Product Updates

This Q&A is dedicated for customers running AIMMS applications on AIMMS PRO installed on a Windows Server 2012. It is adjuscent to an e-mail we have sent inviting you to plan and perform your Windows upgrade.Please read it carefully and do not hesitate to contact us on support@aimms.com if you have any questions. Q&A 1. What is involved in a Windows server migration from 2012 to Windows Server 2019/2022?A: A Windows server migration involves moving data, applications, and settings from the old server to the new server. This can include transferring files, databases, and user accounts, as well as configuring the new server to match the settings of the old server. 2. Why should I consider migrating from Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2019/2022?A: Windows Server 2019/2022 includes several new features and improvements, such as improved security, better performance, enhanced virtualization, and improved management. Additionally, Windows Server 2012 is approaching the end of its support lifecycle, which means that clients will no longer receive security updates or technical support from Microsoft and AIMMS. 3. How long does a Windows server migration typically take?A: The time it takes to complete a Windows server migration can vary depending on the size and complexity of your environment. With simple setups and good preparation of the local IT expert it can take 2 hours per set up migration.In situations with lost domain knowledge and higher level of set up complexity the migration can take days.Yet, please know that we are here to support you and will make sure to help you minimize any downtime/lack of access to your resources.   4. What are some common challenges that can arise during a Windows server migration?A: Common challenges during a Windows server migration can include issues like:Database connection issues or connection to external data resources; Access of users to the new URLs; Single sign on (passwordless) log on issues; Not knowing about other undocumented or specific local custom set up.These issues are usually minimized by AIMMS due to our pre-migration questionnaire/preparation which helps us to better understand the customer’s set up. 5. How can I ensure a successful Windows server migration?A: To ensure a successful Windows server migration, it is important to plan and prepare thoroughly, test the migration process in a non-production environment, respond to AIMMS Pre-migration questionnaire so that we can have a better understanding of your set up and create a backup and recovery plan in place in case of any issues. 6. Who needs to be involved in the process from your side?It is strongly recommended to involve the following experts in the process:a qualified IT professional who knows (or can reverse engineer/troubleshoot) the existing PRO set up ;An app developer who knows the applications and can make minor changes and re-upload the apps if necessary; An end user who can test that the set up functions as expected after the migration process is completed;The lack of any of the above parties may extend the migration process. 7. What will happen if I do not migrate my servers now?AIMMS PRO will continue to work as is, but AIMMS will not support the platform. This means that we will not be able to assist you in case of issues, will not be able to assist you when you do upgrade, etc. 8. What is your responsibility as an AIMMS Client? Provide AIMMS with detailed information about your set up by responding to a questionnaire prepared by AIMMS. The question will enable us to better understand your current environment. Prepare your servers for migration by backing up the requiring data, having up to date SSL certificate, taking Screenshots of your environment and more as specified on the migration documentation which will be shared. Migrating your windows servers to the newer versions.9. What is AIMMS responsibility?Provide the client with AIMMS PRO Migration questionnaire. Provide the client with AMMS PRO Migration plan/instructions. Provide technical assistance to the client when issues arise because of migration. 10. What is the cutoff date for the migration.We are hoping to see all our clients migrate by November 15, 2023. We however advise that you start the migration process early. 

 A collection of new technologies much improves how you can manage, import and export data in, into and from AIMMS. This matters because it:can improve end-user experience reduces the effort to integrate with external data systems allows leverage of emerging corporate data repositories Therefore I invite you to learn about these new technologies and explore their relevance for your job. You can read a bit more in this update.  Without data there is no optimization. Without data AIMMS models cannot do their magic. Without data management tooling AIMMS models will not have data. For 30+ years we have been developing data management features into our products. First we focused on files and file storage, starting with files on your local computer. Later on centrally in PRO Storage, a first step in enabling multi-user data sharing. Next we added support for relational databases to manage data for AIMMS models. Many app developers adopted this method. It enabled powerful querying, improved multi-user experiences and improved data exchange with external platforms. AIMMS data management technology is now entering a 3rd 'wave’ with a return to files, a move to lower-code data exchange features and use of 3rd party Azure technology. In our eyes this 3rd wave is opening an ‘opportunity candy store’ to improve user experience, app developer productivity and data exchange with external systems. Why are we making this move?We noticed customers increasingly consolidating their data in centralized data repositories such as data lakes, often using Parquet files. We saw a growing preference for using REST API services for data exchange.  We realized the majority of AIMMS models work with what-we-call ‘immutable data sets’. A complete set of data values that is loaded/saved as one entity. For that a file is more logical container than a relational database.  Most of our customers are adopting cloud vendors such as Azure and AWS as their primary IT platforms. What is the move?A combination of technologies:Data Exchange Library, a new AIMMS library that offers low-code tools for (a) converting model identifiers into files and vice versa, to (b) generating REST Clients and REST Servers for data import and export. We are adding an Azure Data Lake Storage service to each cloud account. This enables app developers to build powerful data management solutions, for example storing and retrieving AIMMS model data for access by external systems, possibly with the growing collection of off-the-shelf connectors for Azure Data Lake Storage, including PowerBI, Databricks, Snowflake, SQL Server, etc.  A growing collection of ready-to-use connectors between AIMMS models and applications such as Snowflake and PowerBI. Features to deploy Python scripts inside your AIMMS cloud account, running in an exclusive Docker container with a choice of Python images. So why am I telling you this?I am excited to share this '3rd wave’ with you, because of all the opportunities it offers. I believe it will empower you, AIMMS app developer, to achieve more with less effort. I believe it will help you further increase your impact. And ultimately I am confident this will lead to even better decisions, our AIMMS purpose. And how about CDM?We have come to see that CDM, Collaborative Data Management, is a very powerful tool for building AIMMS applications that support concurrent data editing by multiple users. And we also realize it is a complex tool that requires considerable learning. So we recommend only to use it for that 'sweet spot'. FinallyMy intention with this update is to make more AIMMS app developers explore and adopt these important innovations, to trigger also their curiosity. I am not the right person to give you detailed explanations. Our documentation and my colleagues in User Support will take care of that.And I want you to know that these developments are also new for us. We are learning about them everyday, mostly from early adopters among our app developer community. Their feedback and the feedback from our SC Navigator colleagues is flowing back into our development work. AcknowledgementI would like to acknowledge Marcel Roelofs, our CTO, for his compelling and credible vision on this topic. Because this 3rd wave of AIMMS data management is mostly his brain-child, like so many AIMMS innovations.  

