What's in the Retriever 11.0 Patch?

Note: Retriever is built on top of the Simulator Product Line.  As a result, changes made to Simulator will affect Retriever as well.  For a list of changes made to Simulator 11 see the Simulator 11.0 patch description.  The changes listed below are of particular important to Retriever.

PowerWorld Retriever 11.0 Patch addresses any problems found in Retriever 11.0 following its official release in June 2005.  New features are also added in the patch as appropriate.  

The patch website for Retriever was first created on June 28, 2005.  

The Retriever patch was last updated July 18, 2006.

Click here to go to the patch download page.

New Features/Minor Improvements:

• (June 28, 2005) Added the ability to load a PI Point ID cache binary so that Retriever doesn't need to resolve tags to point IDs each time it's restarted. Still need to add the ability to specify the binary in the configuration file.
• (July 22, 2005) Added an indicator for toolbars that allows users to see what data sources are actively being retrieved from.
• (July 22, 2005) Added an option for users to change the location of the retrieval time stamp. It can now be on the oneline, the status bar, both of them or neither location.
• (July 22, 2005) Added option to save out the filename of the PI point ID cache file and have the cache loaded when the configuration file is loaded.
• (July 22, 2005) Added a menu option under Real-Time Data, Export External/Internal Fields which allows the user to export to a text file or Excel a list of fields for each object type which can be setup with alias subscriptions. Also included a list of fields which are automatically obtained from the underlying model if not subscription exists.
• (August 31, 2005) Added the ability for formatting of color, font color, etc... of substation fields to be determined by the dynamic formatting specified with buses that make up the substation. For instance, this allows the "min kv of max nom kv" substation field to be formatting based on dynamic formatting related to a bus voltage.
• (September 11, 2005) Modified the substation objects so that the font attributes (color, fontname, style) of the fields placed inside the substation can be modified based on the Dynamic Formatting specified for the Bus inside the substation.
• (September 11, 2005) Fixed a crash that could occur when closing Retriever after having uploaded files using the remote access features. Also fixed the remote access behavior so that it works on mapped drives.
• (October 11, 2005) Added the ability on the Alias Maintenance Dialog to save a text file that lists the obsolete aliases and the new aliases.
• (October 18, 2005) Added "Alias Subscription" and "Number of Subscriptions" fields for all objects so that they are always show their value even when in real-time mode
  (October 18, 2005) Modified so that limit values for buses, lines, and interface can be modified in the user-interface even when in Real-time mode. Also allowed modification of Limit Groups.
• (October 20, 2005) Added the ability to specify through the registry if customization of the toolbars is allowed. The only way to set this option is to specify a value of zero for the registry key
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/PowerWorld/Retriever 11/dxToolbar11/ Allow_Customization_Of_Toolbars
• (November 30, 2005) Modified the Substation object so that clicking on a substation now allows invoking commands and opening URLs in a web browser.
• (January 11, 2006) Added the ability to choose whether to highlight all objects or just analogs when highlighting anomalous data.
• (January 11, 2006) Now saves out the questionable flag color to Retriever configuration files.
• (February 2, 2006) Made a changes so that in real-time mode so that Area, Zone and Substation aggregate fields do not include bad quality data from the underlying buses, gens, etc... in the calculation.
• (February 10, 2006) Modified to always take the absolute value of MVA values subscribed in Retriever. Some clients use the sign on the MVA to indicate MW flow direction.
• (February 15, 2006) Made the Island Number field of a bus so that it can be subscribed to an alias.
• (March 6, 2006) Modified the implementation of the Dynamic Formatting. This change should greatly improve the oneline refresh speed for onelines that use dynamic formatting.
• (March 21, 2006) Modified Full Screen Oneline diagrams so that they are set to "Stay-on-Top". Previously the oneline would cover up other stay-on-top forms such as the Windows Task Manager. Now the full screen onelines are made normal windows.
• (April 5, 2006) Added zone fields as subscribable fields.

