutorial was tested and successfully compiled with Version 1.7.1, which is available from the Apache Ant archive page.
  • If a collection is configured with invalid parameters (for example, specifying a stemmer that does not exist), an issue might arise where the indexer service enters a continuous restart state. This functionality is documented in the Indexing section. Parameters that can contain invalid values are:
    • The stemmer of a custom language stream.
    • The path name for the PEAR file for a custom content analytics stream.
    • In the Advanced section of the global settings for the indexer, the Lexical analysis logging configuration field. This field has no administrative use other than potentially as a tool for complex debugging.
    • Also in the Advanced section, the Lexical analysis JVM arguments field.
    If you encounter this issue, stop the crawler, correct the configuration, and restart the indexer.
  • (Linux only) If you use the PDF to HTML converter for PDFs that use fonts of double-byte character sets, some text might not be extracted. Text that is not extracted is not included in the converted document. To work around the issue, you can use the PDF to text converter instead. Because the two converters work differently, you might see slight differences in the output of the converted documents.
  • When installing Watson Explorer Engine in non-admin mode on a Microsoft Windows system, the redistributable Microsoft Visual C++ runtime components that are required by Watson Explorer Engine are not installed correctly. This issue can prevent any of the Watson Explorer Engine Windows executables from running correctly. This problem does not occur if Watson Explorer Engine is installed by a user with administrative privileges. To resolve this problem, remove the non-admin installation and reinstall as a user with administrative privileges.
  • When performing a silent installation of Watson Explorer, if any nodes have been removed from a response file, the value for these nodes will be set to the default value.
  • When using continuous update mode for the Oracle WCC connector, filters are not supported if the universal query format is used. If filters are required, use the database query format.
  • When saving a refined query to a folder using the Watson Explorer Engine display, the less than symbol is not supported in the query label field. If the less than symbol is used, the label will be truncated to the content before the less than symbol.
  • Enqueueing a vse-key delete node on a distributed indexing server might result in one corresponding audit log entry on the client when two are expected.
  • When using the Web Parts for Watson Explorer, removing the HTTP authentication user name and password will fail if Remember passwords for sites is enabled in your browser.
  • When using the reporting feature, if the Split System Reporting Database option is set to something other than the default value of monthly, Watson Explorer Engine might incorrectly log some error messages to the monthly reporting database. Similarly, the System Reporting Database Maximum option is ignored, so it might grow in size until hitting the default maximum limit of 2GB.
  • When adding a new seed to a collection, the list of seed types to choose from includes vse-crawler-seed-TEMPLATE. This seed is intended for IBM internal development and should not be used.
  • If you remove a connector plug-in, a search collection will continue to refresh without generating an error message that the connector plug-in was removed.
  • The Watson Explorer Engine internal web server could be vulnerable to the denial-of-service attack (DoS) that is described on the Apache wiki. If you are using the Watson Explorer Engine internal web server as an Internet facing portal, follow the mitigation steps listed at that link.
  • The vsw-form erroneously states that XML is acceptable for the document query condition field. This text is incorrect. XML should not be used for the document query condition field.
  • Bulk collaboration features (express tagging and renaming, adding, or deleting folders) have crawl-url priority of 1, which might result in a delay for users during normal refresh operations.
  • Links in the crawl graph might not be consistent if crawl URLs are enqueued with the parent-url attribute set. This behavior can cause a potential issue when switching a client to a server in distributed indexing if you are using the IO SharePoint Connector.
  • The use of non-ASCII characters in a Watson Explorer Engine installation path is not supported.
  • Calling the search-collection-read-only-all API function on a server with a large number (thousands) of collections results in increased CPU and memory usage, and can make the server appear to be unresponsive while the search collections on that server are being processed.
  • When using distributed indexing, if all data is deleted from the master server and a crawl is initiated, the client servers never attempt to synchronize, nor do they complain about the data mismatch.
  • IO SharePoint connector: When building access control lists (ACLs), the connector does not check the web application policy. When security is enabled for the search collection, the SharePoint user for the crawling account cannot see search results if the account was granted only Full Read permissions at the web application policy level. To work around the issue, grant the SharePoint user for the crawling account Full Read permissions at the site level and document level.
  • Nested document nodes can cause the query-meta application to exit abnormally.
  • Some collection overview statistics might not be correctly reported when re-crawling a collection that uses the Hummingbird connector.
  • The Watson Explorer autocomplete feature does not collect reporting information.
  • Watson Explorer might fail to open files with a path length of over 255 characters on Microsoft Windows systems.
  • When the Watson Explorer Engine Search Web Parts repair installer is used, the repaired features are left inactive and must be manually activated in each site collection.
  • When using the body toggle option in the custom document section of the Watson Explorer Engine display, the toggle option will not appear in the search results if the body toggle option does not specify any non-annotation, non-zero length content elements. For example, if rating (annotation) and URL (document attribute) were specified as body toggle fields, the body toggle option would not appear in the search results. If a content element (such as snippet) was also specified, the body toggle option would be present in results that have a non-zero length snippet content element. This situation is avoided by always specifying a non-zero length content element as a body toggle field.
  • The Livelink connector might return content elements with spaces in their names.

    To work around this issue, you can add a custom converter that removes spurious space from element names.

  • By default, Log4J logging is set to debug. If performance for that connector is an issue, you can turn off logging in the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool by navigating to the Configuration tab for your search collection seed and adding the following logging settings in the Advanced - Logging section:<root><priority value='OFF'/></root> Note that disabling logging will make it difficult to trace future issues.

  • When crawling an SMB file system that is configured with NETBIOS to limit which workstations the crawling account can log on with, the user not allowed to log on to this computer error message can occur if the computer VIV_CRAWLER is not present in the list of allowed workstations.

