Maintenance Update 09 30 2004

Financial Calculator Update 9/30/2004

The quarterly update for 9/30/2004 is a small update, with only minor changes. Most of the changes are optional and not required for your calculators to continue to work properly. As in previous years we have avoided major changes to our calculators in the 9/30 update. Our 12/31 update will contain significant changes to the retirement, savings, and tax calculators.

If you have not updated your calculators in a while you should definitely refresh your existing HTML calculator pages. All updates are cumulative, so if you start fresh with this update you will have all previous calculator updates as well. If you would like, you can review our 6/30/2004 update: 6/30/2004 Update. (The 9/30/2004 update includes all changes included in previous updates, you do not need to download any other updates to have the most current versions of all of the calculator components.)

Update instructions*:

1. Download the latest version of your calculators from your download site, found on your update e-mail notice.
2. Execute the Calc.exe file from your download. This is a self-extracting zip file. (Or unzip the Calc.zip file if you are using a non-windows platform.)
3. When prompted for a directory, you may use the default of "java" or enter your own. It is recommended that you extract the update to a new directory and then move the required files to your production environment. One directory will be created. It will have three subdirectories.
4. Replace the contents of your current KJEgui, KJEgraph and KJEcalculation directories with the new version.
5. Replace your current dinkytown.jar file with the new version.
6. Replace all files with the extension "class" with the new version.
7. Make required changes to any HTML documents as described in this document or replace all of your existing HTML documents and re-apply your web-site custom changes.

*Please note, if you have a Servlet or other custom deployment (other than the custom formatted delivery described below), installation instructions for your package will found on your download page.

Update for custom formatted delivery**:

**Custom formatted delivery is a special option that you can add to your maintenance update service. With this option we can apply an HTML, JSP, CFM or ASP template to your calculator pages and their reports before the update is sent to you. You will then receive your calculator pages with all of your site formatting in place, without any rework to include changes that have been made to the pages deployed on your server. If you are interested in using custom formatted delivery, please contact us at (612) 331-2291, or for more information.

1. Download the latest version of your calculators from your download site, found on your update e-mail notice.
2. Execute the Calc.exe file from your download. This is a self-extracting zip file. (Or unzip the Calc.zip file if you are using a non-windows platform.)
3. When prompted for a directory, you may use the default of "c:\java" or enter your own. It is recommended that you extract the update to a new directory and then move the required files to your production environment. One directory will be created. It will have three subdirectories.
4. Replace the contents of your current "java" directory (including the KJEgui, KJEgraph and KJEcalculation directories) with the new version.

All pages will be custom formatted to your site, no further integration or modification of the calculators is required. Please note, if your custom delivery uses Active Server Pages (ASP), Java™ Server Pages (JSP) or Cold Fusion (CFM) the respective ASP, JSP or CFM pages will be in place of your HTML documents for all calculator main pages. Report templates will remain in HTML documents (these documents are not called by your server, but instead used by the applet in the main calculator page).

To clear your Browser's cache:

When you test the new version of the calculators, make sure that the browser you are using uses the new files instead of any it may have in its cache. You may need to clear the browser's cache manually to ensure the new versions are loaded.

Choose "Internet Options" under the "Tools" menu and on the "General" tab click on the "Delete Files…" button. Click "Ok" when prompted if you wish to delete all temporary files. Close this dialog box, and all open Internet Explorer windows. Your Cache should then be cleared.

Choose "Preferences" under the "Edit" menu. Click on the "Advanced" category and then "Cache" option which appears under it. Click the "Clear Memory Cache" button, then click the "Clear Disk Cache" button.)

Master Changes (HTML Modification required, affects all calculators.)

There are no changes in this update that affect all calculators that affect the HTML documents. Specific calculators have had changes, for more information please see below.

Master Changes (no HTML changes required affects all calculators but is limited to java class files.)

Updated dinkytown.jar and class files: All "class" files and the java archive "dinkytown.jar" have had minor internal changes. These changes allowed for better foreign language support. For this release, you must update all "class" files and the java archive "dinkytown.jar" when you deploy. This is the normal procedure for any update, however, it is particularly important that you do not mix old and new versions of the financial calculators. Prior versions of the calculators will not operate with the newest release. This only affects the "class" files and the "dinkytown.jar" file. You can continue to use any previously deployed HTML documents.

