NASIS 5 Release Notes

This page provides a list of the changes in each maintenance release of NASIS. The release number indicates the type of change using a three level numbering scheme. A change in the third number (like from 5.0.0 to 5.0.1) indicates a minor correction or enhancement, the second number is for larger changes or database structure changes, and the first number is for major design changes.

PDF files require Acrobat Reader.

Release 5.4.0

Nov. 15, 2007

• Only data dictionary changes were made in this release.  See this file (PDF; 79 KB) for the changes.

Release 5.3.1

Nov. 10, 2005

• This release fixes a bug in the interpretation process. In certain cases an incorrect result of Not Rated was being produced due to the data in the selected set not being fully loaded.
• The SSURGO download now includes the data needed to work with the new Soil Data Viewer. The download can be used with template database versions 32 or higher.
• The Help files have been brought up to date to show the database structure as of version 5.3.

Release 5.3.0

May 21, 2005

• This release includes support for access to NASIS through Citrix. Citrix provides better performance and the ability to re-connect to NASIS after a dropped connection. It also opens a pathway from the NASIS server to the user's workstation so that reports can be printed or saved directly to the user’s printer or computer.
• Security is improved by using the USDA eAuthentication for logging into NASIS.
• New tables have been added under Legend to record field reviews and correlation documents.
• New tables are added under Site to link the site to Other Vegetative Classifications as we do in Component data.
• New columns have been added to the Legend table to enhance Soil Survey Schedule. They will be used to record:
  • Digital Map Finishing site assigned for the survey area
  • Location of editor for survey manuscript
  • Dates for tracking publication materials at NCGC
• Obsolete choices are no longer shown in choice lists (such as geomorphic features)
• The validation message box can now be resized to make more of the message visible.
• In report scripts, a new APPEND function allows values to be added to an array.

Release 5.2.2

May 8, 2004

• Authorization for export to the Data Warehouse was added in this release. In order to export a survey area to the staging server, a NASIS user must belong to a group named “NASIS Export XX”, where XX is the two-letter abbreviation for the state where the survey is located. The state must be entered in the Legend Area Overlap table.
• Another group named “Staging XX” was added to allow downloading data from the Staging Server. All users who had permission to access the Staging Server were initially given membership in NASIS Export and Staging groups. Data set managers can remove the users from Warehouse XX who only need permission to export data but not to commit it to the warehouse.

Release 5.2.1

April 4, 2004

• This release includes internal programming changes to accommodate a bigger database. It also fixes a bug that allowed an export to the data warehouse to include the wrong number of reasons for an interpretation, and a bug that froze the Select Manager window if you tried to close it with the X button.
• The process number was added to the window title to help keep track of which window belongs to which NASIS session.
• Queries and reports were fixed to handle table aliases correctly. They would cause syntax errors in certain cases.
• The IMATCHES operator is now available in the DEFINE statement for reports and in Crisp evaluation conditions. There is also a version of LOOKUP that uses only two parameters, as in LOOKUP (a,b). Both parameters must be arrays with the same dimension. Parameter a is an expression that produces a value of true or false (1 or 0). The lookup selects values from b when the corresponding value in a is true.

Release 5.2.0

December 17, 2003
Details

• This release provides a new export option to transfer data to the Soil Data Warehouse for archival storage and public distribution. Minor user interface and data dictionary changes are also included.
• A source flag of “P” has been added to calculable data elements to indicate the presence of “prior” data, meaning data values that were populated before the data element got a source flag. The value could have been manually entered in NASIS or brought over from SSSD.

Release 5.1.1

July 20, 2002

• This release includes fixes for some minor bugs, including a crash when an edit setup name is too long, and an SQL error when typing a entry containing a quote mark into a linking field (such as an ecological site name).
• The validations for FOTG required data have been modified to use only the horizons in the selected set. You can reduce the number of unnecessary error messages by using a query to exclude non-populated horizons from the validation.