Watson Explorer Results Module

  • If you query a Results Module collection and subsequently edit the query service port, you will no longer be able to see query expansions or spotlights from Results Module collections. This behavior can be resolved by editing the environment-get-config node in Watson Explorer Engine to refer to the correct query service port.
  • Multiple identical spotlights can be created within the same spotlight collection.
  • An ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound in termsController#update error is returned if a user attempts to save a term or spotlight that was deleted by another user.
  • This version of Results Module supports the following maximum number of contents:
    • Maximum number of terms: Approximately 5000
    • Maximum number of spotlights: Approximately 5000
    • Number of spotlight images: At least 50
  • Results Module calls to the Watson Explorer Engine API send user and password information in the clear. Configuring the Results Module to use SSL will prevent these parameters from being displayed. See the Watson Explorer Results Module documentation for further details.
  • An exception might occur if an environment becomes invalid due to an external reason. Possible reasons for an external environment becoming invalid include:
    • Deleting the API user defined for the environment
    • Changing the password of the API user defined for the environment
    • Changing the URL of the installation specified in the environment
    • Removing the Watson Explorer Engine installation specified in the environment
    • Changing the HTTPS security settings of the installation specified in the environment

    The exception can be avoided if all affected environments are updated before a user attempts to access any of the components.

  • If a long running action (for example an import) times out, other requests (such as login) might occasionally time out.

  • Spotlight Manager

    • If you use Internet Explorer 11 to access Results Module, you cannot select an image to add to a spotlight in the Spotlight Manager. To work around the issue, add the fully qualified domain name of Results Module to the list of sites that use Internet Explorer Compatibility View. For more information, see Spotlight Manager: Cannot add images when using Internet Explorer 11.
    • If your lowest environment is not correctly pointing to your Watson Explorer Engine installation, saving a spotlight (and possibly terms and collections as well) will fail with no error message.
    • When you delete a spotlight, it will not be immediately deleted in Watson Explorer Engine, but is guaranteed to be enqueued for deletion and will be deleted eventually. This behavior means that if you perform a search that would have returned the spotlight you just deleted, you might still see the spotlight.
    • It is possible to create spotlights whose names are comprised of spaces. This feature does not cause a functional issue, but links to those spotlights in the Results Module might be difficult to use.

  • Terminology Manager

    • Importing terms that contain commas in their entries causes inconsistent behavior: in the main term, the comma is retained; in the associated terms for an entry, it is treated as a delimiter.
    • It is possible to import a term collection directly to an environment that is not the lowest environment in the promotion chain. This action should not be done, as the environments and promotion chain will become out of sync.
    • Adding multiple relationships between two terms causes a Watson Explorer Engine exception error. For example, this exception occurs if you add colour as a spelling variation of color, and then attempt to add colour as a synonym of color.

Watson Explorer Application Builder

  • If security is enabled for an entity that was previously disabled, users without access rights cannot see the entity, but can still see the activity feed.
  • Comments on secured entities are not listed in the activity feed, even if users have access to the entity in question.
  • Parameters for LDAP configuration that are entered in the graphical mode of Installation Manager are not updated in the server.xml file. To work around this issue, manually edit the server.xml file after installation. For more information, see Configuring Application Builder.
  • Rich preview: If users access the application by using Firefox, after they click the preview link they might receive a message that says an unresponsive script is running. This issue occurs only when you preview a long document that has many matches for the search term. To work around the issue, use a more specific search term if you can. Also, you can click Continue to allow the script more time to find all the matches in the document.
  • When connected to a directory store, the user entity will return 0 results if the title field is not configured to match a field that exists in the directory store.
  • Configuring a nested facet to be displayed causes the search page of the application to return 0 results.
  • In Application Builder, when you use the Refine by type option for a refinement widget, the refinements are displayed as the value of the entity name. This entity name is different from the entity name that is displayed in the header of the application if the display name field is populated in the entity configuration.

  • iWidget Widget

    The application detail page fails to load when an iWidget is created without values in one or more fields in the Type-specific configuration section.

  • Iframe Widget

    • The iframe widget contains an iframe, so it has any limitations that an iframe has for a given browser.
    • In some browsers, when you move an iframe widget between columns on the home page, the widget might not resize as accurately as other widgets.

  • Flip Widget

    • Some widgets behave incorrectly if multiple copies of them exist on the page, for example multiple chart widgets. The flip widget contains multiple nested widgets. If a widget is nested within the flip widget, you can still add a copy of that widget to the page. This behavior might result in the end user seeing one stand-alone version of the widget and one nested version of the widget in the flip widget.
    • When you add a flip widget to the page from the widget bar on the home page, the remove icon will not be visible in the header of the flip widget. This behavior means that you cannot immediately remove the widget again. You can work around this issue by reloading the page or closing and re-opening the widget bar.

Watson Explorer Annotation Administration Console

  • If you use IBM Watson Explorer Content Analytics and uninstall Version 10.0.0.2, the JVM version is not reverted to the previous version. To resolve this problem, you must stop Annotation Administration Console and then rename the JVM directories. For instructions, see Release Notes - IBM Watson Explorer Analytical Components.
  • IBM Knowledge Center provides instructions for running the Annotation Administration Console installation program in graphical mode.
  • Error FFQG0024E indicates that a NullPointerException occurred after you exported an annotator from Content Analytics Studio to Annotation Administration Console. To avoid this problem, ensure that the following check boxes are clear in the Export to Content Analytics window before you export an annotator:
    • Restart the collection's index service
    • Re-index existing collection documents
    These options are not needed because collections in Annotation Administration Console do not include an index service or documents. Annotation Administration Console, you must enable the exported annotator in the target collection by deploying analytic resources and restarting the text analytics session.
  • You might see misleading messages when you attempt to start the Annotation Administration Console after you run the 'esadmin system startall' command, such as "Context root not found" or "Unable to read the configuration data for collection .". You can ignore these messages. Services required to run the administration console are still being started. Wait a couple of minutes and refresh your web browser before attempting to access the administration console again.

IBM Software Support

As problems are discovered and resolved, the IBM Support team updates the IBM Support Portal. Search the IBM Support Portal to find workarounds or solutions to problems.

 

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Release Notes for Version 10.0.0.1

What's New in 10.0.0.1

IBM Watson Explorer Version 10.0.0.1 is a fix pack that introduces new features and provides enhancements to the existing product capabilities.

Watson Explorer Engine

The following features have been introduced to Watson Explorer Engine in Version 10.0.0.1:

Lexical Analysis

Watson Explorer Engine 10.0.0.1 provides improved language indexing and search support by introducing the capability to add a lexical analysis (language support) language stream to a search collection on Linux systems. Lexical analysis language streams use PEAR files that are generated in Watson Explorer Content Analytics Miner, which is a Watson Explorer analytical component. PEAR files are provided for seven languages: Arabic, Chinese (simplified and traditional), German, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, and Korean.