To make life easier for app developers we unified the mapping for reading from and writing to table-based formats like CSV, Excel and Parquet files in DEX 2.1.2.1.Each file type had their own mapping elements like ExcelSheetMapping and CSVColumnMapping etc. Now they all use TableMapping, RowMapping and ColumnMapping. Only the root nodes differ to specify the file type. Why did we do this?To make life easier for app developers.ExcelFor Excel mapping the generic TableMapping can be used instead of ExcelSheetMapping. If an existing mapping with ExcelSheetMapping is read, DEX will interpret this automatically as a TableMapping.CSV and ParquetThe mapping for CSV and Parquet can now map multiple files in a folder using TableMapping. The names of the files follow from the name or name-binds-to attributes, just like sheet names would when using an ExcelSheetMapping. The first argument for a call to WriteToFile or ReadFromFile must be a name of a folder and not a file name.It is still allowed to have a CSV or Parquet mapping without a TableMapping (such that the file name cannot be derived from the attributes). The first argument for a call to WriteToFile or ReadFromFile must be a file name and not a folder. Note that this corresponds to the existing behavior so existing applications do not have to change anything.SQLiteSQLite is the only supported database that is also a file format. If a database mapping is used in combination with WriteToFile or ReadFromFile, DEX will automatically assume that the first argument represents the file name for SQLite.Documentationhttps://documentation.aimms.com/dataexchange/mapping.html

We are in the middle of adding the Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 service to each customer account in the AIMMS Cloud Platform, expecting to roll this out in August 2023. I am giving this heads-up so that you can bear this in mind when working on your projects.Why are we doing this?It supports the move to Parquet files that we see with an increasing number of customers. For many use cases it is superior, including faster, to using a relational database, in particular when you are working with so-called immutable data sets in your AIMMS apps.  It opens a wide range of integration options, including support for REST services.How will this impact you?No need to do anything: your apps and optional MySQL application database will continue to function as they are today.  The MySQL service and the PRO storage will remain available. This is an extra option to manage your data. This will ease the integration with other systems to import and export data to and from your AIMMS environment.Some more details on the 'what’Azure Data Lake Storage easily connects to Databricks, Snowflake, Azure Data Factory, relational databases, PowerBI, etcetera.  Our Data Exchange Library contains a growing number of functions to make it very easy for app developers to connect their model to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. Check out the release notes and documentation updates for the latest functions.  We will convert SC Navigator from using the MySQL database to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. No need for customers to do anything there.  Contact our User Support team if you are curious about the potential of this new service for your applications.Please share your feedback on this stepWe are taking this step because of what we saw at some of our customers and we are keen to hear what you think. So please let us know.  

Dear Community, We want to take a moment to remind you about the latest enhancements introduced in the most recent AIMMS 4.96.1 version, which you may already be familiar with. Here's a quick recap:The AIMMS 4.96.1 version, released in June 2023, included the following features:Current Widget Named View Model ConfigurableWe have extended the functionality of the Widget Named View feature, which was introduced in AIMMS 4.95. Now, you can specify the Current View using an element parameter in the model. This enhancement enables app developers to dynamically adjust the view presented to end users based on their interactions with the app. For more detailed information, please refer to the documentation.Upload/Download via Widget and Item ActionsWhile the existing Upload and Download widgets are incredibly useful, they occupy a certain amount of space on your page. Additionally, there are situations where you might want to integrate upload or download actions more closely with specific widgets in your WebUI App. To address this, we have extended the functionality of Widget Actions and Item Actions features to include the capability to upload or download a file. Further details can be found in the documentation.Procedures With Optional Arguments in WebUIPreviously, it was only possible to call procedures from WebUI buttons that did not have any arguments. This limitation existed because there was no way to specify argument values to pass. However, we have now enabled the calling of procedures with only optional arguments from WebUI buttons as well. When invoked, the default argument values will be utilized. We sincerely hope that these features enhance your applications and contribute to an even better user experience.We encourage you to share your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

