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 National Water and Climate Center

Report Generator Announcements/Release Notes

Announcements

January 15, 2014 - Implementation of new Air-Water Database (AWDB) network codes is scheduled for Tuesday, January 21, 2014. NRCS stations will be assigned to a network based on sensor criteria and data collection objectives. These changes apply only to NRCS-managed stations. Most stations will remain assigned to network=SNTL (SNOTEL).

Report Generator users who currently retrieve data for the affected stations using network=SNTL will no longer receive data following implementation of the network code reassignments on January 21, 2014. Therefore, some bookmarked reports may not return all the expected data. Reports created in Report Generator must use new network codes to return data for these stations.

To summarize the scope of the reassignment:

  • ~210 stations (207 active) will be reassigned from network=SNTL to network=SCAN.
  • ~30 (all active) stations will be reassigned from network=SNTL to network=SNTLT.
  • ~10 stations will be reassigned from network=SNTL to network=OTHER.

Complete list of reassignments

For more information or questions, contact Gus Goodbody.

Release Notes

Release 2.0 - November 2016

Improved report selection input:

  • Enhanced station auto-complete works with all station identifier styles.
  • Enhanced HUC metadata support allows query by 2-digit through 12-digit HUC codes.
  • Added value types: QC flag, Reservoir Capacity and % of Reservoir Capacity.
  • Selections for report Layout, Units and Format are restored correctly when returning to Create/Modify tab.
  • Fixed a number of minor interaction defects.

Improved report output:

  • Data can be reported as of start or end of data period, at user choice. NRCS data can be easily comparable with other data sources.
  • Multi-station, multi-column “Time Series” reports group output columns by station for clarity.
  • Enhanced Chart output: multi-station charts, logarithmic scale option, better legend and tool-tips.
  • Enhanced CSV support: automatically opens CSV data in a new browser tab; recommends CSV output when HTML rendering will run long.
  • Corrected sorting of report output, including by columns within Time Series reports.
  • Better saved-report URLs: sort order, log-scale chart, other options are encoded in the URL to give the intended report output immediately.
  • Report Details view describes data elements used in the report output, on Report Details tab in browser, and included inline in CSV output.

Release 1.3 - June 2014

  • Fixed a defect that significantly reduces the delay when switching from the 'View Report' tab to the 'Create/Modify Report 'tab when lots of stations are selected.
  • Modified the 'View Station Information' panel so that the images are only loaded when a user navigates to the site. This significantly reduces the time to load the page when the 'View Station Information' panel is displayed. This also significantly reduces the number of hits to the Google Maps API so that users don't exceed their daily limit on the number of hits that they are allowed for the Google Maps API.
  • Modified the application so that when users switch between the 'Create/Modify Report' and the 'View Report' tabs, a progress dialog is displayed. This lets users know that the page is still loading and prevents users from entering information and then losing that information they've entered when the page finally loads.
  • Fixed defect that was causing empty rows to show up at the beginning of a report when using the Calendar Year or Water Year Group By Month layouts.
  • Fixed defect that was causing users to see the 'Cannot create report - no data found' message while a report was loading.
  • Added a checkbox called 'Fit Chart to Screen' on the 'View Report' tab. If this checkbox is check (the default), the chart will resize to the browser width. If the checkbox is unchecked, the chart will be a fixed size and will not resize as the browser window is resized.
  • Modified the legend in charts so that the series names are word wrapped with a maximum of 30 characters per line.
  • Removed the buffer from the y-axis of charts so that if the data starts at 0 the chart will now start at 0.
  • Units are no longer displayed in the "% of" columns.
  • Changed the location of the tooltips that popup when you hover over the points in a chart so that the tooltip is displayed in the top-right of the point instead of top-left. This prevents the tooltip from getting cut off when hovering over the first point in a chart.
  • Renamed the 'Generate Report' button to 'View Report' to be consistent with the 'View Report' tab.