Note: If you have a Watson Explorer Engine Advanced Edition license, you can create additional language PEAR files and add them to your project.

Note: Custom PEAR files can modify and extend how Engine handles language processing.

 

The following updates and improvements have been made to Watson Explorer Engine in Version 10.0.0.1:

  • Addressed the POODLE security vulnerability by:
    • Updating OpenSSL library to prevent the potential decryption of secure session cookies.
    • Disabling SSLv3 by default in the embedded web server. It can be re-enabled by changing the web server configuration, but this is not recommended by IBM.
  • Improved the converter framework by:
    • Improving use of memory by allowing the JVM to restart and free up memory after the crawler is idle for a specified time interval. The idle restart period is a configurable setting accessible in a search collection's general settings.
    • Increased flexibility of framework by allowing definition of custom JVM startup options.
    • Fixed an issue where the converter framework log file generation mechanism produced incorrect log files.
    • Resolved an issue with the converter framework option string parser that generated incorrectly converted option strings.
    • Fixed an issue where the existence of a converter was not confirmed before attempting to reload it.
  • Improved MS Office converters by:
    • More accurately extract content from MS Office formats, including documents that track changes.
    • Better identification of content types for extraction in the MS Office converter.
    • Generating smaller indexes when converting MS Office documents by creating cleaner PDF to HTML output, which is one step in the process of converting MS Office documents to XML.

The Global Administration setting "HTTP Referrer allowlist" has been added. This field can be used to explicitly allow HTTP requests to be sent from hosts other than the Watson Explorer host.

 

Watson Explorer Application Builder

The following features have been introduced to Application Builder in Version 10.0.0.1:

Table widget

A table widget has been added to the list of available widgets, allowing the display of tabular data, which could previously only be done on entity list pages using the entity table widget. The table widget is configurable in the Watson Explorer Application Builder administration tool. Key features of the table widget include the following:

  • Widget location - The table widget can be added to all pages, rather than only on a list page, which is a limitation of the entity table widget.
  • Sorting - The default sorting direction for tabular data that displays in the table widget can be configured in the administration tool. Additionally, by modifying a query API in the configurable settings of the table widget, an administrator can specify a field or XPath statement that can be used for more advanced sorting.
  • Page size - The table widget provides the ability to set the page size for tabular data that displays in the table widget.
  • Query for dataset - Configurable fields are provided to support configuring arbitrary queries for an entity definition as well as configuring association queries for entities that are related to the subject of the page upon which the table widget is displayed.

Watson Explorer Content Analytics Miner integration

This version of Application Builder allows for publication of Watson Explorer Content Analytics Miner analytic visualizations within an Application Builder Application. Watson Explorer Content Analytics is an IBM® Watson Explorer Content Analytics analytical component that allows users to find patterns, trends, and deviations in unstructured text using advanced natural language processing techniques. This integration is achieved by configuring a standard analytics application in IBM Watson Explorer Content Analytics Miner and then creating a correlating i-Frame widget in Application Builder.

Global JavaScript

Application Builder now allows for improved flexibility and ease of maintenance in configuring application displays by allowing the integration of JavaScript across the entire application rather than at a lower level. Display settings in the administration tool have been enhanced with a Custom JavaScript field. This feature works similarly to the Custom CSS field. You can now enter custom JavaScript code in the administration tool without having to directly access your application code.

Note: JavaScript code entered here is executed after all core JavaScript libraries has executed.

Show more

Application Builder search capability has been improved by allowing an administrator to easily configure what metadata content is shown by default and what metadata content will be hidden from a user, unless that user clicks “Show more” on the search result. This provides a much cleaner user experience especially in cases where search results contain a large amount of metadata content.

Connector security

This version includes a new framework that can use the connector security rights mechanisms that are associated with connector-specific search collections, in addition to the already supported security on the Big Database, Database, Documentum, Exchange, IMAP, MDM (Physical Edition), File Share, and Sharepoint connectors. This version of the connector security framework supports using the Alfresco connector version 5.0 and greater.

Note: The version of the Alfresco connector that ships with Watson Explorer Engine 10.0.0.1 is not supported. Users wishing to use this feature with an Alfresco search collection must upgrade the Alfresco connector to version 5.0 or greater of the Alfresco connector. Check Fix Central for the latest version of the Alfresco connector.

 

The following updates and improvements have been made to Application Builder in Version 10.0.0.1:

  • Enhanced LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) support, which includes LDAP matching for better user login experience, broader support for large LDAP stores (over 1,000 users), and support for limiting access by LDAP security groups.
  • Added OR logic functionality to Refinements widget configuration settings, which enables the user to select multiple, non-overlapping values when refining search results.
  • Improved annotation mechanism includes the ability to generate a record of all comments and tags that were added and deleted, including the entity to which the comment or tag belonged. Additionally, administrators can import any comments or tags which were previously added to a collection. A single annotation backup file is now generated per search collection, which is intended to exclusively back up any annotations added to or deleted from a search collection.

    Note: This feature is not intended to back up spaces, activity feeds or other collections that an entity depends upon. The data in these collections must be backed up using the standard Watson Explorer process.

  • Enhanced rich preview provides the ability to preview email search results in a high resolution representation, including attachments. When previewing an email, the rich cache version of the email body content is displayed. Emails that contain attachments that are preview enabled will display a file icon next to the email title. This icon will display the number of preview enabled documents in addition to the email body content.
  • Improved traceability by adding the ability to display who created a space and when it was created. Administrators can choose to display this information to users. This information is delivered by created_by and created_by_id fields available in the space entity configuration.
  • Improved the export cleanup search results mechanism to reduce the number of temp files left on the Watson Explorer server.
  • Added ability to specify id and type from the field export box. Exported files now contain the following metadata: exported_by, time, search query, URL
  • Enhanced user experience with focus on general accessibility improvements through the application of the ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) web accessibility guidelines as described by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). All new features and functionality in Application Builder incorporate ARIA principles in both the UI and administration tool framework. For more information on ARIA, see WAI-ARIA Overview.
  • Fixed an issue where the entity configuration page was incorrectly displaying at the bottom of a page.
  • Fixed an issue where expanding nested facets did not work correctly in the Refinements widget.
  • Resolved an issue where previous results and more results were not displaying correctly.
  • Corrected an issue where an association did not display a scroll bar when shown in a narrow window.
  • Corrected a user login issue where if a user entry was deleted in a CSV file, and the user collection was re-crawled, the removed user could log in again as different user.
  • Fixed an issue that was causing nested display wrappers to incorrectly display in Internet Explorer 8.

