Welcome to the JMP Development Update for October 22, 2021!
With JMP 17 EA3 available and customer feedback coming in, we are gearing up for JMP 17 EA4 to be cut on 11/5/21. Mia shared these dates for completion of post-freeze tasks relating to EA4, including single source document, EA web page and email plans. Please keep updating your feature pages and let Mia know if you’re planning to make a video.
JMP 16.2 code freeze is coming up on Tuesday, November 2. Thanks to all who are considering important fixes during Approval Mode! Two important JMP 16.2 details:
- Doc teams are working on the 16.2 release notes, and Susan C will be sending these out for review next Wednesday, 10/27. She’ll need your feedback by COB Friday 10/29.
- Also, FYI that Stringbot will not run on the 16.2 branch this weekend. We are now past our UI string freeze and the L10N team is in the midst of returning strings.
This week we did meet as a group on Thursday morning, but it wasn’t for the reason on the invite. Thanks to everyone for joining to hear a tribute to Chung-Wei Ng who is retiring at the end of October. If you missed the meeting, you can find a recording here. Thanks to Russ for helping cook up an enticing topic, and to John Sall and Xan for highlighting Chung-Wei’s many contributions to SAS and JMP (since the very beginning) and for pointing out that her smile always brings out the smiles in others! I’ll miss you greatly, Chung-Wei, but I know you’ll enjoy retirement. And if you ever get bored, you know the JMP EA signup is just a click away! Below is a picture from an informal farewell lunch for Chung-Wei on Tuesday. Congratulations!!!
Also this week, SAS held tracks across the world for Quality Week 2021. You can find recordings of Quality Week sessions from around the world here. There were several external invited speakers and Q&As, as well as internal talks. In Beijing, Eric Wang presented a talk called “Automation Testing In JMP Live” (slides here) and Mike Wu presented on “JMP Query Builder” (slides here).
Thanks to Tonya for sharing this week’s Beta/Crash/Telemetry tracks with crashes selected. The JMP Live report is here: Beta/Crash/Telemetry tracks for the week of 10/22/2021 | JMP Live (sas.com)
Company
Product Release
Topic
Subtopic
Platform
JIRA Ticket
General Announcements
- If you’re willing to be a featured employee on Inside JMP, please download a copy of the Get to Know form. Simply fill out the questions and when you’re done, upload it, along with 3 photos of you to the folder. Thank you for helping to make our JMP family a little more familiar!
Important Upcoming Dates
- JMP 16.2 Code Freeze - 11/2/21
- JMP 17.0 EA4 – 11/5/21
- JMP 17.0 EA5 – 12/10/21
- Please visit Confluence for a full list of JMP 16 and JMP 17 dates.
JMP Development Updates
Data Discovery
- Ernest: Miscellaneous defects. New configure levels feature on graph builder axis variable context menu (see below).
- Evan: With Window Handler bugs. Helping to fix a couple Managed issues. Removing uses of Top::setOpcode to prevent improper caching and subsequent confusion over JSL messages. Investigating adding more EA telemetry for JSL functions, operators, and messages.
- Dave B: Fixed parallel plot problem with redo analysis not honoring sorting on the second frame, updated hover labels so that the seg now handles converting from absolute row to a relative row, fixed pie seg hover labels to be stable when filtering rows, fixed blank hover label problem when opening a journal with a parallel plot.
- Dan S: Work on document-save logic and avoiding an initial paint before the custom script runs in App Builder. Fixed crash in recent timer work for Bubble Plot animation. Default to categorical filter for continuous numeric data with value labels. Working on crash in Graph Builder bagplot, and investigating data filters on virtual join tables with linked rowstates.
- Xan: Working on axis, color and hover label bugs.
DOE
- Brad: Created my presentation for FTC’s William G. Hunter Award talk. Mentored a young statistician at the DAE conference.
- Ryan L: Developer Tutorial on covariates webinar for Mastering JMP and continued work on design explorer.