Dear Community,We are excited to share about the additional value that we are bringing to AIMMS WebUI by enhancing its features.The AIMMS 4.95.1 version released today includes these features, here is an overview of them: Widget Named Views: We've understood that it is more efficient for app developers to provide end users with a widget and a variety of predefined views for it rather than having many instances of the same widget on a page for different data representations. With this Widget Named Views feature, the app developers can create and offer different views of a widget. The app developer can specify the view that an end user sees on the widget when they first load the page. For example, with this feature you could offer one view of your widget with one particular pivoting and another view of the widget with a different pivoting. The widget could be made available in yet another view as a different widget type. When one or more named views are created for a widget, a new button is made available on the widget’s header section. When you click on it, a list of the various named views made for this widget appears, in the order in which the views were arranged. Users can select any of the views from the list, and the corresponding widget configuration will load.Widget Named ViewsWebUI RefreshAllWidgets: The WebUI library has been extended with two new procedures RefreshAllWidgets and UseTransparentVeil. This webui::RefreshAllWidgets procedure can be called to force all widgets in your WebUI to be updated. Normally, WebUI widgets are updated only after an AIMMS procedure has been fully executed. In case of long(er) running procedures, you may want to provide your user with up-to-date info in any of your widgets before finishing the procedure already. In such cases, a call to webui::RefreshAllWidgets  does exactly that. The veil that is applied to your WebUI page if the AIMMS session is in a "working/busy" state will be transparent if you use the webui::UseTransparentVeil procedure. Workflow improvements: We improved the UI behaviour of the Workflow panel after listening to your feedback. Earlier, while being on a child step (sub step) you could not collapse its parent step. This has been improved in a way that while being on a child step you can fold its parent step. Under such a parent step a blue bar is made visible (see the pictures below). You may see the tooltip for the current step by hovering your cursor over this blue bar. When clicked, the parent step unfolds to reveal the currently selected child step again.Workflow PanelCSS Theming – Incorporated missing CSS configurations: From AIMMS 4.85 version we have been supporting WebUI Theming. The Theming options were not yet considered 'complete' because despite the large number of custom CSS properties available, there were several elements not subject to any theming or only pretty coarse theming was achieved at the best, leaving you with the need to add application specific stylesheets like before. With the help of customer feedback and by going through virtually all components, we have added a whole range of additional CSS properties and ensured that they are applied in all logical locations. Please have a look at our updated documentation page and the most recent base theme file to see how much better Theming should now be able to "reach" every component of a WebUI application.  Supporting custom tooltips for Table Title Headers and Scalar Widgets: Although it is already possible to customise Identifier names displayed on Table, Scalar, and other widgets using webui::IdentifierElementText. On Table and Scalar widgets, webui::IdentifierTooltip  support for custom tooltips on hover of Identifier names was not completely supported. We are now expanding the above mentioned support. We hope that these features add value to your application and improve the user experience even further. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

Dear Community, We are excited to talk about the additional value that we are bringing to AIMMS WebUI by enhancing its features.Table Filtering on Identifier Header cell: Data filtering has been available on the Table widget for some time. Filters are useful when you want to narrow down the data in your table, allowing you to focus on specific information. The filtering ability has now been expanded to include the Identifier Header cell. Table filtering on Identifier Header cellControlling Data Case Comparison on a Widget: We are aware that when Data Case Comparison is applied on the WebUI, on the widgets that are used to load configurations, datasets, scenarios, etc. it does not make sense to view data for multiple cases. Earlier, App developers had no mechanism to control whether to apply data case comparison to a widget. We have added an option to the Table and every Chart widget, so that the App developer can now have control. Each of these widgets still has the Case comparison feature enabled by default. Through this literal switch an App developer can override and manage it.Controlling Data Case Comparison on a Table Widget We hope that these features add value to your application and improve the user experience even further. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

We have made the change to provide you with every AIMMS major feature release automatically and will also guarantee that you will always work on the most recent hotfix on that version, with all the benefits of bugfixes. This is how it will work:1. You will not need to activate AIMMS versions anymore. When you publish an app, you will see all AIMMS major releases available. Your list of options will decrease significantly since you will not need to check for hotfix versions or check if there is a newer version available. We take care of it!2. Whenever you run an app, it will select the latest hotfix of the selected AIMMS major release. This will guarantee you get bugfixes without re-publishing the apps. For example, when you have published an app with AIMMS 4.88 and then when you run it, it will select the latest hotfix from 4.88, so in this case, it will run on 4.88.6, even if this hotfix was not available during publishing. We will never change the feature release association.3. This change will directly impacts the speed in which our servers can scale up, since it simplifies AIMMS versions that need to be available to start the session. You may see job queues being processed faster from this.4. This does not impact your apps. They will always continue to work with the selected feature release and already benefit from any hotfixes available. You do not need to change anything. If you have any questions please let us know on support@aimms.com