Watson Explorer BigIndex

The following updates and improvements have been made to Watson Explorer BigIndex in Version 10.0.0.1:

  • There are no updates to report for this version.

Watson Explorer Results Module

The following updates and improvements have been made to Watson Explorer Results Module in Version 10.0.0.1:

  • There are no updates to report for this version.

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Known Issues in 10.0.0.1

At the time of publication, the following issues are known to be unresolved in the Watson Explorer foundational components:

Watson Explorer Engine


	#search-primary table.form tr.search-inputs {
	display:block;
	z-index:1000;
	position:relative;
	}
	
	#search-primary table.form tr.below {
	display:block;
	position:relative;
	z-index:0; }
  • When using lexical analysis language streams, the following options are not supported. For more information about using lexical analysis, see Indexing.
    • Term expansion
    • Stop words
  • If the Maximum JVM Idle Time is set to 0 and you enqueue a large number of documents, such as 50 or more, in quick succession, many of the enqueues are rejected with the following error: [JAVA_CONVERTERS_REMOTE_JVM_COMMUNICATION_FAILED]There was a problem connecting or communicating with the JVM used for running Java converters. Last system error was: Connection refused. To work around the issue, increase the maximum JVM idle time to a value greater than 5.
  • If you use a response file such as full_install_windows_response.xml to install ZooKeeper, ensure that the configuration options in the installation_directory/ZooKeeper/zookeeper/conf/zoo.cfg file are separated by newline characters instead of semicolons (;). An example of correctly separated options in the zoo.cfg file is: 
    
	initLimit=1000
	syncLimit=1000
	tickTime=2000
	autopurge.snapRetainCount=3
	autopurge.purgeInterval=1
  • The template Java converter that is described in the tutorial for the Java converter might not compile with some versions of Apache Ant. The Java converter tutorial was tested and successfully compiled with Version 1.7.1, which is available from the Apache Ant archive page.
  • If a collection is configured with invalid parameters (for example, specifying a stemmer that does not exist), an issue might arise where the indexer service enters a continuous restart state. This functionality will be documented in the Indexing section. Parameters that can contain invalid values are:
    • The stemmer of a custom language stream.
    • The path name for the PEAR file for a custom content analytics stream.
    • In the Advanced section of the global settings for the indexer, the Lexical analysis logging configuration field. This field has no administrative use other than potentially as a tool for complex debugging.
    • Also in the Advanced section, the Lexical analysis JVM arguments field.
    If you encounter this issue, stop the crawler, correct the configuration, and restart the indexer.
  • (Linux only) If you use the PDF to HTML converter for PDFs that use fonts of double-byte character sets, some text might not be extracted. Text that is not extracted is not included in the converted document. To work around the issue, you can use the PDF to text converter instead. Because the two converters work differently, you might see slight differences in the output of the converted documents.
  • When installing Watson Explorer Engine in non-admin mode on a Microsoft Windows system, the redistributable Microsoft Visual C++ runtime components that are required by Watson Explorer Engine are not installed correctly. This issue can prevent any of the Watson Explorer Engine Windows executables from running correctly. This problem does not occur if Watson Explorer Engine is installed by a user with administrative privileges. To resolve this problem, remove the non-admin installation and reinstall as a user with administrative privileges.
  • When performing a silent installation of Watson Explorer, if any nodes have been removed from a response file, the value for these nodes will be set to the default value.
  • When using continuous update mode for the Oracle WCC connector, filters are not supported if the universal query format is used. If filters are required, use the database query format.
  • When saving a refined query to a folder using the Watson Explorer Engine display, the less than symbol is not supported in the query label field. If the less than symbol is used, the label will be truncated to the content before the less than symbol.
  • Enqueueing a vse-key delete node on a distributed indexing server might result in one corresponding audit log entry on the client when two are expected.
  • When using the Web Parts for Watson Explorer, removing the HTTP authentication user name and password will fail if Remember passwords for sites is enabled in your browser.
  • When using the reporting feature, if the Split System Reporting Database option is set to something other than the default value of monthly, Watson Explorer Engine might incorrectly log some error messages to the monthly reporting database. Similarly, the System Reporting Database Maximum option is ignored, so it might grow in size until hitting the default maximum limit of 2GB.
  • When adding a new seed to a collection, the list of seed types to choose from includes vse-crawler-seed-TEMPLATE. This seed is intended for IBM internal development and should not be used.
  • If you remove a connector plug-in, a search collection will continue to refresh without generating an error message that the connector plug-in was removed.
  • The Watson Explorer Engine internal web server could be vulnerable to the denial-of-service attack (DoS) that is described on the Apache wiki. If you are using the Watson Explorer Engine internal web server as an Internet facing portal, follow the mitigation steps listed at that link.
  • The vsw-form erroneously states that XML is acceptable for the document query condition field. This text is incorrect. XML should not be used for the document query condition field.
  • Bulk collaboration features (express tagging and renaming, adding, or deleting folders) have crawl-url priority of 1, which might result in a delay for users during normal refresh operations.
  • Links in the crawl graph might not be consistent if crawl URLs are enqueued with the parent-url attribute set. This behavior can cause a potential issue when switching a client to server in distributed indexing if you are using the IO SharePoint Connector.
  • The use of non-ASCII characters in a Watson Explorer Engine installation path is not supported.
  • Calling the search-collection-read-only-all API function on a server with a large number (thousands) of collections results in increased CPU and memory usage, and can make the server appear to be unresponsive while the search collections on that server are being processed.
  • When using distributed indexing, if all data is deleted from the master server and a crawl is initiated, the client servers never attempt to synchronize, nor do they complain about the data mismatch.
  • IO SharePoint connector: When building access control lists (ACLs), the connector does not check the web application policy. When security is enabled for the search collection, the SharePoint user for the crawling account cannot see search results if the account was granted only Full Read permissions at the web application policy level. To work around the issue, grant the SharePoint user for the crawling account Full Read permissions at the site level and document level.
  • Nested document nodes can cause the query-meta application to exit abnormally.
  • Some collection overview statistics might not be correctly reported when re-crawling a collection that uses the Hummingbird connector.
  • The Watson Explorer autocomplete feature does not collect reporting information.
  • Watson Explorer may fail to open files with a path length of over 255 characters on Microsoft Windows systems.
  • When the Watson Explorer Engine Search Web Parts repair installer is used, the repaired features are left inactive and must be manually activated in each site collection.
  • When using the body toggle option in the custom document section of the Watson Explorer Engine display, the toggle option will not appear in the search results if the body toggle option does not specify any non-annotation, non-zero length content elements. For example, if rating (annotation) and URL (document attribute) were specified as body oggle fields, the body toggle option would not appear in the search results. If a content element (such as snippet) was also specified, the body toggle option would be present in results that have a non-zero length snippet content element. This situation is avoided by always specifying a non-zero length content element as a body toggle field.
  • The Livelink connector might return content elements with spaces in their names.