Updates that require modifications to HTML documents

1. Retirement 403b, Retirement 457 (Retire403b.html, Retire457.html): Changed text 'upto' to 'up to'

2. Auto Equity Loan, Mortgage Refinance Breakeven (AutoEquity.html, MortgageRefinance.html): Changed text 'Misc.' to 'Miscellaneous'

3. Canadian Mortgage Rent vs. Buy ( (CAMortgageRentvsBuy.html): Definition changed. New definition and label for entry field is now:
   After-tax investment return: Annual percentage return you would retain, after income tax was paid, if you invested your closing costs and down payment instead of purchasing a home.

4. ALL Mortgage Calculators (U.S. and Canadian): Optional settings have been introduced that allow for more flexible selection of the number of years available for the term of a mortgage. The changes are all optional, your calculators will continue to operate as they are with no changes.

   All calculators with drop down boxes for terms now accept the following parameters:
   <PARAM name="TERM_MAXIMUM" value="40">

   Change this value to set the maximum term to any whole year. You will need to add this parameter to each calculator that you wish to have a different maximum, the default without the parameter is 25 for canada, 30 for the us.

   <PARAM name="SHOW_ALL_MAXIMUM" value="25">
   Change this parameter to set the maximum term that all years should be shown in the drop down box. For example, if you set this value to 25 and the TERM_MAXIMUM is 40, then the dropdown box will show 1-25 inclusive and only every 5th term thereafter. (so it would be 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,30,35,40 in this example).

   <PARAM name="TERM_LONG_APPEND" value="*">
   If you want to put something after terms that are beyond the value set in the SHOW_ALL_MAXIMUM, use this parameter. For example, set this value to a * with with the SHOW_ALL_MAXIMUM at 25 and the TERM_MAXIMUM at 40 and you will have an * following the 30, 35 and 40 year terms. Default is an empty string (IE no appended value).

   EXAMPLE: You could use:

   <PARAM name="TERM_MAXIMUM" value="40">
   <PARAM name="SHOW_ALL_MAXIMUM" value="25">
   <PARAM name="TERM_LONG_APPEND" value="*">

5. Canadian Mortgage Qualifier and Rent vs. Buy Only:

   <PARAM name="SHOW_FLEX_DOWN" value="TRUE">
   Set this parameter to "TRUE" to show the flex down checkbox. Default is false.

   <PARAM name="MSG_LABEL_FLEX_DOWN1" value="Check for Flex Down">
   Set this parameter to the text that you want to appear after the flexdown checkbox.

   <PARAM name="MSG_LABEL_FLEX_DOWN2" value="10% or less downpayment?">
   Set this parameter to the text that you want to appear before the flexdown checkbox.

   EXAMPLE : For Mortgage Qualifier and Mortgage Rent vs. Buy you could use:

   <PARAM name="TERM_MAXIMUM" value="40">
   <PARAM name="SHOW_ALL_MAXIMUM" value="25">
   <PARAM name="TERM_LONG_APPEND" value="*">
   <PARAM name="SHOW_FLEX_DOWN" value="TRUE">
   <PARAM name="MSG_LABEL_FLEX_DOWN1" value="Check for Flex Down">
   <PARAM name="MSG_LABEL_FLEX_DOWN2" value="10% or less downpayment?">
   

Updates that do not require modifications to HTML documents

1. Commercial Loan Calculator(DebtService.html): The report has the number of payments in months with a label of years. This has been corrected show the term in years.

2. Profit Margin Calculator (ProfitMargin.html): The percentages for Gross Margin and Markup were being rounded to the nearest whole number. The calculator has been updated to use two decimal places.

3. Retirement Income Calculator(RetirementIncome.html): The maximum starting balance has been increased to 99,000,000.

4. Canadian calculators with CMHC premium calculations. In the past, we calculated the CMHC premuim on the entire loan balance. Often, part of the loan balance was actually the CMHC premium. It turns out that the CMHC premium rate and amount do not need to take into account any change in the loan balance due to the CMHC premium's inclusion in the loan. This can lower the total CHMC premium.