Changes in Execute 21.1.277

Execute’s Data Warehousing feature has received many updates:

SQL Warehouse

1. We have removed the NORMAL and MATERIALIZED options for the creation of helper views since they were not-performant with larger datasets. We added a new option TABLES_AUTO (the new default, and our recommendation for most cases) which will similarly ensure that the helper tables are kept current automatically.
2. We have added support for breaking very large documents (typically only seen with Schedules) into smaller chunks. To enable this, the EXECUTE_DOCUMENTS table has a new chunk column. If you are querying EXECUTE_DOCUMENTS directly, you may need to adjust your queries to handle this correctly (When querying normal fields, filter to chunk=0. When querying child tables, include data from all chunks). If you are querying our automatically created helper tables, this work has been done for you.
3. To avoid issues where restarting Execute could take a very long time, Execute will no longer wait for a sync to finish on shutdown but, instead, keep a highwater mark of successfully sync’d records. After restart, and on the next automated sync, Execute will publish any records modified since that stored highwater mark.
4. Fixed behavior when Deleting and Undeleting records.
5. To avoid excessive replication of data, the EXECUTE_DOCUMENTS_LATEST table no longer includes the data from the latest records. Queries relying on this table will need to join on EXECUTE_DOCUMENTS.

Snowflake

1. We have added support for breaking very large documents (typically only seen with Schedules) into smaller chunks. To enable this, the EXECUTE_DOCUMENTS table has a new chunk column. If you are querying EXECUTE_DOCUMENTS directly, you may need to adjust your queries to handle this correctly. If you are querying our automatically created helper tables, this work has been done for you.
2. To avoid issues where restarting Execute could take a very long time, Execute will no longer wait for a sync to finish on shutdown but, instead, keep a highwater mark of successfully sync’d records. After restart, and on the next automated sync, Execute will publish any records modified since that stored highwater mark.
3. Fixed behavior when Deleting and Undeleting records.

Mandatory Manual Upgrade Step

Because of the changes made in this update, administrators must manually perform the following steps after upgrading Execute.

1. Replace your SQL Warehouse or Snowflake plugin with the latest version from plugins_available
2. Verify that the Create Views setting is set appropriately (for SQL Server, we strongly recommend TABLES_AUTO)
3. Remove all Execute created objects in Execute’s Data Warehouse schema (EXECUTE_DOCUMENTS, AFE, PROCESS_EXECUTE_DOCUMENTS, ...).
4. Run the Schema Publisher synchronization task.
5. Run the Document Publisher synchronization task.

Execute will now correctly prevent passwords from being used in environments configured to use Single Sign-on. This change has the potential to prevent users from accessing these SSO environments if they were relying on a username and password instead of the SSO mechanism.

This affects environments…

1. using OKTA or OIDC for SSO
2. using our legacy Windows login mechanism where the Authentication Type setting is set to WINDOWS

This means that:

1. Users will not be able to login with a user-specified password in these environments.

• Login screen
• APIs
• OData

2. Users will not be able to set a password. The password changing feature will be hidden from the user’s profile.
3. Administrators will not be able to set a user’s password from the user management screen.

Any integrations using Execute’s API or OData should transition to using Execute’s safer API Key mechanism.

If you require the use of user-specified passwords in your SSO environment (NOT RECOMMENDED), you can override this new behavior by setting the new Allow User Passwords When Federated setting.