    To work around this issue, you can add a custom converter that removes spurious space from element names.

  • By default, Log4J logging is set to debug. If performance for that connector is an issue, you can turn off logging in the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool by navigating to the Configuration tab for your search collection seed and adding the following logging settings in the Advanced - Logging section:<root><priority value='OFF'/></root> Note that disabling logging will make it difficult to trace future issues.

  • When crawling an SMB file system that is configured with NETBIOS to limit which workstations the crawling account can log on with, the user not allowed to log on to this computer error message can occur if the computer VIV_CRAWLER is not present in the list of allowed workstations.

Watson Explorer Results Module

  • If you query a Results Module collection and subsequently edit the query service port, you will no longer be able to see query expansions or spotlights from Results Module collections. This behavior can be resolved by editing the environment-get-config node in Watson Explorer Engine to refer to the correct query service port.
  • Multiple identical spotlights can be created within the same spotlight collection.
  • An ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound in termsController#update error is returned if a user attempts to save a term or spotlight that was deleted by another user.
  • This version of Results Module supports the following maximum number of contents:
    • Maximum number of terms: Approximately 5000
    • Maximum number of spotlights: Approximately 5000
    • Number of spotlight images: At least 50
  • Results Module calls to the Watson Explorer Engine API send user and password information in the clear. Configuring the Results Module to use SSL will prevent these parameters from being displayed. See the Watson Explorer Results Module documentation for further details.
  • An exception might occur if an environment becomes invalid due to an external reason. Possible reasons for an external environment becoming invalid include:
    • Deleting the API user defined for the environment
    • Changing the password of the API user defined for the environment
    • Changing the URL of the installation specified in the environment
    • Removing the Watson Explorer Engine installation specified in the environment
    • Changing the HTTPS security settings of the installation specified in the environment

    The exception can be avoided if all affected environments are updated before a user attempts to access any of the components.

  • If a long running action (for example an import) times out, other requests (such as login) might occasionally time out.

  • Spotlight Manager

    • If you use Internet Explorer 11 to access Results Module, you cannot select an image to add to a spotlight in the Spotlight Manager. To work around the issue, add the fully qualified domain name of Results Module to the list of sites that use Internet Explorer Compatibility View. For more information, see Spotlight Manager: Cannot add images when using Internet Explorer 11.
    • If your lowest environment is not correctly pointing to your Watson Explorer Engine installation, saving a spotlight (and possibly terms and collections as well) will fail with no error message.
    • When you delete a spotlight, it will not be immediately deleted in Watson Explorer Engine, but is guaranteed to be enqueued for deletion and will be deleted eventually. This behavior means that if you perform a search that would have returned the spotlight you just deleted, you might still see the spotlight.
    • It is possible to create spotlights whose names are comprised of spaces. This feature does not cause a functional issue, but links to those spotlights in the Results Module might be difficult to use.

  • Terminology Manager

    • Importing terms that contain commas in their entries causes inconsistent behavior: in the main term, the comma is retained; in the associated terms for an entry, it is treated as a delimiter.
    • It is possible to import a term collection directly to an environment that is not the lowest environment in the promotion chain. This action should not be done, as the environments and promotion chain will become out of sync.
    • Adding multiple relationships between two terms causes a Watson Explorer Engine exception error. For example, this exception occurs if you add colour as a spelling variation of color, and then attempt to add colour as a synonym of color.

Watson Explorer Application Builder

  • If security is enabled for an entity that was previously disabled, users without access rights cannot see the entity, but can still see the activity feed.
  • Comments on secured entities are not listed in the activity feed, even if users have access to the entity in question.
  • Parameters for LDAP configuration that are entered in the graphical mode of Installation Manager are not updated in the server.xml file. To work around this issue, manually edit the server.xml file after installation. For more information, see Configuring Application Builder.
  • Rich preview: If users access the application by using Firefox, after they click the preview link they might receive a message that says an unresponsive script is running. This issue occurs only when you preview a long document that has many matches for the search term. To work around the issue, use a more specific search term if you can. Also, you can click Continue to allow the script more time to find all the matches in the document.
  • When connected to a directory store, the user entity will return 0 results if the title field is not configured to match a field that exists in the directory store.
  • Configuring a nested facet to be displayed causes the search page of the application to return 0 results.
  • In Application Builder, when you use the Refine by type option for a refinement widget, the refinements are displayed as the value of the entity name. This entity name is different from the entity name that is displayed in the header of the application if the display name field is populated in the entity configuration.

  • iWidget Widget

    The application detail page fails to load when an iWidget is created without values in one or more fields in the Type-specific configuration section.

  • Iframe Widget

    • The iframe widget contains an iframe, so it has any limitations that an iframe has for a given browser.
    • In some browsers, when you move an iframe widget between columns on the home page, the widget might not resize as accurately as other widgets.

  • Flip Widget

    • Some widgets behave incorrectly if multiple copies of them exist on the page, for example multiple chart widgets. The flip widget contains multiple nested widgets. If a widget is nested within the flip widget, you can still add a copy of that widget to the page. This behavior might result in the end user seeing one stand-alone version of the widget and one nested version of the widget in the flip widget.
    • When you add a flip widget to the page from the widget bar on the home page, the remove icon will not be visible in the header of the flip widget. This behavior means that you cannot immediately remove the widget again. You can work around this issue by reloading the page or closing and re-opening the widget bar.

