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Release Information

About The Current Version of WPS

Summary of Main New Features in WPS Version 3

For a more generalised overview of the current features of WPS, not just the 'new' features summarised below, please refer to the Product section.

Here are the main new features of the latest release.

• Multi-Platform Workbench
  The WPS Workbench (IDE/GUI) is now offered on the following platforms:
  

  - AIX
  - Linux (x86 and System z)
  - Mac OS X
  - Solaris (x86 and Sparc)
  - Windows
  

• Workbench Feature Enhancements
  The WPS Workbench has received many usability enhancements including:
  

  - Dataset import/export wizard.
  - 3rd-party eclipse plugin support.
  - Rename/delete datasets.
  - Assign/deassign libraries (libnames).
  - Find values in dataset viewer.
  - Enhanced dataset viewer display.
  - Automatic management of ODS HTML and Listing output.
  - Regular expression support in 'find' features.
  - Improved character set/codepage support.
  - Multiple concurrent WPS servers (see below).
  - WPS Link remote server capability (see below).
  

• Multiple Concurrent WPS Servers
  In previous releases of the WPS Workbench it was only possible to have one local server on which you could run your scripts. WPS version 3 allows you to set up multiple servers in the WPS Workbench and to pick which server to run any given script on. The WPS Workbench manages all the output, logs and datasets generated by each server for you.
  This enhancement, combined with the New WPS Link technology (see below) allows you to run your programs wherever you would like and control it all from the WPS Workbench.
• Remote Server Connection
  New WPS Link technology allows the WPS Workbench to link to remote WPS Servers on other Mac, Linux or UNIX servers and to run scripts on those machines. It also allows you to view any resulting output locally in your WPS Workbench on your local machine. This enables you to make use of centralised storage and processing resources including grids and clusters of WPS processing servers and removes the requirement to process or store any data on the workstation.
• Multi-Threading Summarisation
  Workstations and Servers with multiple CPU cores or hyper-threading can benefit from the new multi-threaded summarising engine in WPS version 3.
  This significantly improves the performance of many procedures within WPS that perform summarisation of data including PROC SUMMARY, PROC MEANS and other statistical procedures such as PROC TTEST.
• Microsoft Windows® Installer
  WPS for Windows now allows in-place upgrade without requiring the removal of previous version of WPS beforehand.
• Core Language Support
  WPS version 3 continues the expansion of it's language support with even more new language items.
• Statistical Analysis
  The support in WPS Statistics has been expanded to include:
  

  - PROC DISTANCE
  - PROC FACTOR
  - PROC GLM
  - PROC GLMMOD
  - PROC PRINCOMP
  - PROC STDIZE
  - PROC TTEST
  

  PROC LOGISTIC has been improved to allow the following model selection methods FORWARDS, BACKWARDS, STEPWISE and FAST.
  Numerous other statements and options have been added to the DATA STEP and other PROCS.
• Financial Functions
  Support has been added for the following financial functions:
  

  - PMT
  - IPMT
  - PPMT
  - CUMIPMT
  - CUMPRINC
  - EFFRATE
  - NOMRATE
  

• DATA Step Enhancements
  Support has been added for MODIFY and UPDATE statements within the DATA Step as well as support for NOMISS and UNIQUE constraints. Numerous other enhancements have also been added to the DATA Step like the addition of the COMPGED, CALL COMPCOST and UUIDGEN DATA Step functions.
• Data Set Index Enhancements
  WPS support for data set indexes has been extended and optimised to offer faster index build and modification actions as well as faster index retrieval. Index creation speed has been dramatically improved. For example, on a 50 million row dataset WPS version 3 may create an index 10 times faster than WPS 2. The index files WPS version 3 produces are also significantly smaller than those produced by previous WPS versions, typically up to 50% smaller.
  
• Improved WPD Library Engine
  WPS version 3 has a new, improved version of the World Programming Data Set (WPD) library engine. WPD files generated by version 3.x cannot be read by previous version 2.X releases of WPS.
   
  Version 2 files can be read and written to by WPS 3 using the new WPDV2 engine.  
  The WPD engine in WPS 3 can read version 2 datasets without program modification, however by default the WPD engine will now write WPS 3 datasets. Please see Upgrading comments below*.
  
• Sybase®
  A new WPS Engine for Sybase on Windows, Linux, Solaris and AIX platforms.
• XML Data Support
  A new Libray engine for XML in the WPS Core module provides generic XML data import/export support and use of Oracle, CDISC and XMLMAP transformations.
• PROC IMPORT/EXPORT support for Microsoft Access and Excel
  WPS version 3 now provides full support in PROCs IMPORT/EXPORT for Microsoft Access and Excel.

* Upgrading from WPS Version 2 to WPS Version 3

1. New Version 3 WPS Data Set
   Please read carefully in the "releasenotes.txt" file (see Documents table below) the section "WPD Library Engine and Data Migration and Performance Considerations" for important information regarding:
   (i) Data migration for use with version 3
   (ii) Ongoing operation in mixed WPS version 3 and WPS version 2.x environments
2. Command Line Interface - Windows Users
   The name of the command line executable for WPS has been changed from wpsi.exe to wps.exe. Existing batch scripts and other references to wpsi.exe will need to be changed to wps.exe.
3. Command Line Interface - Linux, Solaris, AIX Users
   The location of the command line executable for WPS has been moved from the root of the WPSHOME directory to the bin subdirectory. Existing shell scripts and other references to wps will need to be changed to bin/wps.
   
4. License Keys
   Existing version 2 license keys are not compatible with WPS version 3. A new version 3 license key will be required in order to activate the new software. A new version 3 license key is free to valid license holders. Existing license holders can request a new version 3 license key by contacting the WPS support team.
   
5. Obtaining the Software
   WPS version 3 is a free upgrade for all valid license holders.
   Please ensure you have read the license key notes above before upgrading to version 3.
   If you have personal login details to access the WPS software download server, just use these to login and you will see WPS version 3 ready to download and install. If you do not have personal login details, please talk to the nominated person in your organisation/department responsible for coordinating how you obtain new releases of WPS in your organisation.
   

Related Documents

You can find an up-to-date list of all supported language items in downloadable spreadsheets in the language support section of this website.

There are more documents that you can download or view concerning the current release of WPS in the documentation section of this website.