Host
- Bryan B: Working with Nan Wu to update JMP’s MySQL support for both the 5 and 8 ODBC driver. Fixed export of selected columns in a data table to SAS.
- John Schroedl: Investigated crash with undo in edit box. Debugged issue with version string in .jer files. Updated jmp live publish dlg from dlgPick to dlgSave. Removing a number of unnecessary elaborated type specifiers. Discussed adding indeterminate mode to checkbox.
- Paul N: Daniel and I are making progress with AWS activation. Have tested an AWS activated build of Subscription, JMP Trial, and JMP Pro Demo. In the process of testing the support pages used by Tech support to view and update serial numbers, the generator pages used by Business Operations to create new serial numbers and an AWS manual activation page. Reviewed 16.2 Blackduck security scans and will generate the document file to add to the JIRA ticket. Will generate required outputs from Xcode and Visual Studio analyze as well.
HTML5
- John Powell: Began working on Parallel Plot selection and brushing. Tried out Ernest’s new cool feature to combine categories in Graph Builder and reported JMP-7681 that will prevent it from working correctly on JMP Live. Helped Praveena submit her changes to restructure our unit test folders. Gave Mayowa some advice on adding support for Row Labels in Parallel Plots. Reviewed Bryan’s code to support Packed Bars in Interactive HTML. Added Packed Bars component to the JMPHTML Jira project and JiraBot. Tried Florence Kussener’s workaround for lack of Graphlet support in Interactive HTML and JMP Live for the MDMCC platform. Sent Florence links to JMP User Community articles to help Lafarge and other potential JMP Live customers get the most out of JMP Live.
- Bryan F: Fixed issue that Anna found where packed bar charts were not immediately redrawn when row selections were inverted. JMPHTML-1298: Added a separator line between primary bars and packed bars when using bar color for packed bars. JMPHTML-1301: Added white space between packed bars when the packed bars placement type is "Separate". Added code not to draw bars that are smaller than a pixel in either width or height when there are over a million bars. Getting JMPHTML-1291 ready for review. The issue is packed primary label lost when response axis uses log scale. Participated in design meeting for how to separate test images from test code.
- Praveena: Worked on JMPHTML-504, where the Web/test folder structure was updated. The image files being used in parser and view unit test were moved to a separate images folder. Analyzed JMPHTML-1107 and started work on JMPHTML-1240 to fix the missing back ground for text segment in the exported HMTL file.
- Mayowa: Working on adding row labels to parallel plots (JMPHTML-1279).
JMP Live
- Aurora: Hierarchical Folders: user requirements & server design, update code that adds one empty folder (simplify, support GraphQL, support adding into existing folder). Big thanks to the JMP Live team, Dieter, and Stephanie for cheerfully participating in several meetings about how hierarchical folders can play nicely with existing features.
- Bryan B: Making more JMP Desktop to JMP Live interaction have the ability to be threaded.
Statistics
- Jianfeng: I have added a new feature of “Show Excluded Rows” in MDMCC requested by Exon (JMP-3410) and other customers. It is ready for the next EA. I also pushed several fixes for JMP16.2 as well.
- John Sall:
- In the Profiler, I changed "Spec Limit Profiler" to "Design Space Profiler" in response to Mia's survey (JMP-4839). Mia's survey had lots of informed opinions – there was no clear winner, but the new name had fewer negative votes. Made another name change in Hierarchical Cluster to change Standardize("method") to Standardize By("method") in order to make it backward compatible with previous releases (JMP-7445).
- The Robust PCA options in Explore Outliers and Explore Missing Values imputation now allow results to be shown even if iterations run past their limits. (JMP-7634 and JMP-7645).
- Fit Stepwise now supports broadcast mode for the three comboBoxes (JMP-7639). This helps users that have multiple Y columns or By groups.
- The Profiler Simulator is starting to support custom random distributions for mixtures (JMP-7595), with a preliminary Dirichlet implementation, with Laura to work on Mixture Uniform (polytope).