Watson Explorer Annotation Administration Console

  • If you click Help or Learn more in the Annotation Administration Console, a message states that the help topic cannot be found. To resolve this problem and view the help topic, update the URL in your browser and change the file name extension from htm to html. Beginning with Version 10.0.0.2, links to the help topics work correctly.
  • IBM Knowledge Center provides instructions for running the Annotation Administration Console installation program in graphical mode.
  • Error FFQG0024E indicates that a NullPointerException occurred after you exported an annotator from Content Analytics Studio to Annotation Administration Console. To avoid this problem, ensure that the following check boxes are clear in the Export to Content Analytics window before you export an annotator:
    • Restart the collection's index service
    • Re-index existing collection documents
    These options are not needed because collections in Annotation Administration Console do not include an index service or documents. Annotation Administration Console, you must enable the exported annotator in the target collection by deploying analytic resources and restarting the text analytics session.
  • You might see misleading messages when you attempt to start the Annotation Administration Console after you run the 'esadmin system startall' command, such as "Context root not found" or "Unable to read the configuration data for collection .". You can ignore these messages. Services required to run the administration console are still being started. Wait a couple of minutes and refresh your web browser before attempting to access the administration console again.

IBM Software Support

As problems are discovered and resolved, the IBM Support team updates the IBM Support Portal. Search the IBM Support Portal to find workarounds or solutions to problems.


 

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Release Notes for Version 10.0.0

What's New in 10.0.0


  • IBM Watson Explorer Version 10.0.0 introduces new features and provides enhancements to the existing product capabilities. Watson Explorer components, which were referred to as Watson Explorer modules in previous versions of Watson Explorer, are now referred to as Watson Explorer foundational components.
 
  • The IBM Watson Explorer foundational components include the following feature additions and product enhancements:
     

    Watson Explorer Annotation Administration Console

    Added Annotation Administration Console, which can help you can gain deeper insights into unstructured content. After you specify which annotators you want to apply in the console, a new text analytics API pulls analysis results and makes the results available to your Watson Explorer 360-degree view and content mining applications. For more information on this feature, see Annotation Administration and Using Converters for Content Analytics Annotations.



Watson Explorer Engine
The following features have been introduced to Watson Explorer Engine in Version 10.0.0:

    • IBM Content Analytics Annotation Converter
      • Added the IBM Content Analytics Annotation converter for annotating data that is ingested into Watson Explorer Engine through Watson Explorer Annotation Administration Console.

      IBM Domino Connector
      • Watson Explorer Engine bundled connectors now ship with an IBM Domino connector. The IBM Domino connector is not installed by default and is available in the /extras directory of your Watson Explorer Engine installation. This connector replaces the previously shipped Lotus Notes connector, which has been removed from this version.

      Web Parts for Watson Explorer Engine
      • Web Parts for Watson Explorer Engine include the following feature additions:
        • Enhanced Web Parts for Watson Explorer Engine to support Microsoft SharePoint 2013.
        • Added Predefined Query Results Web Part, which shows contextually relevant information to a SharePoint user that is based upon the content that they are viewing.
        • Expanded the security model to support claims-based authentication.
        • Restructured the documentation that additionally includes a Microsoft PowerShell command reference section.

The following updates and improvements have been made to Watson Explorer Engine in Version 10.0.0:

  • Removed the ability to search documentation from within the administrator tool. All documentation searches must be conducted at IBM Knowledge Center.
  • Updated Java parser error messages to include more helpful reference information relating to converters.
  • Added a PDF to HTML (Hybrid Mode) converter to extract more content from PDF documents. Documentation for this new converter describes the procedure for adding this converter.
  • Increased the default minimum and maximum heap size values of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that is used by the conversion framework. These new values are more appropriate for typical Watson Explorer Engine deployment environments. The default minimum value is now 20 MB and the default maximum value is now 1024 MB.
  • Updated converter framework by removing converters that were part of non-active projects and replacing them with similar converters from active projects.
  • Resolved an issue where PDF documents that included splits between two lines generated separate index entries.
  • Replaced image-based icons with CSS-based icons for improved performance.
  • Added documentation about how to manually configure the URL for IBM Knowledge Center.
  • Resolved an issue when the font size indicated with a <span> tag in the <div> element of a title resulted in the title content not being extracted.
  • Renamed system messages to system updates.
  • Updated documentation with procedures on how to create autocomplete-tutorial.txt, which is a sample text file that was incorrectly described as existing in a Watson Explorer Engine installation sub-directory. This file must be created manually.

Watson Explorer Application Builder
  • The following features have been introduced to Application Builder in Version 10.0.0:

    Rich Preview
    • Provides the ability to preview results on search and entity pages. In addition to Microsoft Word, rich preview supports paged navigation when previewing Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint search results. You can also search within a preview.
    Comments
    • Enables users to add comments to search results, which can then be seen by other users in activity feed pages and search results.
    Customization and Visualization Improvements
    • Introduces CSS-based file type icons that can enable users to more quickly determine the file type of a search result.
    Multiple Back Ends
    • Adds GUI support to configure multiple back ends in the administrator tool, which provides the ability to more easily mirror collections for fault tolerance purposes.

The following updates and improvements have been made to Application Builder in Version 10.0.0:
  • Enhanced Application Builder tutorial documentation to describe how to activate comments.
  • Fixed an issue where the Application Builder service would not stop after executing a stop command.
  • Resolved an issue where curly brackets {} in VSE keys were generating errors when creating entities with IBM FileNet P8 repositories.
  • Enhanced the entity chart widget to use default theme colors.
  • Fixed an issue where deleting search results after dragging them into a private space or entity space caused existing links in the activity feed to break.
  • Corrected a typographical error in the example documentation that incorrectly displayed the user.position value as manager (example: user.position="manager"). It now correctly displays as user.position="sign".
  • Changed the view field in the custom widget to a required setting to prevent errors.
  • Improved activity feed styling by removing context styling inconsistencies.
  • Enhanced filter fields with better styling.
  • Changed Manage Watson Explorer application to Manage application in the user menu.
  • Resolved an issue where the My profile link was displayed when a user entity for that profile did not exist.
  • Fixed an issue where the Export a few tooltip was displayed when spaces were disabled.
  • Resolved an issue that prevented the administrator tool help link from being displayed.
  • Enhanced message windows by making them responsive.
  • Renamed the Violet color theme to Aubergine.
  • Resolved an issue where the list expansion mechanism did not work after a back end was updated.
  • Fixed an issue where the border on widgets disappeared when using Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.
  • Resolved a dependency issue where a bad faceting formula caused the search to fail.

