Release 8 Is Here!

This issue of EMME/2 News is entirely dedicated to the introduction of Release 8. Once again, this new release is packed with many new developments and even more enhancements of existing functionalities. The aim here is to give you a first brief overview on what to look for in the new release, but is not meant to replace the complete technical reference information provided in the updated EMME/2 User's Manual and in the Release Notes which you will receive with Release 8.

As usual, we start the description of the new release with a list of all those new developments and improvements that are of general interest. Some of these topics are then described separately in more detail in the following sections.

Release 8 includes one new module and many module specific developments and enhancements:

• A new module 1.31 has been added to EMME/2 which allows accessing other EMME/2 data bank files (locally or remotely via LAN or WAN) and importing data directly from them -- eliminating the tedious task of transferring data by first batching out and then batching in again.
• As has been requested by many users, color indices can now be used in the network editor module 2.12 in order to display the network elements in user defined colors. For this purpose, two new module parameters have been added. These are used to activate the optional specification of a node and/or a link color index attribute.
• Also in module 2.12, the automatic node numbering mechanism has been extended. The asterisk (which implies automatic node numbering) can now be used for all ADD NODE operations, not just when USE SAME DATA is active. If a node number is specified by prepending an asterisk, the system will automatically look for the next available node number, starting with the given value.
• After having completely restructured the intersection data and having enhanced the network calculator to allow turn calculations in the previous release, the long awaited graphic intersection and turn editor is introduced in Release 8.
• Following the general enhancements regarding the zone groups (see below), module 3.01 has undergone a major overhaul. New features include batch input/output by nodes (instead of groups), as well as several new report formats, including a summary report and the possibility to map one zone group ensemble onto another.
• When reading matrices by using zone groups with module 3.11, any occurrences of empty zone groups will now generate warning messages, so that the user is aware of the potential loss of information that may result from this.
• The matrix calculator, module 3.21, has been enhanced to allow saving of zone based results in node attributes and zone group ensembles. Also, the X and Y coordinates of the centroids can be accessed directly within matrix expressions by means of the new keywords ``xi'' and ``yi''.
• Color indices are now supported in module 4.13. This improves the readability of function plots, since each displayed function can be colored individually.
• In modules 5.11/5.21, class specific link and turn volumes can now be saved directly for each class of a multiclass equilibrium auto assignment.
• New options have been added to module 6.12, ``plot auto volumes and times'', for displaying several volume layers on the same plot, each displayed in separate bands using a different color. This opens new dimensions for displaying assignment results in which the volumes are split in several components, as e.g. in multiclass assignments or when using additional options.
• A new choice is offered for the way the relative differences in modules 6.13 and 6.23 are computed. In addition to the existing method, which is based on the comparison to the larger of the two values, the relative difference can now also be computed with respect to either one of the two scenarios involved.

In addition to the above module specific developments, Release 8 includes many enhancements and new features which apply to the system as a whole:

• The maximum possible size of an EMME/2 data bank has been increased from 1 Gigabyte to 2 Gigabytes.
• The maximum number of transit vehicle types has been increased from 99 to 999.
• Zone groups can now have numbers up to 9999 (previously 999). This will facilitate the use of ensembles to code zone group aggregations having more than 1000 groups. Also, each zone group ensemble includes new a description of up to 40 characters, as well as a time stamp recording the time and date the ensemble was last modified.
• A new keyword ``nodes='' is available in the transit line selection dialog. It is used to select transit lines according to their itinerary by specifying one or several nodes that appear (in the given order) in the itinerary of the selected lines.
• In the past, the zone selection dialog (e.g. ``Enter: Origins (from,to)'') was very strict and forced the user to enter at least one valid zone number. This would sometimes lead to situations in which it was difficult to bail out and start over. In Release 8, this dialog has been changed to accept the input of an empty zone subset and, in this case, return back to the beginning of the corresponding dialog.
• More powerful query commands have been added to the ``Enter: Matrix='' dialog. With these commands a user can list matrix directory information by specifying matrix types, identifiers or names.
• A new intrinsic function bint() is available in algebraic expressions. It implements bucket rounding, a special type of rounding, in which the accumulated rounding error of previous calls is used to bias the next rounding operation. By using bint() for rounding entire sets of values (such as e.g. demand matrices) the sum of the rounded result values is guaranteed to be equal to the rounded sum of the unrounded values. As bucket rounding is used in certain traditional integer valued distribution models, bint() is useful when implementing these models with EMME/2.
• The functionality of existing intrinsic functions put() and get() (used to store and recall intermediate expression results) has been enhanced by the new intrinsic puti(), which allows random write access to the stack values, and by increasing the stack size from 20 to 250.
• The annotation keep mechanism has been improved to also retain all circles that are drawn while the keep buffer is activated. This enhancement allows circle filling using the standard annotation filling command introduced in Release 7.
• Many new features have again been added to the EMME/2 macro language, making it even more powerful.

The new functionalities MORELINE, MOREVEH and LOGBOOK have been added to the macro MODIFYDB to allow changing the dimensions of an existing EMME/2 data bank to increase the number of transit lines and transit vehicle types or for changing the size of the log book.

PC users will be happy to know that the Windows 95 compatibility problems have been solved in the new and enhanced version of EmtoolW.

EMME/2 users who have multiple EMME/2 licences on PC connected via a local area network can now avoid all the hassle related to keeping track of the INROKEYS attached to each of the PCs, by installing E2NETLIC, our new EMME/2 network licence server for PC networks.

With a new release adding so many new features, users are naturally concerned about the retro-compatibility of Release 8 with their existing applications. In this respect, there are no problems to be expected, as, except for the addition of a small new internal file for storing the ensemble descriptions and time stamps, there are no changes made in the structure of the data bank when switching to Release 8.

As always, some existing macros that use features and modules that have been enhanced in the new release may need minor adaptations. But this should be a rather easy task for Release 8, since a) there are only very few changes in the code which may lead to such macro incompatibilities, b) all of these are well identified in the release notes, and c) the single stepping and fall back mechanisms of the macro debug mode are a big help for updating macros and testing the new versions.