Release 1.2 - May 2014

  • When using Internet Explorer, the pages now render correctly when Compatibility View is OFF, but may no longer work correctly when Compatibility View is enabled.
  • Changed the user interface components to a different vendor. The new interface looks and feels very similar, but is slightly different. This should help background processing performance.
  • Changed charting implementation to add features and improve usability. The following charting features were added:
    • Users can hover over the series to display the exact value, series name, and date of the value.
    • If multiple series are plotted, users can toggle any of the series on or off by clicking on the series name in the legend.
    • The width of the chart automatically adjusts to fit the browser width as the browser width is resized.
    • Charts can be exported to an image (charts are converted to an image and displayed in a window when the "Export Chart As Image" button is pressed. Users can then right-click on the image to save the image).
    • Added a button with some 'Help' information about charting.
    • Added the ability to zoom into a specific area of a chart (by clicking on chart and drawing a rectangle around the area to be zoomed. Reset zoom by double-clicking anywhere on the chart).
  • Added an indeterminate progress bar on the Advanced Search screen that will display while a search is pending.
  • Added a status indicator in the bottom right corner of the screen that will show up indicate whenever the application is waiting for some background processing to complete.
  • Added the ability to time slice across multiple durations (for example, an hourly report can be narrowed to only view data for 1 or more specific months, days, and/or hours).
  • Added support for requesting water year PRCP normals.
  • Now filters the list of selectable Depth options based on what is available for the selected site(s) and element.
  • On the View Report tab, eliminated paging, and instead replaced it with an option to fit the table to the screen. This sizes the table based on the browser size, and freezes the header row and makes the table a scrolling table.
  • On the View Report tab, changed the output formats so that they are in a menu like all of the other options instead of having icons that change based on which formats are available.
  • Hourly data now obeys the same rules as daily+ data with regard to shifting summary data (such as TMAX) to the correct interval.
  • No longer performs precision rounding prior to converting data to requested units.
  • Delta column headers now specify units.
  • Group by layouts now always have month headers across the top, even if there is only 1 data column.
  • Added month/day/hour information to report headers.
  • Replaced 'Last 3 Months' option with 'Last Month' option.
  • 'Current Year' and 'Current Water Year' selections now generate a report for dates up to the end of the water year rather than halting on today's date. This allows always viewing a full year's worth of entries when normal data is requested.
  • Prevented crashes due to trying to request reports using hourly normals/averages/medians, which don't exist.
  • Fixed defect causing functions on normals to only return Jan results.
  • Fixed metadata only reports sometimes incorrectly being blocked by the max report size check.
  • Fixed a layout issue where the site image and related station information was not rendering correctly in Chrome browsers.
  • Fixed defect resulting in some water year reports displaying 1 year more data than requested.
  • Fixed defect that sometimes caused group by period of record layouts to not start on the expected month.
  • Fixed layout issue when using a 'Previous Year's Value' column.
  • Fixed defect that was preventing the ability to plot any of the "% of" columns such as "% of Normal".

Release 1.1 - February 2014

  • Improved performance when searching for and removing stations.
  • Sorting the selected station list will now also sort the Station Information list.
  • Removed the Group Element by Month layout (which used the begin date and sometimes created unexpected month ordering) and replaced it with two, new fixed-format group by month layouts: 
    Water Year - Group by Month, which will always format the report output to begin in October and display by water year.
    Calendar Year - Group by Month, which will always format the report output to begin in January and display by calendar year.
    Bookmarked group by URLs will continue to work for now and will create water year layouts.
  • Fixed several defects in water year requests causing missing data for several elements or data that was returned 1 year off.
  • Fixed a defect in requesting deltas and prior values for elements with a depth causing no data to be returned.