In DEX 2.1.0.1 we included support for reading from and writing to databases, similar to the way the DEX library supports data exchange with CSV, Excel and Parquet files. The library supports the SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLServer databases. Generating application databasesBased on a DEX mapping, the library is capable of generating the database tables described in the mapping on-the-fly.The generated database schema can optionally be extended with tables to hold the elements for all root sets in your data. In that case, the tuples for multi-dimensional data tables refer to these root set tables via foreign keys, for additional data integrity and performance.In addition, every table in the generated database can be extended to hold multiple versions of the data, e.g. to store the input data and results for multiple scenarios.With the existing functionality in DEX to auto-generate mappings for a single table, or entire datasets consisting of multiple tables, solely based on identifier annotations, this offers app developers an easy way to generate a fully functional and well-performing application database structure for any AIMMS app that is capable of storing application data for multiple scenarios. Comparison to existing database support in AIMMSThe existing support for reading from and writing to databases in AIMMS was primarily aimed to allow app developers to work with existing, external, databases, with a database schema outside the control of the app developer. It supports modes to read slices of the data in such tables, or to insert, update or overwrite data in the database tables, often leading to performance issues because of peculiarities in the underlying schema that may influence the SQL statements we generate and/or the complexity of the underlying SQL statements and mechanisms we employ to ensure data integrity.In contrast, the database support in the DEX library is much more opinionated. It takes control to create a database that we consider to be a useful and well-performing application database structure for most AIMMS apps. It closely fits with the way AIMMS organizes its multi-dimensional data, with support for storing multiple versions of that data.The DEX library only supports inserting a new version of the data into a database table. Such a version can act as a snapshot of the application data to exchange with external applications, or can be the result of a specific import of data from an external application.We strongly believe in considering a version of the data stored in the application database to be immutable. This makes computations reproducible, and allows to reliably compare one version of the data to another. As a consequence we offer no functions to update, or extend, an existing version of the data in a table, but rather have you store a new version of the data.Comparison to CDMMany customers  have used CDM as a means to automatically create an application database around an AIMMS app, and found out that importing multiple versions of extensive input data from external sources into a CDM database may eventually lead to performance problems. This is because CDM was never intended as a means of exchanging data with external applications, or even to store very large datasets computed by an AIMMS application. The main design goal of CDM was to add multi-user support to interactive AIMMS apps, allowing multiple users working in separate AIMMS sessions to make simultaneous changes to the shared data in the app, while still allowing them to run scenarios and evaluate their usability before sharing such changes with the other users. As data in a CDM database may change continuously, it is hardly usable to provide a consistent data set for exchange with an external application, as its contents is effectively a moving target.DEX database support is complementary to CDM, explicitly aiming at exchanging snapshots of data either imported from external systems or intended for external applications. Because of the intended immutability of versions of the data in DEX-generated databases, it provides perfect reproducibility.AlternativesWe emphasize that a DEX-generated application database is certainly not the only way to accomplish a storage scheme capable of storing and exchanging multiple versions of the data relevant to an AIMMS app. An equally valid, or in certain scenarios maybe even preferable, approach may be to store a scenario, or an external dataset to import, as a collection of DEX- or externally generated Parquet or CSV files in a single location, e.g. folder on a local or shared disk, an AWS S3 bucket, or a container in Azure Blob storage.The database support in DEX just offers you more options, allowing you to choose the data storage and exchange mechanism of your preference.

Dear Community, I am happy to share the exciting work we have been developing for WebUI. Further Workflow improvements: In the most recent AIMMS 4.92 release, Workflow support for sublevels and enhanced UI designs were added. We improved it further in response to the following two requests: Accessibility to a page set up as an inactive/hidden Workflow step: We acknowledge the input that it can be difficult to land on a page that is set up as a Workflow step with an Inactive/Hidden state because you are constantly redirected elsewhere. Now, when you access such a page using the Application Manager (accessible only to an App developer), you actually land on the intended page without being redirected.Access page set up for multiple Workflows: The Workflow feature was flexible enough to allow for the configuration of a page as a step in multiple Workflows. However, when you had clicked on such a Workflow step, you would have been taken to the first Workflow that had this page configured. Now we addressed this, such that clicking on a Workflow step like this will keep you in the current Workflow that is being displayed. Other WebUI enhancements:  The AIMMS SCNav team made the following two requests, which we incorporated:Support for extra Sidepanel tabs on a page: We increased the number of Sidepanels that may be set up on a page from the earlier maximum of 6 to 10 now. The visual representation of the Sidepanel tabs remains the same on a page with Sidepanels configured up to a count of 6. The Sidepanel Tabs evenly divide the available vertical space on a page with a Sidepanel count of 7 to 10.   ​​​​​​Controlling Data Case Comparison on a Widget: We are aware that when Data Case Comparison is applied on the WebUI, on the widgets that are used to load configurations, datasets, scenarios, etc. it does not make sense to view data for multiple cases. Earlier, App developers had no mechanism to control whether to apply data case comparison to a widget. We have added an option to the Table and every Chart widget, so that the App developer can now have control. The widget still has the Case comparison feature enabled by default. A literal toggle or an AIMMS identifier can be used by an App developer to override and manage it.Case Comparison Option on Table Widget We hope that these features add value to your application and improve the user experience even further. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

Dear Community, I'm happy to share the exciting work we've been developing for WebUI. Improved user experience on the Table widget: To complement the recent Advanced Table Editing feature, we now provide: Improved navigation experience: Although arrow keys were already available for navigating to adjacent cells on the Table widget. We now support the following keys to provide a simple and natural Tabular data navigation experience. You can select a cell on the table widget and then apply the following keys.         *   The “Home” key moves the focus to the leftmost cell in the current row.         *   You can get focus to the first cell by pressing "Ctrl” + "Home" keys.         *   You can get focus to the last cell by pressing "Ctrl" + "End" keys.         *   By pressing "Ctrl" + "Left Arrow" keys, you can get focus onto the row’s leftmost cell.          *   By pressing "Ctrl" + "Right Arrow" keys, you can get focus onto the row’s rightmost cell.         *   By pressing "Ctrl" + "Up Arrow" keys, you can get focus onto the column’s topmost cell.          *   By pressing "Ctrl" + "Down Arrow" keys, you can get focus onto the column’s bottommost cell.      Improved block selection experience: To provide a simple and natural block selection experience for tabular data. The following keys are now supported by table widget.         *   Block selection using Shift + Arrow keys combination.         *   Block or scattered cells selection using Shift key + Mouse clicks combination.Workflow enhancements: Considering the AIMMS SCNav team's suggestions and customer feedback regarding the present Workflow (v1) feature. We expanded it to support sublevels and improved the UI designs. The Workflow specification index webui:: indexWorkflowPageSpec is extended with parentPageId property. Now, for any Workflow step, one can specify the PageId of its Parent Step as the parentPageId, which is subsequently displayed as a sub-level on the Workflow panel. We support upto 1 level of sub-levels. The Parent step's unfolding and folding state can also be persisted, making it available again when the WebUI is accessed later. Refer the documentation for more details.Workflow Demo We hope these features bring value to your application and further enhance your user experience. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

Multi-Factor-Authentication (MFA) for AIMMS PRO has been released in AIMMS PRO 2.47, both for our cloud platform and on-premise. It is pretty self-explanatory and details can be found in the documentation. We recommend the use of MFA as proven extra security measure, particularly for the admin accounts, which are also there when using Single-Sign-On. 

