We are happy to announce Clario 3.1.0 was released Friday, March 30th.  Even though this is a minor release, it does contain a major feature enhancement. Power users now have the ability to create or edit Transform and Filter expressions directly in code instead of using the visual expression builder.

Edit Clario Expression Code Directly

Users of Transform and Filter have always been shown the pseudocode for an expression as it is being built.  While the builder is easy to use, power users wanted to know if they could edit the code directly.  Now they can, with the Clario Expressions code editor.

Transform and Filter each have a new “Edit Code” button that opens up an expression editing environment.  Here users can view and extend existing expression definitions, cut and paste expressions from one node to another, or cut and paste expressions from a library they’ve created in their favorite text editor or in Excel.

The expression editing environment helps you ensure that your expressions are syntactically valid and that the node is configured correctly.  Expression editing works hand-in-hand with the expression builder.  You can stub out an expression in the builder and then move to the editor to complete it, switching between the two editors as needed.  This makes it easy for users comfortable with the builder to quickly learn the Clario Expressions syntax.

As part of Clario Expressions we’ve standardized the scripting language and improved the validation warning messages on both the builder and code editor. A user guide with examples can be found at http://www.clarioanalytics.com/support/documentation/codeguide.html

Reuse Expressions Generated from Other Clario Nodes

Prior to this release several Clario nodes produced pseudocode in their results view. The pseudocode was designed to support the portability of data transformation definitions outside of Clario.  Those views have been updated to produce valid Clario Expression Script that can be cut and pasted directly into Transform.

Clario nodes that now produce valid Expression Script include Create Indicators, Factor Analysis, Missing Values, and Outliers.

New Expression Functions

Clario release 3.1.0 also brings three new functions for use with Transform and Filter expressions: Today, Now, and Midnight

Today - The current date (ex: 2012-03-30)
Now - The current date and time (ex: 2012-03-30 10:45:22)
Midnight - Removes the time portion of any date by setting the time to midnight (ex: 2012-03-30 00:00:00)

Additional Improvements

Filter / Transform:
Changed the Default Number of Fields in the Concatenate Function from 1 to 2.

System:
Improve Job/Workflow startup times by increasing the number of ‘warm’ executors during busy periods.

Read File / Write File -  Improve Interoperability with Excel:
Creating file definitions with the Attribute Import Editor now supports easy copy and paste between Clario and Excel.  A “Copy to Clipboard” button has been added that will convert commas into tab characters for easy paste into an Excel spreadsheet for modification.  When complete, pasting back to Clario converts the tabs back to commas and has improved end of line recognition.

User Documentation
A help button has been added to the main Clario toolbar, clicking it takes you to Clario’s online user documentation.

FIXES:

Unable to access link remove button (CLARIO-1560) It was possible to arrange nodes and links in a way that prevented a link from being removed.

Formatted file preview button disabled (CLARIO-1561) If you had a non-existent file name configured and tried to preview it, an error message was displayed indicating this. Unfortunately, the preview button was never re-enabled to allow you to try and preview the file again upon correcting the configuration.

Transform/Filter rowCount() function was not working as expected (CLARIO-1624) The counter was not incrementing correctly in all situations.

Thank you!
The Clario Analytics Product Development Team