- Fit Least Squares now produces warnings in the "Parameter Estimates" and "Effect Tests" reports for main-effect terms in mixture factors, because users often mistakenly think that they test the components named, rather than being confounded with other components. (JMP-5787).
- Doing some exploratory testing, in consultation with Jeremy, on speeding up matrix multiplications, either using BLAS or in transposing matrices to avoid cache-misses. So far the transposing seems to be the big winner. Will seek Josh Griffin's advice. Here is a graph showing that transposing the matrix inside Random SVD to make the loop iterate on adjacent elements improves the speed but using the BLAS routines doesn't make much difference.
- Peng: Completed a feature in Nonlinear that lets a user add profilers of user provided functions of parameter estimates and profiler factors (JMP-7609). Fixing recently reported issues.
- Laura C-S: Continued working on updating SEM code, including changes to the SEM Diagram for multiple group analysis. As a member of the planning committee for the upcoming DATAWorks workshop, I had several meetings to identify potential presentations for the program. Met with a couple of customers interested in using SEM and with Rob Lievense to show some SEM analyses of functional data.
- Annie: Added the functionality in CCB to better handle launches from Process Screening by removing predefined limits whenever the user changes the chart type or summarization.
Stat Documentation
- Michael C: Worked with Karen, Caleb, and Sheila to get equation bug fixes for DOE Sample Size Explorers into the 16.0, 16.1, and 16.2 help; attended (and had follow-up discussions of) Global English training with doc team; documented NFs in Mixed Models and Fit Life by X.
- Colleen: Spent this week catching up on email after vacation, watching/attending meetings for the Global English String updates, and working on OSI updates for the Profiler.
Stat Testing
- Tonya: Testing the new Show Excluded Rows option in MDMCC and bug verification.
- Mark: Working with Brad and Joseph on design of Easy DOE. Working with Jacob on testing Easy DOE. Returning to spectral data analysis and dissolution profile analysis to help Jeremy.
- Jacob: Testing Multivariate RPCA Imputation and Robust PCA Outliers. Adding more tests for the Imputation Report in Explore Missing Values. Verifying Jira issues and adding unit tests. Investigating performance issues.
Life Sciences Updates
- John Cromer: Updated handling for JMP Clinical 17 population variables in study metadata. Refreshed the Outliers report with the most recent conventions. Added modes to return cloned objects in Study/Domain class methods returning domain/variable object lists. Working on expanding variable requirements support for suffix wildcards (e.g., AEACN*, ACN*).
- Drew: Getting my laptop and everything sorted. Diving into getting the java bits of AE Narratives to launch on the Mac.
- Anisa: Worked with Shannon to convert rest of defects to Jira. All JMP Clinical defects have now been converted.
Product Management
- Dieter: Learned how to install a JMP Live instance on Azure. Worked with Poseida on some sign-in issues to their JMP Live site.
Technical Support
- Duane: A few of us in TS met with Ryan DeWitt to discuss the production of a series of short videos to help with renewing licenses, installation, and updating our products. I think these will be extremely useful to our customers in the future. Additionally, many of you may have worked with Melanie Hession in the past. She is retiring from SAS at the end of the month. She is part of SAS Retail Tech Support, (not a part of JMP Tech Support), but she has contributed a great deal to JMP over the last few years and she will be missed. Many thanks to her for JMP support efforts!
- Here are the TS JMP Live reports. (JMP Live 16) Here is information regarding Jira tickets opened by Tech Support.
Development Operations
- Shannon: Interviewed candidates for R&D admin with Amy and Robin. Beth Evans has accepted our offer and will join us November 2! Participated in Quality Week Inquest session with Maanasa.