Seeing the potential of the ever-expanding collection of Azure services for augmenting AIMMS apps, we created a 'low-friction’ way for AIMMS app developers to connect those services to AIMMS apps running on our cloud platform. We call it ‘customer-specific Azure tenant’ (suggestions for a better namen?). What is it?An Azure tenant (jargon for a kind of account or environment inside Azure), created specifically for one customer. In which almost any Azure service can be deployed for that customer. It is securely connected to (only) that customer's AIMMS apps, enabling data exchange data and action triggering between that tenant and the apps.  We deliver this as a managed service, billed separately. This diagram may help, it includes some extra technical details.Who is it for?To use this advanced feature you require knowledge of Azure fundamentals and of the Azure services you intend to explore or use. You will also need to be familiar with our Data Exchange Library (DEX) as you will need to configure that for the data exchange and other REST calls. What can I do with this?There are many ways to use this new feature. Some examples:Data storage, transfer and manipulation services such as Azure Data Share, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Data Bricks, Azure Stream Analytics, and all kinds of databases AI/ML services such as Azure Machine Learning, Azure AI and Azure Cognitive Services Compute services such as Azure Functions, AKS (Kubernetes) or regular VMs. …Key featuresAlmost any Azure service can be deployed in this tenant.  Provided as managed service: monitoring, maintenance, back-up and restore and help-desk. Intercept Azure specialists can consult on service selection, architecture design, security design, etcetera. Connected with the AIMMS applications securely via the Azure Backbone, using a selection of authorization methods. Azure Key Vault and Service Principal present in the customer-specific Azure tenant, for example for authorization schemes.How is it charged?We are still exploring the charging models for this. We are likely to use custom charging models and pricing, because applications will vary widely. But expect to pay for the managed service and for the Azure consumption. Interested?Because this feature has so many different potential applications, it is probably best to contact us at support@aimms.com for arranging an exploratory chat with our experts on this topic.

This product update will dive a little deeper into the new REST Service for managing apps about which we informed you in an earlier product update.What is this service?This REST service offers ‘CRUD’ (Create Read Update Delete) on apps in your PRO Platform. In other words: publish apps, update apps, delete apps and list published apps and their details.Why did we build it?We built this to enable automated app management, typically to enable Continuous Deployment (CD) flows.How do we envisage this will be used?Knowing the creativity of AIMMS app developers, we know we will be surprised with the number of ways in which this new functionality will be used. We expect this to be used mostly in situations where new app versions are routinely created and deployed to production. In fact our own SC Navigator app development team has already used it to build their flow for automated updating of the apps of all our SC Navigator customers.What are key features I need to know about?Supports publishing, updating, deletion and listing of apps using REST calls. Includes OpenAPI spec to enable automated development of the REST client. For now uses API keys for authentication, created in the PRO Portal. In future this will be changed to a more sophisticated authentication/authorization method.What else do I need to know as app developer?Only available on our cloud platform, no plans to offer this for the on-premise version of AIMMS PRO. Reference documentation can be found here (both how to obtain API keys and further down how to use this service). And of course you can always ask questions here in the community or email our User Support team.

A customer of ours recently set up a data transfer from their Azure tenant to their AIMMS cloud account, using Azure Blob Storage and Azure Data Share and our new feature to provide customer-specific Azure tenants linked to our cloud platform. In this post we will briefly explain how as it may also work for others.Probably best to start with a diagram.This solution relies on three features/technologies:As AIMMS we now offer customers the possibility to have their own Azure tenant in our cloud platform, called ‘AIMMS4CustomerXtenant’ in the diagram. In this tenant we, AIMMS, can deploy almost any Azure tenant. And this tenant can be securely connected with the AIMMS cloud account of that customer. Azure Data Share enables the secure syncing between two Azure storage services, without having to provide direct access from one tenant to the other. AIMMS Data Exchange Library (DEX) provides the REST Client to retrieve the data from the Azure storage into the AIMMS app.Combined this enables the following flow.The Azure Blob Storage in CustomerX’s Azure tenant holds the data that is to be sent to the AIMMS application. In this case the data is placed there from other sources, using data workflow. Azure Data Share transfers that data securely to the Azure Blob Storage in the AIMMS4CustomerX tenant, keeping it exactly in sync with the source. The AIMMS app uses a REST Client created with DEX to retrieve the data securely via the Azure backbone into identifiers in the AIMMS model and write the data to the local application database (MySQL). For now the access credentials are inserted manually. In future we will provide more automated mechanisms for that.All this was set-up in a matter of days by the customer’s team and our Azure partner Intercept, in two instances: development and production versions. The customer will be invoiced by AIMMS for the Azure costs of the AIMMS4CustomerX tenant. And AIMMS charges a small set-up and managed-service fee for monitoring and maintenance.If you want to explore this path for data exchange or have other ideas of Azure services you would like to add to your AIMMS apps in our cloud, please contact our User Support team (support@aimms.com).