Release 5.1.0

May 3, 2002
Details

• A major change has been made in NASIS interpretations to provide a “Not Rated” result for situations where there are not enough data available to produce a meaningful interpretation. A Hedge named “Null Not Rated” in the Rule Editor is used to produce a Not Rated result when critical input data is missing (null). A new version of the Soil Data Viewer is needed to make use of the Not Rated interpretation.
• Data from the Component Potential Ecosystem table have been moved to the new Ecological Site table to enforce consistency in the definition of ecological sites (range sites and forest sites). The ecological sites will be defined by the national data management staff, and users will identify the ecological site for a component through the Component Ecological Site table.
• New columns have been added to the Mapunit History table for recording more detail about the correlation event that produced the change to the map unit.
• New columns have been added to the Site table to describe the geology of the site.
• New functions were added in NASIS reports for statistical analysis. The functions ARRAYMEDIAN, ARRAYMODE, and ARRAYSTDEV find the median, mode and standard deviation of a group of data. ARRAYCOUNT finds how many non-null values are in a group of data. Descriptions of the new report features are in the Reports Reference Manual.
• It is now possible to paste a NASIS User into the Group Member table. This will help site administrators manage their group membership lists.
• Several bugs that could cause NASIS to crash were fixed. A significant one is that the sprintf function in reports can now handle long text without crashing.

Release 5.0.9

January 21, 2002

• Corrects a bug in the Evaluation module for Arbitrary Linear and Arbitrary Curve evaluation types. An incorrect result was produced when a data point exactly matched the highest X value in the evaluation curve.
• In the Rule Editor the popup menu for the Edit button appeared at the bottom of the screen. This has been corrected to appear at the cursor location like the other popups.
• Corrects a bug in the use of Tab/Shift Tab to move through the cells of a collapsed editor table (such as the Legend table when the Mapunit table is visible). When tabbing past the end of a row the display would sometimes get out of synch.

Release 5.0.8

November 12, 2001

• Enhances the “Import from Previous Export” procedure in the SSURGO Export. Previously the system used the most recent export for a legend as the source for a list of interpretations, but that was not always what was desired. Now you have the opportunity to select any previous export, through the use of a new choice list that shows the date, user and number of interpretations used in each previous export. The same choice lists are also available for importing a list of text kinds from a previous export.
• The generic interpretation reports (“INTERP - Portrait Table” and similar) now have an expanded capability that allows selection of interps from more than one NASIS site for one report. The parameter dialog now works like the one in the SSURGO export, where you move rule names from a choice list into a list of selections. This requires no changes in existing report scripts--any report parameter that includes the OBJECT MULTIPLE attributes will automatically use the new selection format.
• Fixes a programming problem that caused large reports to be very slow at saving or printing. Once a report preview comes up, doing a print or save will now only take a few seconds.
• The toggle buttons and selections you make in the Report Manager will now be saved if you cancel the Report Manager then bring it back up (with Options / Standard Reports).
• The online help related to these new features is not ready yet. Updated help is being prepared.

Release 5.0.7

October 5, 2001

• Fixes a programming bug that caused a crash during editing of Edit Setups.
• Fixes a programming bug that caused a crash after inserting a new Legend row, then attempting to View a table under Legend without filling in the required fields of the Legend table.
• Corrects the position and font of drop-down choice lists so that the full text of each choice will be visible in the list.
• Adds an option in NASIS Preferences to select the font for Text Editor dialogs.
• Reduces the time that reports and exports will be retained on the servers from 30 days to 2 weeks.
• Fixes a programming bug in the FOCS Export Preview.