Documentation
- Sheila: Finished SEO verifications. The project is complete. Thanks to Susan, Michael, Colleen, and Karen for your hard work on this project. It was quite labor intensive. Ordered new VM for the JMP 16.0 and 16.1 help builds and ordered software. Fixed callout problem in help. Finished my part of the release notes. Gave Qiana a demo of FrameMaker, part two to come! Attended Sue Kocher’s class on writing strings according to Global English recommendations. Helped Melanie with the filename marker project. Did a test of the new filename markers in help builds.
- Qiana: Various meeting including Doc Team meeting, chat with Tom Pedersen about the Genomics and Clinical doc, discussion with writers and L10N to determine what standards are needed for strings and our next steps, and intro conversation with Brian Corcoran to determine his team’s doc needs and gather feedback. Continued JMP education and Management onboarding process.
- Susan C: This week, we finished up the SEO project – yay! Thanks to all the writers who put in such effort. All of the books have now been optimized for searching in ways we think should make a positive difference. We’re working on the 16.2 release notes, and I’ll be sending these out for review next Wednesday. We’ll need feedback in by COB Friday.
- Karen: Working on finishing up our SEO (search engine optimization) project, finished a project to remove manual steps from screen shot jsl flies, updated equations in the sample size explorer chapter (with the help of Caleb and Michael), and starting to work on updates from defects for 17.0.
System/Host Testing-Cary
- Mike M: BIG THANKS to Josh L for his continued help with the Azure VMs! He got us access to more external URLs that were required for interactive JMP Help tests on Sikuli. Worked through several fileSpec issues with Aaron. Opened a couple of defects on the large Managed change. Investigating drag/drop issue with App Builder.
- Hunter: Installed Monterey 12.0.1 RC on Intel and M1 host testing Macs in the lab and ran tests, file paths regression testing within projects, and updated the status for JMP-413 (crash opening BulkData.jmp) after testing with current builds of JMP 16.2 and 17.
- Hui: Continued working on HTML5 parallel plot testing. Reported issues on HTML5, Journal, and Graph Builder. Entered 8 issues in Jira.
- Josh L: JMP Live Jira testing and Bug verification. Fielding JMP Live deployment and Azure deployment questions. I also had a few calls with the SAS network team got get some firewall issues resolved.
- Cary / Beijing JMP Live Testing Jira Status
- 10 Stories in Testing
- 63 Stories in Test Ready
- 17 Bug Created in the last 7 days
- 18 Stories / Bugs Closed in the last 7 days
System/Host Testing-Beijing
- Eric Wang: (1) Working on Control Chart warning Jira items, added integration tests for warning settings in space and warning notifications. (2) Working on JMP 16.2 regression testing for SAS Integration and JMP Publish. (3) Jira stories/bugs testing. (4) Quality week presentation, slides have been uploaded to here.
- Da Li: (1) Completed JMP 16.2 Regression testing for Import/Export. (2) Testing WEBJMP-3692 Back End: Re-work allow download mechanism for posts.
- Mike Wu: (1) JMP 16.2 3rd party software regression testing on ODBC drivers, see BRDSTG-3217. (2) Working on JMP 16.2 regression testing BRDSTG-3220. (3) Prepare for the presentation for Quality Week 2021.
- Kimi: (1) Completed JMP 16.2 regression testing for Python Interface and Formula Depot, see BRDSTG-3220. (2) Investigating UT failures. (3) Summarize the testing of Python Interface and let Paul and Audrey review. (4) Learning SAS Integration.
- Nala: (1) Completed JMP 16.2 regression testing for CAS Integration, standalone Regex and Text Explorer. (2) Jira stories/bugs testing for Move post and Publish.
Note from Shannon
My daughter Hannah is very excited to be acting in her first play in nearly two years at Northwood High School this weekend. She’s playing the part of Oliver in Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic. It’s a 2015 original off-Broadway produced play very carefully based on the events of the Harry Potter books (so as not to infringe their copyrights) and told from the Hufflepuff perspective. The actors can’t wear Hogwarts themed closing or even say “Harry Potter”, only “Harry” or “Potter.” We’re looking forward to seeing it after all the long hours of practice the kids have put in!
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