Watson Explorer BigIndex
  • The following updates and improvements have been made to Watson Explorer BigIndex in Version 10.0.0:
    • Fixed an issue where load balancing of searches was not working due to conflicting code in the entity resolver mechanism.

Back to top


Known Issues in 10.0.0

At the time of publication, the following issues are known to be unresolved in the Watson Explorer foundational components:



Watson Explorer Engine:
  • The template Java converter that is described in the tutorial for the Java converter might not compile with some versions of Apache Ant. The Java converter tutorial was tested and successfully compiled with Version 1.7.1, which is available from the Apache Ant archive page.
  • (Linux only) If you use the PDF to HTML converter for PDFs that use fonts of double-byte character sets, some text might not be extracted. Text that is not extracted is not included in the converted document. To work around the issue, you can use the PDF to text converter instead. Because the two converters work differently, you might see slight differences in the output of the converted documents.
  • When installing Watson Explorer Engine in non-admin mode on a Microsoft Windows system, the redistributable Microsoft Visual C++ runtime components that are required by Watson Explorer Engine are not installed correctly. This issue can prevent any of the Watson Explorer Engine Windows executables from running correctly. This problem does not occur if Watson Explorer Engine is installed by a user with administrative privileges. To resolve this problem, remove the non-admin installation and reinstall as a user with administrative privileges.
  • When performing a silent installation of Watson Explorer, if any nodes have been removed from a response file, the value for these nodes will be set to the default value.
  • When using continuous update mode for the Oracle WCC connector, filters are not supported if the universal query format is used. If filters are required, use the database query format.
  • When saving a refined query to a folder using the Watson Explorer Engine display, the less than symbol is not supported in the query label field. If the less than symbol is used, the label will be truncated to the content before the less than symbol.
  • Enqueueing a vse-key delete node on a distributed indexing server might result in one corresponding audit log entry on the client when two are expected.
  • When using the Web Parts for Watson Explorer, removing the HTTP authentication user name and password will fail if Remember passwords for sites is enabled in your browser.
  • When using the reporting feature, if the Split System Reporting Database option is set to something other than the default value of monthly, Watson Explorer Engine might incorrectly log some error messages to the monthly reporting database. Similarly, the System Reporting Database Maximum option is ignored, so it might grow in size until hitting the default maximum limit of 2GB.
  • When adding a new seed to a collection, the list of seed types to choose from includes vse-crawler-seed-TEMPLATE. This seed is intended for IBM internal development and should not be used.
  • If you remove a connector plug-in, a search collection will continue to refresh without generating an error message that the connector plug-in was removed.
  • The autocomplete feature might not function correctly when using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. This issue can be resolved by adding the following code to the theme-main display node:

    • #search-primary table.form tr.search-inputs {
      display:block;
      z-index:1000;
      position:relative;
      }

      #search-primary table.form tr.below {
      display:block;
      position:relative;
      z-index:0; }

  • The Watson Explorer Engine internal web server could be vulnerable to the denial-of-service attack (DoS) that is described on the Apache wiki. If you are using the Watson Explorer Engine internal web server as an Internet facing portal, follow the mitigation steps listed at that link.
  • The vsw-form erroneously states that XML is acceptable for the document query condition field. This text is incorrect. XML should not be used for the document query condition field.
  • Bulk collaboration features (express tagging and renaming, adding, or deleting folders) have crawl-url priority of 1, which might result in a delay for users during normal refresh operations.
  • Links in the crawl graph might not be consistent if crawl URLs are enqueued with the parent-url attribute set. This behavior can cause a potential issue when switching a client to server in distributed indexing if you are using the IO SharePoint Connector.
  • The use of non-ASCII characters in a Watson Explorer Engine installation path is not supported.
  • Calling the search-collection-read-only-all API function on a server with a large number (thousands) of collections results in increased CPU and memory usage, and can make the server appear to be unresponsive while the search collections on that server are being processed.
  • When using distributed indexing, if all data is deleted from the master server and a crawl is initiated, the client servers never attempt to synchronize, nor do they complain about the data mismatch.
  • IO SharePoint connector: When building access control lists (ACLs), the connector does not check the web application policy. When security is enabled for the search collection, the SharePoint user for the crawling account cannot see search results if the account was granted only Full Read permissions at the web application policy level. To work around the issue, grant the SharePoint user for the crawling account Full Read permissions at the site level and document level.
  • Nested document nodes can cause the query-meta application to exit abnormally.
  • Some collection overview statistics might not be correctly reported when re-crawling a collection that uses the Hummingbird connector.
  • The autocomplete feature does not collect reporting information.
  • The g_fopen function cannot handle files with a path of the format C:\... with a length over 255 characters on Microsoft Windows systems.
  • When the Watson Explorer Engine Search Web Parts repair installer is used, the repaired features are left inactive and must be manually activated in each site collection.
  • When using the body toggle option in the custom document section of the Watson Explorer Engine display, the toggle option will not appear in the search results if the body toggle option does not specify any non-annotation, non-zero length content elements. For example, if rating (annotation) and URL (document attribute) were specified as body toggle fields, the body toggle option would not appear in the search results. If a content element (such as snippet) was also specified, the body toggle option would be present in results that have a non-zero length snippet content element. This situation is avoided by always specifying a non-zero length content element as a body toggle field.
  • If you specify a password to query-search using authorization-password, the password will be passed in plain text to the collection.
  • Deleting staging data might fail if the names of crawled files contain invalid characters.

    • To work around this problem, navigate to the directory that Watson Explorer Engine reports that it cannot delete because it is not empty, and manually delete the files that it contains. The Watson Explorer Engine administration tool will then be able to successfully delete the staging collection.
  • When using synchronized distributed indexing and rebasing multiple collection mirrors from a single main collection, you must rebase each mirror from the main collection. You should not configure cascading rebase operations, where a collection is rebased from a main collection, and another collection is then rebased from the mirror. Updates will not propagate correctly in a cascading rebase scenario.
  • The Livelink connector might return content elements with spaces in their names.