Bug Fixes:

• (June 28, 2005) When deleting expressions from the list of all subscriptions, sometimes an access violation would occur. This has been fixed. 
• (July 5, 2005) Corrected the way PI datasource Digitals with values of TRUE or FALSE are handled.
• (July 5, 2005) Fixed the way that datasource option "report by exception" is read from an auxiliary file.  Previously this was always being treated as true.
• (July 10, 2005) Subscriptions with default values were not being recognized when the case information display was refreshed.  This has been fixed.
• (July 10, 2005) An access violation would occur on program exit if the user pressed the "Upload" button on the Remote Access page of the Retriever Control Panel.  This has been fixed.
• (July 17, 2005) After deleting all the aliases and data sources in the Retriever control panel, an access violation could occur. This has been fixed.
• (July 17, 2005) Fixed error in the drawing of transmission line connected between substations which could result in the flow arrows appearing in the wrong direction.
• (July 22, 2005) On the alias subscription dialog, the list of "mapped to value fields" that were available for an alias subscription was too large, thus allowing the user to assign an alias subscription to a field for which these do not work. This has been fixed so that the alias subscription dialog now only allows you to define subscriptions that are allowed.
• (August 31, 2005) Fixed bug related to remote access - unable to upload files when the destination is a subdirectory of the login folder.
• (September 13, 2005) Oneline Diagram: Fixed an error with the pie-chart option for "Min Pie Chart Font Size for Warning/Limit" setting. This was not working properly when zooming out on a large display. This has been fixed.
• (September 26, 2005) Modified the connection to ODBC datasource types in Retriever so that the connection is made using standard interfaces that will work on all Windows machines.  Previously Simulator was assuming the installation of other database software.
• (October 4, 2005) Previously the number of custom alias expressions was limited to 200. This hard limitation has been removed and there is no longer a limit to the number of expressions.
• (October 11, 2005) When reading alias definitions from a flat text file, Retriever now ensures that the alias name does not have leading or trailing spaces. This was causing some inconsistent behavior.
• (October 11, 2005) When the connection to an SQL database was lost temporarily, Retriever was not properly restoring the connection when it became available again. This has been fixed.
• (October 11, 2005) Cleaned up the behavior of the "angle reference" so that the columns "Angle (Deg) Ref" shows the proper value when in Real-Time mode.
• (October 18, 2005) When changing username/password options for a datasource, the datasource connection would not properly connect until the connection was terminated. This has been fixed.
• (October 18, 2005) A change was made a few months ago to prevent the user from editing most values when in real-time mode. This change resulted in a bug that made the reading of auxiliary files when in Real-Time mode was no longer working properly. This has been fixed. Now when reading an AUX file, Retriever will modify data even though this data can not be modified through the user-interface.
• (October 20, 2005) Fixed a problem with loading a cache file when no datasources are present that use the cache.
• (October 31, 2005) Fixed bug when showing some area and zone fields in real-time mode. The values would appear as zero even when they should not have.
• (October 31, 2005) Modified the case information display of all subscriptions so that you can paste from an Excel spreadsheet into the display.
• (October 31, 2005) The time-zone correction of machines using the remote configuration was always being set to zero. The time-zone correction is now obtained from the original master data source instead.
• (November 28, 2005) Fixed bug of the Alias form opening and generating an error.
• (December 22, 2005) When in Real-Time mode, it was still possible to click on a circuit breaker and change the status of a line, generator, load, or shunt. This has been fixed.
• (December 22, 2005) Modified so that after each data retrieval all open case information displays are also updated.
• (January 9, 2006) When reading a text file datasource, if alias names were listed without using double quotes, then single-quotes in the alias name would result in an error in reading the datasource. This has been fixed.
• (January 11, 2006) Fixed potential access violation when deleting an alias subscription
• (January 11, 2006) Forced analogs that are supposed to be highlighted when missing show up on a oneline
• (February 2, 2006) When removing unused subscriptions that included expression, the routine to perform this was very slow. This has been fixed.
• (February 2, 2006) Fixed intermittent error when reading in a flat text data source that could cause the data source retrieval to never finish.
• (March 14, 2006) Fixed so that SQL datasources that lose their connection will regain them after the datasource comes back online.
• (April 12, 2006) Fixed access violation which would occur after closing the Contour Options Dialog. This bug was added in the previous patch and presents only a nuisance.
• (April 12, 2006) When using dynamic formatting on a transformer display object, the color of the second half of the transformer was not properly updated. It will now draw both halfs the same color.
• (June 26, 2006) Modified the SQL data retrieval process to greatly speed it up.
• (June 26, 2006) Fixed problem when opening Retriever using the remote configuration option to ensure that it properly opens in Real-Time Mode.