We are currently working on a new service on our cloud platform that we expect to launch in the first half of 2023 and here is a heads-up.What?A complete solution for running Python or R applications from within an AIMMS model, on the AIMMS cloud platform.Why?So that you can extend your AIMMS model with calculations and/or operations in Python or R, leveraging that language’s particular strengths or specific libraries/packages written for those languages, without having to worry about the deployment of that application.Key Features‘Turn-key’ solution: includes all you need to provide AIMMS apps to your users that use the power of Python and/or R. Avoids session launch times by allowing repeated calls to a launched session. Reduced development effort by using DEX for exchanging data with the AIMMS model, including format conversion and mapping to model identifiers. Resources (CPU and memory) can be configured to suit the application’s requirements Multiple Python and R versions available, complete with a collection of packages/libraries, to suit app developer needs. Deployed in Docker container. Application to be stored as ZIP file on PRO Storage.To be aware ofThis will replace the existing R-link that we can no longer support when we upgrade to a current Linux version. The Python or R application upon launch first needs to establish a REST service end point. We will provide examples for this. Cloud (Azure) only. Automatic session termination after a configurable idle period (default 5’) or session ‘life-time’ (default 1 hr). These services are not part of our regular subscriptions, so please expect additional charges for this service.  

Dear Community, I'm sure we can all agree that over the past four releases, the experience with Tabular Data Manipulation on WebUI has significantly improved.We've made further progress and I'd like to share it with everyone: “Advanced Table Editing” as a formal General Available feature: This feature was first made available in AIMMS 4.87.1 as an Experimental Feature. Support for Block Selection, Block-Editing, and Copy-Paste capabilities were all implemented. Later we added the ability to Search&Find. We've been addressing the feedback we've gotten and making improvements. With the release of AIMMS 4.90, we formally establish this as a General Available feature and take it out of the experimental feature category. Table Header Sorting: Sorting is now supported in the Header cells of the Table widget. The behaviour is similar to how data can be sorted by Table Row or Column headers. Here, the elements of one of the sets involved in the table are sorted.   Consider the following example where the data has four indexes:If we choose for “Decreasing” sorting of the set Centers in the Columns Headers, then the table is sorted as follows:Similarly, if we choose for “Decreasing” sorting of the set Factories in the Row Headers, then the table is sorted as follows: We hope these features bring value to your application and further enhance your user experience. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

This product update will dive a little deeper into the new ‘REST Service for running solve jobs and other asynchronous jobs’ about which we informed you in an earlier product update.Why did we build it?For three reasons: As part of our integration vision: enabling our software to fully participate in an increasingly connected IT landscape, using common standards such as REST, OpenAPI and OAuth. Specifically to replace the current PRO API that requires more programming and only support Java and .net. As part of our modernization of the AIMMS PRO code, turning it into a collection of micro-services connected through APIs. How do we envisage this will be used?Knowing the creativity of AIMMS app developers, we know we will be surprised with the number of ways in which this new functionality will be used. Some applications that we have already identified are:Automating the execution of a large number of optimization runs to conduct a scenario analysis. Incorporating an AIMMS optimization into an analytics workflow consisting of all sorts of other technologies. Embedding an AIMMS optimization into an interactive software product or application to perform ‘behind the scenes’ AIMMS optimizations.What are key features I need to know about?Supports creation, inspection and deletion of Tasks. An overview of Tasks currently running can be retrieved using a REST call. Includes OpenAPI spec to enable automated development of the REST client. Tasks are queued and, depending on the configuration and contract form, multiple Tasks can be handled concurrently. For now uses API keys for authentication, created in the PRO Portal. In future this will be changed to a more sophisticated authentication/authorization method.What is a ‘Task’?‘Task’ is a new term that we introduced so that we can differentiate between Sessions and Tasks.Within the AIMMS context you might be familiar with the concept of a solve session. This refers to an AIMMS run-time session with a specific AIMMS model loaded. When a user of AIMMS PRO (on our cloud platform or on-premise) requests an optimization (typically by ‘hitting’ some kind of ‘optimize’ command or button), a separate solve session is launched, the optimization job is executed and when done this solve session is terminated. Same mechanism applies when a solve job is submitted using the ‘old’ PRO API: the solve session is started, solve job is performed, solve session is terminated.We introduced the new concept of a Task so that we could run a sequence of tasks on the same session, thus avoiding the session launch times. This is particularly helpful when running a large number of optimization jobs that each require little time on the same model. After completing a Task the Session is used for the next Task in the queue for the same model. The Session is terminated when there are no more Tasks for that model in the queue.What else do I need to know as app developer?Only available on our cloud platform, no plans to offer this for the on-premise version of AIMMS PRO. Requires a commercial arrangement; and in most cases we can arrange trials. Reference documentation can be found here. And of course you can always ask questions here in the community or email our User Support team.     