Release 1.0 - September 2013

  • Modified how the reports are generated to significantly improve performance (for everything except charts. Chart performance will be enhanced in a future release). PDF output had to be removed (except for charts) because the technology used to generate the newer reports doesn't support PDF output.
  • Significantly improved the performance of reports that include columns where a function is used.
  • The list of available networks and their stations is now database-driven and certain stations have moved (SCAN stations are now under SCAN instead of SNOTEL).
  • Changed the look and feel of the rendered reports to better match the application's theme.
  • Added paging to the reports. This improves performance and gives users the option to view data in small chunks.
  • Modified the CSV output so that instead of prompting the user to save a file, it just opens the CSV output in a separate browser window. Users can save to a file by using the browser's save-as option.
  • Column headings for element names now come from the database.
  • Added the 'Period of Record' option when selecting a 'Time Period'.
  • Added the ability to change the duration and/or time period on the view report page.
  • Added the metadata columns 'Start Date', 'End Date', 'Network Code' and 'Network Name'.
  • Added the ability to remove sites from a query based search. So, now if you go to 'Advanced Search' and search for all 'SNOTEL' sites in 'OR', after you click the search button, you can still remove individual sites. The sites that are removed get excluded from the search criteria.
  • Added a new View Station Information panel at the top of the page. When expanded, this panel displays site metadata, a site image and Googlemap view (if available) for the currently selected station, and links to common reports for this type of station (for example a SNOTEL site will have links to the standard sensors and snow depth reports available on the site pages).
  • Data for observed streamflow now always comes from the AWDB database instead of directly fetching it from USGS.
  • Delta columns no longer show a missing value as the first value; the first value will be skipped and the first delta value will be shown.
  • Fixed the bug where the current day's hourly data would not be shown when "Custom" dates were chosen.
  • Fixed the bug where monthly normals would be missing when the start month was greater than the end month (for example, if you had asked for monthly normals 2011-12-01 to 2013-01-01, you would've only got values for Dec 2011, Jan 2012, Dec 2012, and Jan 2013).
  • Fixed bug that prevented running metadata-only reports and removed the inapplicable date column.
  • Added a check to make sure that if a "custom" date range is used, that both the custom begin and end dates are supplied.
  • Removed PII fields from the user feedback form.
  • Changed how the 'Group Elements by Month' layout is implemented so that it essentially runs the 'Standard' layout report and then reformats the data afterwards. This prevents errors where the data in the 'Group Elements by Month' layout might have been different from the values in the report when the 'Standard' layout was chosen. This also improves the performance of reports using this layout.
  • Removed "beta" from the URL. Bookmarked URLs with "beta" in them will continue to work for now - but this support may be removed in a future release.

BETA 5 Update 1 - December 2012

  • Renamed the station metadata attribute 'Basin Name' to 'HUC Name'
  • Added a new station metadata attribute called 'HUD' that returns the 8-digit HUC of the station (which might be different than the 1st 8-digits of the HUC attribute because the 8-digit HUC was based on the Hydrologic Unit Dataset and the 12-digit HUC is based on the Watershed Boundary Dataset)
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing retrieval of snow depth data when a Snotel station has a snow depth sensor, but didn't have a snow water equivalent sensor (such as an automated aerial marker).
  • Fixed a bug in the retrieval of snow depth data for Snotel sites so that it correct applies the data rule that sets the snow depth value to zero if the snow water equivalent value is zero

BETA 5 - November 2012

  • Added charting support for a single station. This is implemented as a new layout called 'Chart' that allows creating a line graph of the data that is selected.
  • Added a 'Layout' menu on the 'View Report' page that allows users to toggle between the various layouts quickly and easily.
  • Modified the user interface to select data columns by combining the element (which was physical element) and function into just a list of elements. This expands the list of elements to map one-to-one to an element in the AWDB database and allows us to introduce a new 'Function' list where Report Generator will apply a function to the selected data.
  • Implemented basic function calculations. There are currently 4 functions supported - Sum, Mean, Max, and Min. When a function is selected, a 'Function Interval' list will display a list of intervals where the user must select the interval over which the function should be applied. For example, you can now do things such as calculate the minimum of the daily TMAX values for each month, or for the year.
  • Modified the 'Advanced Search' screen to allow searching by DCO using the 'State' field. Now if you enter the name of a DCO, such as ORDCO or IDDCO in the 'State' field, you can search for sites whose jurisdiction is under that DCO.
  • Fixed a bug where retrieval of monthly SWE or Precipitation normals was not working when the layout was set to 'Group By Element'
  • Modified the report titles so that they no longer include the name of the network
  • Modified the report titles so that the name of the state and the name of the site is mixed case instead of being all capitalized.
  • Fixed a bug where the '% of' value types were not working correctly for 1981-2010 normals. The column headers were not displayed correctly and regardless of whether % of Normal, % of Average, or % Of Median was selected, it was always calculating % of Normal.
  • Modified the 'Manage Selected Columns' table so that when a metadata column is selected, the same name is displayed in the 'Data Type' column of the table instead of showing a code that is used internally be the application.
  • Modified the metadata columns so that the header for the metadata columns match the names used to select the metadata columns
  • Fixed a bug in the retrieval of hourly data (only Snotel temperature and other data that is by default in metric units in Snotel was affected). If you had requested the same data more than once in the same report, only the first set of numbers was correct.
  • Added the ability to retrieve the 1971-2000 Normals.
  • Split the 'Annual' frequency into 'Water Year' and 'Calendar Year'. This allows users to select the type of annual data they want in a report.
  • In the "Time Period" list, renamed "Water Year" to "Current Water Year" and renamed "Calendar Year" to "Current Calendar Year"
  • Added default selections for 'Last 3 Years' and 'Last 5 Years' for the two annual frequencies.
  • Added the ability to choose between English and Metric units. Also added a menu called "Units" on the 'View Report' tab that allows toggling between English and Metric units.
  • Added validation error messages for custom dates. If the date is in the incorrect format, a message is now displayed.
  • Modified the date format for custom dates so that it is dependent on the frequency selected. For now, everything is 'yyyy-MM-dd' except for 'Water Year' and 'Calendar Year' which is 'yyyy' which makes it more intuitive for users to just enter the year when running annual reports.

