Fixed potential security issues, including items proactively identified by vulnerability scanning software or PTC Quality Assurance testing. Please upgrade as soon as possible to take advantage of these important improvements.

For important recommendations about the use and update of third-party software, see technical support article CS320194.

A new TEXT op type has been added to support the use of free form text information in training, scoring, signals, profiles, and cluster jobs. Free text data can be filtered and configured to reduce its impact on job performance. For more information about the new opType, see OpType DataType Combinations.

For information about how text data is converted to analysis-ready continuous data, see Transforming Free-Form Text for Analysis.

TA-4520

Previously, the Asynchronous microservice could only handle a detect metadata request that included a URI to the CSV data file. In this release, capability has been added so the Async microservice can detect metadata directly from data included in the body of the request.

TA-5037

New keys for updating Analytics Server keystore and truststore passwords have been added to the utility script for updating encrypted passwords. For more information, see Updating Encrypted Keys and Passwords.

TA-6717

A new DATETIME data type allows Analytics Server to accept date and time information in a more readable format. The date and time data is converted to epoch time from one of three valid formats. For more information, see OpType DataType Combinations.

TA-6771

The ENTITY_ID column is now optional when preparing time series data. When all of the data belongs to a single entity, this change eliminates the need to manually enter an ID for that entity. The entity is inferred when the time series data is used to build a model. The resulting PMML model will still contain a field indicating that the entity has been defaulted. For more information see OpType DataType Combinations

TA-6772

A new button option has been added to the following list pages to allow automatic copying of specific Job IDs without the need to view additional screens:

TA-6773

A new button option has been added to the Datasets list page to retrieve the metadata definition from an existing dataset. The metadata is saved as a JSON file that can be used to create new datasets with the same schema.

TA-6774

A new optional Description field has been added to the following dialog boxes so additional information can be added about datasets, signals, or profiles when they are created:

TA-6775

To simplify the configuration of SSL certificates, the Analytics Server will no longer require the use of a Java truststore. Instead, the installer will automatically generate individual truststores for ThingWorx and Analytics Server and can import the necessary SSL certificates. In addition to streamlining installation, this change provides additional flexibility and reduces the maintenance burden of supporting Java patches. Upgrades to future Java versions will be easier too.

TA-6869

The following event statuses have been removed from the list of possible trigger events when creating a new analysis event:

TA-6381

When Analytics Server is installed with no SSL protections enabled for ZooKeeper, an error is generated. This issue has been resolved so that Analytics Server will not validate for a keystore unless SSL protections for ZooKeeper are enabled during installation.

TA-7132

When adding a data filter, the Equal To filter functionality is not working as expected for certain numeric model parameters, including ROC, RMSE, RMSE Normalized, Person Correlation, and MCC. This issue has been resolved so that all filtering functionality works as expected.

TA-7296

When a predictive scoring job is submitted via a REST API request, the information displayed on the Model list page in Analytics Builder is incorrect. The Number of Records Scored column should reflect the number of data rows submitted in the REST request. Instead, it displays a value of 0.

This issue will be resolved in a future release.

TA-4715

When a filter is applied to the Signals list page and results in no matching jobs, the list is not cleared properly in a Chrome browser and previous results are displayed. This issue will be resolved in a future release.

TA-4972

When a model is created using a large dataset (1 GB or more), the display of the model results can be slow. To avoid a timeout failure, change the timeout settings as follows:

Changing the timeout settings will not resolve the slow performance but it will prevent a timeout failure. This issue will be resolved in a future release.

TA-6766

There is currently a dataset size limit of 9 million rows by 30 columns for predictive scoring. When scoring is run on a larger dataset, an error is generated and scoring fails. There is no work around for this issue but it will be resolved in a future release.

TA-6780

In ThingWorx, if the Alert Processing Subsystem is not configured to point to the Analytics Server, Anomaly Detection cannot function successfully. However, when an anomaly alert is created on a Thing, this connection is not validated during the alert initialization. The anomaly alert still goes through the calibration stage and then fails on training with an unclear message. This issue affects Anomaly Detection in both standalone mode or as part of a ThingWorx cluster.

As a work around, set the Alert Processing Subsystem manually in ThingWorx Composer.

This issue will be resolved in a future release so that the Alert Processing Subsystem configuration is validated on initialization of an anomaly alert and any failure due to this connection will include a clear message.

TA-6973

TA-6976

When running discrete analysis events, where a new job is created for every event trigger, performance issues are occurring. Either the data sent from ThingWorx to the agent is not processed in a timely manner, or the agent appears to stop working. The faster data is scheduled for processing, the faster the agent fails. This issue will be resolved in a future release.

As a work around, always select the Run as Simulation check box when creating an analysis event. For a simulation analysis event, a single job is created and is executed for every event trigger. For more information, see Working with Analysis Events.

TA-7374

Analytics Manager agents are experiencing intermittent performance issues during scoring. The issue causes a backup in the processing queue. This issue occurs in both standalone mode and in ThingWorx cluster. This issue will be resolved in a future release.

TA-7375

When an analysis replay is created and it does not include data for the specified time frame, an error is generated. However, an empty analysis replay instance is still created containing no records. The empty instance must be deleted before another replay can be created for the same time frame. This issue will be resolved in a future release.

TA-7619

In ThingWorx Analytics Server 8.5, confidence models for Boolean and categorical goals could be created during training. When these confidence models are scored, the scoring output includes confidence interval information along with the prediction results. In a future release, the confidence interval information will no longer be returned as part of the scoring results for confidence models created in Analytics Server 8.5 with Boolean or categorical goals. In preparation for future upgrades, you should update any application code that is related to scoring these types of models. Ensure that your application code does not rely on the confidence interval results.