pasUnity 4.47.0.0 RTM is now generally available.

This release contains performance improvements and significant new functionality.

Job parallel-execution improvements

pasUnity now has a priority system that controls precedence of job execution.  The new job priority can be configured as lowest, low, normal, high, and highest.  All existing jobs are set to normal during the upgrade process and can be adjusted at any time.

pasUnity has also made significant enhancements in job parallel processing and resource governance.  Users can now configure a maximum number of threads that jobs can execute with at a job or impeller level.  Combined with job priority configuration this can be leveraged to create a highly performant job system while controlling pasUnity so that external products and services (such as web services) are not overwhelmed by the massive parallel processing capabilities in pasUnity.

Macro Designer and Regular Expression Designer

A new regular expression designer (F3) has been created that allows you to prototype and test regular expressions.  It can be used in conjunction with macro commands and sample test data and provides a query-designer like UI for analyzing the results.  Additionally, the Macro Designer (F4) has been updated with feature parity similar to those in the new Regular Expression designer.  In both tools you can press F5 to execute your code and view the results.

Navigation improvements

Many view (such as history and work queues) now have a Navigate To Definition image button that when clicked jumps the user straight to a job definition in the UI saving you time having to drill through the UI manually.

DropBox job step improvements

pasUnity DropBox job steps now allow the targeting of reference files (files that do not have a target date in the Matrix).  DropBox related job steps that add or modify data files now can optionally return the Data File ID into a parameter for use in subsequent job steps. 

Basic wildcard syntax has been deprecated on DropBox job steps in favor of the much more powerful regular expression syntax.  The upgrade process will automatically update wildcard based syntax on the tag name filter to use regular expressions.  Additionally, there is now a file name regular expression filter that can be applied wherever tag expressions exist.

New job step: Update File in DropBox

The Update File in DropBox job step allows the user to change properties on data files such as file name, tag, contributor, and even the target date on which it appears in the matrix.  Additionally, work in the queue can be purged or new work added due to file reprocessing.  This job step is very powerful and if used incorrectly can have unintended consequences.  It is important that you familiarize yourself with the product documentation and have a thorough understanding of your DropBox impellers prior to implementing this job step.

New job step: Matrix Reporting

The Matrix Reporting job step can be used to send file omission notifications for one or more matrices.  Based on a combination of date ranges, column frequency, file name regular expressions, tag regular expressions, and matrix row filters files that are missing from a matrix are detected and summarized into email notifications.  Email notifications are configured globally or at the column and row level.

pasTransfer ETL job step improvements

The pasTransfer ETL job step now default the pasTransfer agent name to {SYSTEM-NAME} token which at runtime resolves to the name of the pasUnity agent.  This is in favor of hard-coded machine names.  This allows for easy moving of jobs between agents or cloning.

Matrix Frequencies

Previously, expected file frequencies could only be configured within pasPortal.  Now, this can be done directly from within pasUnity on the Matrix editor by selected a matrix column name and configuring the frequency values in the side-load editor.  This supports the new Matrix Reporting job step.

Manual Job Execution

When manually executing jobs you can now view the logs in your local browser after the job completes.  Additionally, the execution window can be spawned multiple times and will be tied to the pasUnity main window UI thread so that the execution windows are always layer on top of the main windows (but can be moved to other monitors) and will automatically cancel execution and terminate if the main pasUnity window is closed.

Job cloning changes

When jobs were cloned the job itself, all impellers, and all job steps were disabled by default to ensure that end-users configured them correctly prior to use.  Now the job and job steps will return the original values for enabled and impellers will still be disabled by default.  Chances are that you do not want to have to toggle each job step back on but likely will want to review the job for correctness before configuring and enabling the impellers.

Lookup macro command and Lookup caching added.

Jobs now have the ability to download and cache lookups from pasPortal for use during job execution.  A new Lookup macro command allows you to access the cached lookups within job steps.  This new capability can be used to eliminate switch statements in PowerShell and Managed Code job steps by moving user-maintained information out of code blocks and into pasPortal where the user can easily maintain the data without modifying job design.

Regex macro command.

A new Regex macro has been created that allows you to extract a pattern from an input string and either return the results of a match or return custom success and failure values that can be used in conjunction with other macro commands.

Exception macro command.

The existing Exception macro has been enhanced to allow conditional exception raising while implementing pass-through behavior so that exceptions are only raised in specific scenarios with minimal coding.  Ideal for mapping sheets.

Service auto-recovery configuration.

The pasUnity installed now auto-configured all of the pasUnity services for automatic restart 10 seconds after a failure is detected.  This adds resiliency to the service and ensures that a catastrophic failure does not end up in a massive work backlog or monitors failing to enqueuer work.

UI Performance Enhancements.

Commonly accessed information from pasPortal such as Lookup mapping sheet names, Task names, and Dashboards and Roles are now cached on first access and remained cached until either the cache is reset from the menus or context buttons.  Moving between objects (such as jobs) that rely heavily on this information is now extremely fast.