BETA 4 - August 2012

  • Modified the advanced station search screen to allow searching for stations by the elements that it has. The search-by-element feature can be used together with the other search criteria.
  • Moved the feedback button to top-right of screen, above tabs so that it can be clicked when entering report parameters or when viewing a report
  • Fixed a bug that was occurring when creating a report with multiple stations for semi-monthly data and using the Standard layout.
  • Huge performance improvement when requesting large amounts of data
  • Fixed bug where you couldn't filter stations by maximum elevation

BETA 3 - June 2012

  • Added the ability to retrieve the normals for 1981-2010
  • Modified the UI so that there is no longer a selection for "single station" vs. "multiple station" for reports. Now, the application will figure this out automatically.
  • Modified the UI to have better date selection. The duration is moved down to the bottom where the date selection was and now there are default selections for dates and calendars. If the calendars are used, the dates can be made relative by checking a box.
  • Added time slicing support. This allows users to request subsets of dates for some date range. For example, you can ask for daily data for a given calendar year and now you can limit the days to only the days of each month that you are interested in.
  • Reports can now be output in two different formats. The standard layout is the same what was available in BETA 2. The "group by month" option, is a dynamic format that allows users to group all of the columns that are element related by months. This makes it a lot easier to view large amounts of data
  • Now you can have multiple station reports for more than just a single date.
  • Performance improvement in retrieval of monthly and semi-monthly observed streamflow data from the USGS
  • Added support for retrieving annual data and normals
  • Modified the dates that display when doing a semi-monthly report to show 1st and 16th instead of 1st and 15th.
  • When elevation is selected as a metadata column, the units are displayed in the header instead of in each row
  • Implemented physical element filtering based on selected stations. Now, as stations are selected, the list of physical elements gets automatically filtered to show only the elements that can be selected for the stations selected. This makes it easier and faster to select data columns, because the list of physical elements will only contain relevant items.
  • Added "MANUAL PRECIPITATION" and "MANUAL SNOTEL" networks to the list of networks.

BETA 2 - April 2011

  • Completely changed the advanced station selection screen. This was redesigned to look and work differently. In the previous version, selecting several sites didn't work very well because it resulted in a URL that was very long, and the length of the URL was causing problems in IE and on the server. Now, selecting stations on the advanced station selection screen results in a query that is encoded in the URL instead of the full list of stations that results. The new screen allows stations to be selected using some criteria, but it also allows adding stations to the selection that don't match the specified criteria.
  • Improved performance. There is significant performance improvement when selecting large numbers of stations and across the board performance improvements.
  • Modified the header for the table of selected stations to show the number of stations that are selected.
  • Added the ability to search for active sites only on the the advanced station selection screen
  • Added the ability to sort selected stations
  • On the advanced station selection screen, changed the network filter to a multi-select list of networks so that users don't have to know the network codes and can instead select from a meaningful list of networks.
  • On the advanced station selection screen, users can now specify HUCs that are less than 8 digits without putting the '*' character after the digits.
  • Fixed bug that was occurring when filtering list of elements
  • Added a new column "Value Type" called "Collection Date" so that users can request the collection date for Snow Water Equivalent and Snow Depth for Snow Course sites.
  • Renamed the header for the list of selected columns to "Manage Selected Columns" instead of "Selected Columns"
  • For multiple station reports, if a user doesn't include one of the station id, station name or acton id columns, then the application will automatically add the station id and station name columns to the report and notify the user that they were added.
  • If a semi-monthly multiple station report is run, a new column is now included to indicate which part of the part (1st Half or 2nd Half) that the data is for.
  • Some minor report formatting changes were made to improve the appearance of reports
  • Added a link to release notes for the application
  • Fixed bug that occurred when a user tried to add a data column when no element was selected
  • Removed the single tab on the Advanced Search screen.

BETA 1 - March 2011

  • Initial release to the public