Now available on the Azure version of the AIMMS Cloud Platform: REST Service for running so-called ‘Tasks’.Create automated workflows by submitting tasks/jobs to your AIMMS project running on our cloud platform (Azure) REST Service OpenAPI specification to minimize implementation effort Authenticates with API keys Tasks will be queued Requires separate license, for one or more concurrent jobsDocumentation can be found here. Contact us if you are interested in exploring or purchasing licenses for this functionality.With ‘REST Service on Tasks’ we have completed our first collection of PRO REST Services for our PRO Platform. Other services allow app publication and management of users and groups. Our Data Exchange Library is a close companion to these PRO REST Services.See also:  

I'm happy to announce that yesterday we released the AIMMS 4.89 version. As listed below, this release includes some interesting features.Experimental Feature: Search/Find for WebUI TableAs an addition to the ‘Advanced Table Editing’ Experimental Feature, we added the possibility to search for data in the WebUI Table. Cells that contain your search string are highlighted and selected, and you can easily navigate through your search results. Full details are described in the documentation.Excel Upload/Download Support for WebUI Tables made a Generally Available FeatureIn AIMMS 4.86 we introduced the feature to Download Excel data from a WebUI Table and to upload Excel data into a WebUI Table. Since then, we have polished this feature and now we consider it good enough to make it into a generally available (GA) feature. This means that you do not have to set the ‘Excel Upload/Download Support’ checkbox anymore.WebUI: Cleaner Widget Header MenuOver time, we have added more icons to the header menu of our widgets. In some cases, especially in the Table widget, this could become a bit ‘messy’. To mitigate that, we now introduce the new ‘Kebab’ widget header menu. Instead of all the loose icons (for Excel upload/download, CSV download, etc.), we group these menus as items in the new menu, together with the widget actions. For details, please refer to the documentation.Better support for Academic/Community licensesWe have improved the support for academic and community licenses. Failed connections to our academic/community license server specified through a license URL now provide more detail about the reason for failure (e.g., license expired, too many sessions, etc). Licenses with a license URL can now also be specified in the License Configuration dialog in AIMMS itself. Previously, such licenses could only be entered in the AIMMS Launcher.Improved Presolver EfficiencyThe memory usage and computing speed of the AIMMS Presolver have become more efficient for linear models. For large linear models, it can be beneficial to switch on the option ‘Linear presolve’ because this might drastically reduce the memory usage of the solver.New Function: SetAsStringWe introduced a new function ‘SetAsString’ in the AIMMS language. It returns a string representation of a set. As a result of this, implicitly casting from a set to a string is now deprecated. Please refer to the AIMMS Function Reference for more information.And a lot more improvements.   For more information, please see the release notes. We hope that these features add value to your applications and enhance the user experience even more. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments section. Thanks,Madhu Krishnappa

Dear Community,As you know, we’ve been working on the Enhancing the Tabular Data Manipulation experience on WebUI epic, and we have shared a few increments over the course of the last three major releases.We've made more advancements on this epic, and i'd like to share them with you all:“Excel Upload/Download Support” as formal General Available feature: This feature was introduced as an Experimental Feature in 4.86.1 version. We've been addressing the feedback we've gotten and making improvements, some of which are detailed below. With AIMMS 4.89 version, we formally make this a General Available feature and remove it from the category of experimental features.Global ‘Show Upload/Download Data Controls’ option: The Table widget now includes a new "Show Upload/Download Data Controls" option that lets you choose whether or not to allow your end users to upload or download the table data. This option was added in version 4.88.1. With the 4.89 release, we added a global Application-Settings "Show Upload/Download Data Controls" option, allowing you to choose whether to show or hide the data controls (the Upload Excel, Download Excel, and Download CSV buttons) on all the Table widgets across the WebUI.           Below is a table illustrating whether Upload and Download Data Controls are shown or hidden on  the Table widget, based on the option set at Global and Widget level “Shown Upload/ Download Data Controls” option.Upload/Download Data ControlNote: The global "Show Upload/Download Data Controls" option setting is overridden by the "Show Upload/Download Data Controls" option set for a specific table widget. Restructured and redesigned Widget Header Buttons: With the inclusion of the Upload and Download Excel buttons in addition to the current widget header buttons, we intend to update and reorganise how these buttons are shown on the widget header. Now, the Download controls like Download Excel, Download CSV and Download Image are grouped alongside the Upload Excel and the custom Widget actions.  Additionally, we added a "Help me" action that points to the appropriate Widget's documentation. Notably, the "Settings" action is displayed for app developers as a stand-alone button next to the … Kebab button, however for end users it will be the last entry in the list of actions.Notes:End users cannot access the "Help me" action; it is only available to app developers. This change is across all of the widgets. Support for webui::ElementTextIdentifier annotation has been added : Dropdown data values that have been translated using this annotation are now downloaded exactly as they appear in the WebUI table. When uploading an Excel sheet, these translations are also considered. Extend webui::IdentifierElementText support for Header titles area: We now extend our prior webui::IdentifierElementText support to include the translation of Identifier titles displayed on the Header titles area. This is like our earlier support for translation of Identifier titles displayed on Column and Row headers. When uploading or downloading an Excel sheet, these translations are also taken into consideration. For example, the “scndm::TransportationTypename” Identifier in the Table header titles area can be translated and displayed as “Transportation Type”. Improvements to the “Advanced Table Editing” feature: We introduced "Advanced Table Editing" as an experimental feature in version 4.87.1, with support for Block Selection, Block-Editing, and Copy-Paste capabilities. We've been addressing the feedback we've gotten and making improvements, some of which are detailed below.Search & Find feature on the Table Widget: With this feature, we can now search for and locate relevant data in the table. The table automatically scrolls to display the nearest search result. There is also a counter that compares the number of search results overall to the instance of the current result. Despite the fact that case insensitivity is the default search type, we offer a control on the search panel to disable it. There are ˄ and ˅ controls that allow you to move between the search results.Notes: As of right now, we only display the first 1000 results. If a search yields more than 1000 results, the search results counter will show 1000+. The data cells are the only ones that are currently searchable. This feature will eventually be expanded to include header cells as well. Enhancements to Block Editing: Previously, when a block was selected and a Control+Delete operation was done, the cells within the block did not automatically set to their corresponding default values. Now they will. We hope these features brings value to your application and further enhances your user experience. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

