Alphablox Strikes Back - Part 1

As of current moment, latest version of IBM Alphablox is 8.4.1 that comes with DWE 9.1.1. Anyway, I'm using 8.4.0.1 which I installed the fix pack separately after DWE 9.1.

Check out the relevance fixes applied in 8.4.0.1 below:

Fixes for customer-reported issues (APARs) in the Alphablox 8.4.0.1 release

APAR Abstract
PJ31104 Column sort option on an Alphabox Cube bookmark is not being applied when the bookmark is restored
PJ31413 When it meets the following requirements, an alias and a peculiar name cannot change over
PJ31309 legendStyle should be a valid chart property
PJ31310 Legend incorrectly visible on dial charts
PJ31290 BookmarkMatcher performance makes it unusable
PJ31211 More errors drilling down on waterfall members
PJ31222 Dial charts don't work on Japanese and Chinese windows
PJ31231 ReportBlox interaction stops after query is issued via a select list
PJ31233 The default query in Query Builder is translated
PJ31247 Histogram Pareto (sorted histogram) checkbox does not persist
PJ31311 Incorrect axis information on Waterfall Chart
PJ31407 Traffic lights fail with aliases and removeSuffix
PJ31414 PersistenceBlox and DB2 Connection staying open
PJ31439 Toggling parentFirst and parentLast gives incorrect order
PJ31483 Using an FormEventListener to display the visibility of a MemberSelectFormBlox causes the PresentBlox Menu/Data list not to appear
PJ31490 Cannot get user credentioals from Windows 2003 Active Directory LDAP
PJ31494 Default for setAxisLabelLayout documented incorrectly
PJ31520 Placing 5 slicer dimensions on the PageBlox cause adjacent cell to be black on selection
PJ31526 Excel template - Too many different cell formats
PJ31523 Render to XML of DataBlox fails
PJ31302 resolveMember does not work against [cubeName].memberName with relational cube
PJ31537 ReportBlox PDF requests Chinese font for Japanese data
PJ31545 render=html causes sorted headers to use larger font
PJ31563 Member Filter only contains calculatedMember if in first position
14739,344,000 & 19917,49R,000 WL SERVER CRASHES WHEN CONNECTION ATTEMPT IS MADE TO SSAS (MSOLAP 2005) IF DOMAIN IN USER NAME OMITTED
PJ31575 FATAL error if connecting to WebSphere before initialization complete
PJ31589 Shipped EMail bean class files generate bad table+chart email attachment
PJ31615 getChartCurrentDimensions returns incorrect members if dimensions moved via data layout panel.
PJ31428 Grid lines broken in PDF file when using expand/collapse mode (or other images in cells)
PJ31626 Code conversion error (mis-mapping) problem in ABX with Essbase bridge.
PJ31633 NullPointerException when replaceMembers is called on SerializedMDBQuery
PJ31648 y1FormatMask cannot handle division
PJ31668 DBCS not working in ReportBlox in FastForward to Excel
PJ31247 Histogram Pareto (sorted histogram) checkbox does not persist
PJ31693 Alphablox loops when BFO does not find a useable font.
PJ31682 java.lang.NullPointerException at com.ibm.icu.util.TimeZone.getDefault(TimeZone.java:700) with icu4j_3_4_2
PJ31707 GridBlox columns misaligned in portlet with BiDi
PJ31324 axis labels overlap in histogram, horizontal with 90 degree angle
PJ31044 cellFormat not() clause fails when multiple members are specified
40,951,122 Repository Conversion Utility Memory Consumption Prevents Upgrades
PJ31138 PageBlox Diminsions and PageBlox members containing DBCS as null characters
PJ31139 Wide ReportBlox PDF output overlaps
PJ31140 Suppressed rows showing on chart legend - regression
PJ31141 Specifying a page break on a column member breaks after first row member
PJ31158 ReportBlox should use the external PDF server
PJ31159 Regression - editing a cell with String data causes ParseException
PJ31160 Refreshing page which deletes and defines DataBlox crashes server
PJ31161 No ChartBlox.getHistogramOptions()
PJ31162 PDF pageBreak property is one member off
PJ31148 PresentBlox render=printer produces incorrect HTML when used to create the body of an e-mail message
PJ31129 render=printer concatenates previous Blox component
PJ31242 nullPointerException on render=printer in frameset
PJ31268 Scrollbar within table nearly disappears when screen is resized
PJ31315 Error when member filter page is started
PJ31388 Negative Scale error using Oracle database
PJ31364 Support for spanning of data cells
PJ31374 Rapid connections to the Alphablox server causes RenderManager Could not find object
CSD PJ31358 within a PresentBlox no longer makes a toolbar disappear.
PJ31363 alphablox calc editor issue
PJ31390 Regression: Traffic lighting doesn't work properly with textual data in cells
PJ31386 Formatting issue when export to default Excel template is selected.
PJ31416 PDF rendering breaks if report is more than one page
PJ31452 Invalid scope built for format mask and traffic lights when member contains parentheses
PJ31454 Sort is retained on wrong member when sort on opposite axis is removed
PJ31470 Wrap cells containing very long strings of data for PDF so that data does not overlap
PJ31482 Cube Manager dialog will not start
PJ31476 Combo bar/line charts do not display line against RDB data
PJ31500 Using percentage format mask multiplies value by 100 in Excel
PJ31511 Excel properties tab shows garbage for DBCS in PageFilterDimension and PageFilterSelection
PJ31538 Change of behavior in QueryFilter object
PJ31590 Collapse not working on mergedHeaders if inner dimension is drillable
PJ31579 Issue with render=xls with GroupBlox (ReportBlox)
PJ31624 MSAS dimensions are showing up as parents when they are leaf members
PJ31647 Show siblings will only perform a single level drill down with AsyncDataNavigation example

Some of the reported bugs do affect me, for example, the sorting order missing after restoring from bookmark, is really an annoying one when your customer desires a ranking report.


The Export to Excel toolbar (The one on the top right corner) functionality doesn't work anymore. It keep on gave me error message that says "Unable to open xxxx". I'm not sure whether installing 8.4.0.1 causes this because I didn't test out that function in previous releases.


After a round of debugging, the root of the above problem was the missing of a page directive in /war-root/excel.jsp, maybe due to accidental editing. Now the function works fine.