Release 5.0.6

August 13, 2001

• The SSURGO Export Manager will now produce a warning message when it finds that the prior export for the current legend had a setting of zero for the Maximum Reasons field. The zero is no longer allowed, so it is changed to the default, 3.
• Another change in the SSURGO Export corrects an erroneous value of “partially successful” which sometimes appeared in the Distribution Status.
• The cursor will change to a busy indicator (gumby) while a report is being saved to a file. This is only noticeable for big report files.
• A number of bugs have been fixed in report processing:
  • If the contents of a file used with the INPUT statement were in the wrong format, a Programming Error would occur and NASIS would exit. This has been changed to a warning message.
  • The KEEP WITH did not correctly keep two sections together at the bottom of a page if the first section ended in a SKIP statement.
  • A core dump was possible during generation of geomorphic descriptions with the GEOMORDESC function with certain unusual data errors. The data error will now be correctly identified.
  • A section with the “LAST OF variable” condition did not print at the end of the report if the variable was created in a DEFINE statement. Only variables from the report's main query would work correctly in LAST OF, but now any variable can be used.
  • The CODELABEL function was not recognized in the Select clause of a query. It now works in a manner comparable to CODENAME.
• A significant new feature has been added to the report language at the request of several people who are trying to prepare manuscript reports. When a long component name was printed followed by dashes the name could take two or more lines. The data for the component was printed alongside the beginning of the name, instead of lining up with the dashes as required. There is now a way to change this vertical alignment.
  
  In a line specification that begins AT position you can follow the position with a vertical alignment specification of TOP or BOTTOM, where the default is TOP. This is meaningful only when the AT specification follows a semicolon, to define a second group of columns. It indicates whether the new column group will line up with the highest or lowest line that has been output so far.
  
  For example, here is some component data printed with the following template:

  TEMPLATE comp SEPARATOR “|”
     AT LEFT FIELD WIDTH 16, FIELD WIDTH 8, FIELD WIDTH 10.
  
  
  |Alpha-----------|    1200|Mollisols
  |Beta, frequently|    1250|Mollisols
  | flooded--------|        |
  |                |        |
  

  This is not the desired alignment for the Beta component data. It would appear this way with the following template:

  TEMPLATE comp SEPARATOR “|”
     AT LEFT FIELD WIDTH 16; AT 18 BOTTOM FIELD WIDTH 8, FIELD WIDTH 10.
  
  
  |Alpha-----------|    1200|Mollisols
  |Beta, frequently|        |
  | flooded--------|    1250|Mollisols
  |                |        |
  

  The manuscript style reports (MANU - *) in the national reports list are being modified to take advantage of this new feature. You can look at them for examples when modifying your own reports.

Release 5.0.5

July 4, 2001

• The SSURGO export was corrected to allow selection of just one text kind for exporting.
• In the FOCS export there were corrections made in the calculation of shrink-swell and of pH for histosols.
• When an interpretation fails, the id of the component where the error occurred will be written to the error log.
• A property that does not include all the output variables required for its mode will produce an error message, rather than crashing NASIS.
• In reports, when unix command (`command` in a DEFINE) contains a # sign, it will not be interpreted as a syntax error.
• In the evaluation editor, when a crisp evaluation is inverted the graph inverts (displays a line at 0 rather than 1).

Release 5.0.4

May 18, 2001

• The View menu was changed to a 2 column list to fit better on the screen.
• The SSURGO export was corrected to use current rule names and sites when bringing in the rule list from a previous export, because the rule name or ownership may have changed since the earlier export.
• The ssurgo_archived date is no longer exported from NASIS, because the actual date of the SSURGO archive is determined after the export.
• The README.TXT file in the SSURGO export was updated to provide correct descriptions of the additional files included in the export.

Release 5.0.3

May 12, 2001

• Two bugs that could cause NASIS to crash were corrected. One occurred after using the Go To button on the Validation error list, and the other was in the Evaluation Editor.
• A pop-up message box was added to allow the system administrators to send messages to active NASIS sessions.

Release 5.0.2

April 22, 2001

• A read-only user is now allowed to edit his/her own NASIS User record.
• The e-mail from the NASIS Export process now includes the date of the request and, if the process fails, the name of the server where the working files are located.
• When previewing a report with unlimited length a maximum of 100 lines will be displayed, to prevent display problems.
• The list of crops to select for a crop yield report was longer than the screen and there was no scroll bar. This has been corrected.

Release 5.0.1

April 6, 2001

• The Object Status indicator was changed to a button. Clicking it gives a more detailed explanation of the object status, including the name, phone number and email address (if available) of the user who has a lock on the object.

Additional Notices

• Password Changes
  We have experienced problems in password management on the NASIS servers. Currently, some users get an error message when they try to change their password. For assistance with this problem, contact the Soils Hotline at (402) 437-5378 or (402) 437-5379.