Today we released version 2.0 of the Data Exchange library, containing the initial release of the support in AIMMS for generating client code to call APIs directly from within your model. The API client code generator will generate an API client directly from the OpenAPI specification of the service you want to connect to.While the Data Exchange library already had support for making HTTP requests and reading/writing JSON or XML request or response bodies, using this basic functionality to actually call an API was quite laborious and error-prone. The new API client code generator inside the Data Exchange library will tremendously ease the integration of third party APIs within your AIMMS model.For a given OpenAPI service specification, the generator willcreate a runtime library with collections of identifiers that can hold data for any JSON schema encountered in the OpenAPI specification file for describing request and response bodies. The library also offers support for generating this directly from a JSON schema file. create DEX mappings to map these collections of identifiers onto corresponding JSON or XML documents to create request bodies, or parse response bodies create procedures to make API calls to every operation defined in the OpenAPI specification, taking care of path and query parameter handling, handling of headers and cookies, generation of request bodies from, or parsing the results into, the identifiers generated in the runtime libraryThe generated code will support security schemes either using API keys, or using the OAuth2 authorization code or client credentials flows.All API calls will be executed in a completely asynchronous fashion, allowing multiple API calls to be made in parallel, For simple uses, the generator also allows generating a more simplified synchronous variant.At this point, the generator does not yet offer support for multi-part and/or binary request and response bodies. 

Dear Community, As you know, we are always striving to improve the user experience with WebUI. Part of this journey is simplifying the process of adding new widgets to the grid layout area.On the Page-Configuration pane, against each area in the Grid Layout page, we now provide a button to add a new widget. When clicked, this reveals the “Add Widget” wizard, which then adds the new widget to that specific area.The respective Area name is shown in the title of the “Add Widget” wizard for reference.This simplified way of adding new widgets eliminates the additional step of moving widgets from the default “Unassigned Widgets” area to their designated area. We hope this feature brings value to your application and further enhances your user experience. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI.

Dear Community, As you know, we’ve been working on Enhancing the Tabular Data Manipulation experience on WebUI epic, and made our first incremental release of Excel Upload/Download support in the last 4.86.1 release, also mentioned in my previous product update. We’ve made further progress on this epic and also have introduced a new Data Color Palette that is applied across widgets in the WebUI. The 4.87 release includes these features, here is a preview of them: Increment on Enhancing the Tabular Data Manipulation experience: As part of enhancing user experience of data manipulation on the WebUI table widgets, we now have extended it with support for Block Editing and Copy/Paste:Block Editing: We now can select a region of a table using your mouse, then type a value and press CTRL+ENTER to change all selected cells into the value you typed.                            You are not limited to selecting a rectangular region of cells. Holding down the CTRL key, you can select more than one region with your mouse. Such a region can also consist of a single cell. Copy/Paste: The table now supports Copy/Paste functionality. Currently, this is limited to rectangular blocks of cells, which you can select as described in the Block Editing section above. When having selected a block of cells, press CTRL+C to copy the block. In order to paste it, select a single cell in the table and press CTRL+V. This will paste your selected block of cells into a region of the same size with the selected cell as its top-left cell.                            If the paste region contains read-only cells, no values will be pasted in those.                  Pasting is not limited to the same table as from which you copied the values. You can paste into different tables on the same WebUI page or on different WebUI pages, even in other WebUI apps. Furthermore, you can also paste to external programs, for example, like text editors or Excel.                                                                                                                    Please note that pasting from an external source to a WebUI table is not supported.The Block Editing and the Copy/Paste features are available as Experimental Features. You can toggle the ‘Advanced Table Editing’ feature On or Off in the Experimental Features dialog in order to use it.  Updated Data Color Palette used across WebUI: The WebUI has a new data color palette, consisting of 16 well discernible colors for most users. This was introduced to replace the current default 19-color palette.                                                                                                    It will affect all Widgets that derive the coloring of their nodes from ordinal annotations: all Charts and the Map. The new palette also works better when using the Transparency Index option to create additional color variations for the Combination Chart.                                          Please refer to the documentation to learn more about the new colors, about falling back to the previous 19, 11 or 7-color palettes and how this influences any custom data coloring that might be in place.   Combination Chart with Colors from the New PaletteCombination Chart with Color and Transparency Index applied We hope these features bring value to your applications and further enhance your user experience. Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks.Team WebUI. 

Hi All, As you might be already aware we are working towards an epic about enhancing the Tabular Data Manipulation experience on WebUI. We are proud to announce that, as part of its incremental development, we have released Excel Upload/Download support for the current Table widget in the recent 4.86.1 version release. This Excel Upload/Download support feature of the Table widget is available as an Experimental Feature from AIMMS 4.86 onwards. You can switch on the feature by checking the ‘Excel Upload/Download Support’ box in the Experimental Features dialog. With this new feature we now provide the ability to download the WebUI Table Data onto an Excel file. And the ability to upload data from an Excel file to a WebUI Table.This feature unveils the possibility that one could now download the Table data onto an Excel file, make the required changes to the data in the Excel file and save it. One can utilize Excel features like Block selection and editing, sorting/filter, and usage of formulas to modify the data. And upload the file onto the Table so that the data reflects back on the WebUI and the model. With the current Excel Upload/Download support, there are some limitations on what you can and cannot do. For details on those and on the feature itself, please see the documentation.  Curious to know if you got a chance to try out this new feature.   Are you happy to use this feature in its current state? If not, why? Do you see something you would like us to improve? Please leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments. Thanks,WebUI Team