    • To work around this issue, you can add a custom converter that removes spurious space from element names.
  • The Log4J Java logging package always produces a default level of logging if no custom log configuration is provided.

    • To work around this issue, you can completely disable connector logging by navigating to your search collection seed configuration tab in the Watson Explorer Engine admin tool, and adding the following logging settings in the Advanced - Logging section:

      <root><priority value="off"/></root>

  • When crawling an SMB file system that is configured with NETBIOS to limit which workstations the crawling account can log on with, the user not allowed to log on to this computer error message can occur if the computer VIV_CRAWLER is not present in the list of allowed workstations.

Watson Explorer Results Module:
  • If you query a Results Module collection and subsequently edit the query service port, you will no longer be able to see query expansions or spotlights from Results Module collections. This behavior can be resolved by editing the environment-get-config node to refer to the correct query service port.
  • Multiple identical spotlights can be created within the same spotlight collection.
  • An ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound in termsController#update error is returned if a user attempts to save a term or spotlight that was deleted by another user.
  • This version of the Results Module supports the following maximum number of contents:
    • Maximum number of terms: Approximately 5000
    • Maximum number of spotlights: Approximately 5000
    • Number of spotlight images: At least 50
  • Results Module calls to the Watson Explorer Engine API send user and password information in the clear. Configuring the Results Module to use SSL will prevent these parameters from being displayed.
  • An exception might occur if an environment becomes invalid due to an external reason. Possible reasons for an external environment becoming invalid include:

    • The exception can be avoided if all affected environments are updated before a user attempts to access any of the Results Module components.

      • Deleting the API that a user defined for the environment
      • Changing the password of the API that a user defined for the environment
      • Changing the URL of the installation specified in the environment
      • Removing the Watson Explorer Engine installation specified in the environment
      • Changing the HTTPS security settings of the installation specified in the environment
  • If a long running action (for example an import) times out, other requests (such as login) might occasionally time out.
  • Spotlight Manager
    • If you use Internet Explorer 11 to access IBM Watson Explorer Results Module, you cannot select an image to add to a spotlight in the Spotlight Manager. To work around the issue, add the fully qualified domain name of Results Module to the list of sites that use Internet Explorer Compatibility View. For more information, see Spotlight Manager: Cannot add images when using Internet Explorer 11.
    • If your lowest environment is not correctly pointing to your Watson Explorer Engine installation, saving a spotlight (and possibly terms and collections as well) will fail with no error message.
    • When you delete a spotlight, it will not be immediately deleted in the Watson Explorer Engine, but is guaranteed to be enqueued for deletion and will be deleted eventually. This behavior means that if you perform a search that would have returned the spotlight you just deleted, you might still see the spotlight.
    • It is possible to create spotlights whose names are comprised of spaces. This feature does not cause a functional issue, but links to those spotlights in the Results Module might be difficult to use.
  • Terminology Manager
    • Importing terms that contain commas in their entries causes inconsistent behavior: in the main term, the comma is retained; in the associated terms for an entry, it is treated as a delimiter.
    • It is possible to import a term collection directly to an environment that is not the lowest environment in the promotion chain. This action should not be done, as the environments and promotion chain will become out of sync.
    • Adding multiple relationships between two terms causes a Watson Explorer Engine exception error. For example, this exception occurs if you add colour as a spelling variation of color, and then attempt to add colour as a synonym of color.
Watson Explorer Application Builder:
  • Rich preview: If users access the application by using Firefox, after they click the preview link they might receive a message that says an unresponsive script is running. This issue occurs only when you preview a long document that has many matches for the search term. To work around the issue, use a more specific search term if you can. Also, you can click Continue to allow the script more time to find all the matches in the document.
  • When connected to a directory store, the user entity will return 0 results if the title field is not configured to match a field that exists in the directory store.
  • Entering an invalid facet formula into a refinement widget causes the application search page to be unavailable to end users.
  • Configuring a nested facet to be displayed causes the search page of the application to return 0 results.
  • In Application Builder, when you use the Refine by type option for a refinement widget, the refinements are displayed as the value of the entity name. This entity name is different from the entity name that is displayed in the header of the application if the display name field is populated in the entity configuration.
  • Iframe Widget:
    • The iframe widget contains an iframe, so it has any limitations that an iframe has for a given browser.
    • In some browsers, when you move an iframe widget between columns on the home page, the widget might not resize as accurately as other widgets.

  • Flip Widget:
    • Some widgets behave incorrectly if multiple copies of them exist on the page, for example multiple chart widgets. The flip widget contains multiple nested widgets. If a widget is nested within the flip widget, you can still add a copy of that widget to the page. This behavior might result in the end user seeing one stand-alone version of the widget and one nested version of the widget in the flip widget. This problem exists for some widgets.
    • When you add a flip widget to the page from the widget bar on the home page, the remove icon will not be visible in the header of the flip widget. This behavior means that you cannot immediately remove the widget again. You can work around this issue by reloading the page or closing and re-opening the widget bar.
Watson Explorer Annotation Administration Console:
  • IBM Knowledge Center provides instructions for running the Annotation Administration Console installation program in graphical mode.
  • Error FFQG0024E indicates that a NullPointerException occurred after you export an annotator from Content Analytics Studio to Annotation Administration Console. To avoid this problem, ensure that the following check boxes are clear in the Export to Content Analytics window before you export an annotator:
    • - Restart the collection's index service
      - Re-index existing collection documents
  • These options are not needed because collections in Annotation Administration Console do not include an index service or documents. In Annotation Administration Console, you must enable the exported annotator in the target collection by deploying analytic resources and restarting the text analytics session.
  • You might see misleading messages when you attempt to start the Annotation Administration Console after you run the 'esadmin system startall' command, such as "Context root not found" or "Unable to read the configuration data for collection <collection>.". You can ignore these messages. Services required to run the administration console are still being started. Wait a couple of minutes and refresh your web browser before attempting to access the administration console again.
IBM Software Support:
As problems are discovered and resolved, the IBM Support team updates the IBM Support Portal. Search the IBM Support Portal to find workarounds or solutions to problems.

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Document Information

Modified date:
03 July 2023

UID

swg27042989

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