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Siebel Anywhere Administration Guide > Siebel Anywhere Concepts >
How Siebel Anywhere Versions Work
This section describes how Siebel Anywhere uses version settings to perform its functions, beginning with some brief definitions of essential terminology.
Siebel Anywhere packages and delivers certain kinds of software using special files called upgrade kits. For more information about upgrade kits, see Upgrade Kits.
A software module that is upgraded as a single unit is called a Siebel Anywhere component. Examples of components include Siebel configuration files, Siebel database schemas, Siebel Executables, Siebel repository files, third-party software, and customer revisions. Any component that needs an upgrade must have its own upgrade kit. For more information about Siebel Anywhere components, see Upgrade Components.
A Siebel application server or Siebel client that has been associated with one or more Siebel Anywhere components is called a Siebel Anywhere subscriber. The association between a subscriber and a set of components is not direct; the association is formed by means of the subscriber's membership in an upgrade configuration, which is a definition of a setup used by a particular group of users, such as Siebel Call Center Clients or Siebel Sales Clients. A configuration associates a group of subscribers with the specific set of upgrade components that those subscribers need to have managed and maintained. For more information about configurations, see Upgrade Configurations. For more information about subscribers, see Siebel Anywhere Subscribers.
Siebel Anywhere stores and checks several kinds of version information to determine whether a particular subscriber can or should use a particular upgrade kit. To create upgrade kits that have the effects you want, you must understand how these versions are specified, stored, and used. The following paragraphs briefly describe the kinds of version information that Siebel Anywhere uses and how Siebel Anywhere uses them. The information is divided into the following sections:
About Specifying a New Version Number for a Component
An administrator who creates an upgrade kit specifies the version number that the component being upgraded will have after the kit is used to install the upgrade. This version number is called the New Version number.
For example, if the administrator sets the value of New Version to 3 when creating a new customer revision upgrade kit, a Mobile Web Client who successfully installs that upgrade kit will be upgraded to version 3 of the customer revision component.
About Specifying Versions That Can Use the Upgrade Kit
The administrator who creates an upgrade kit also specifies which previous versions of the component are compatible with the upgrade kit. If one or more specific versions are specified, a client or server must have one of those versions already installed to download and use the upgrade kit.
The following Upgrade Kit Wizard settings are used to specify the acceptable range of versions for downloading the kit:
- Minimum Old Version
- Maximum Old Version
These settings are specified as part of the process of defining the upgrade kit. For more information about defining upgrade kits, see Defining Upgrade Kits.
As an example, suppose you assign the following values when creating a customer revision upgrade kit:
Minimum Old Version = 1
Maximum Old Version = 2This causes the following results:
- A Mobile Web Client with version 0 of the customer revision component cannot download the upgrade kit until they install an upgrade that changes their customer revision number from 0 to 1.
- A Mobile Web Client with version 1 or 2 of the customer revision component can download the upgrade kit.
As another example, suppose you assign the following values when creating an upgrade kit for a custom report component:
Minimum Old Version = NULL
Maximum Old Version = NULLNull values for both these settings indicate that subscribers who have any previous version of the component or no previous version of the component can download and use the kit. Therefore, null values for these settings should only be used if there are no prerequisite versions for the component, or if the upgrade kit will contain all prerequisites within itself.
As a third example, suppose you want to distribute two kits for the same component, such as a report and a batch file that will manipulate the report. To make sure that the report is installed before the batch file is run, you would create one kit for the report and a separate kit for the batch file, and you would make the kit for the batch file dependent on the kit for the report. The settings shown in Table 3 would accomplish this objective.
About Specifying Versions That Must Upgrade
The administrator who creates an upgrade kit also specifies the following version information:
- Which upgrade component versions are still acceptable for running the software that is being upgraded (such as a Siebel application)
- Which component versions must be upgraded
For a user who must upgrade, the upgrade kit is called a required kit. For a user who can either upgrade or continue to use an older version of the component being updated, the upgrade kit is called an optional kit.
There are two different ways to specify the acceptable range of upgrade component versions for running the software:
- Apply in the Upgrade Kit Wizard. In the Upgrade Kit Wizard, choose to activate and apply the upgrade kit immediately, and then use the read-only default values supplied for the following settings:
- Component Minimum Version
- Component Maximum Version
- Apply in the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box. Do not apply the upgrade kit while using the Upgrade Kit Wizard. Instead, follow the procedures described in Activating, Applying, and Distributing Upgrade Kits and specify values for the following settings in the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box:
- Min Version
- Max Version
NOTE: The Component Minimum Version setting in the Upgrade Kit Wizard is equivalent to the Min Version setting in the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box, except that the former is read-only. Similarly, the Component Maximum Version setting in the Upgrade Kit Wizard is equivalent to the Max Version setting in the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box, except that the former is read-only.
As an example, suppose you assign the following values when using the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box for a customer revision upgrade kit:
Min Version= 2
Max Version= 4This causes the following results:
- The kit is required for any Mobile Web Client with version 1 of the customer revision component. If users have a version less than the minimum and choose not to install the upgrade, they can only access the application in a read-only mode.
- The kit is optional for any Mobile Web Client with version 2, 3, or 4 of the customer revision component.
About Storing Version Information
When an administrator applies an upgrade kit (either by using the Upgrade Kit Wizard or the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box), the following settings for the kit are recorded as a compiled information string in the database:
- New Version
- Minimum Old Version
- Maximum Old Version
- Component Minimum Version (also known as Min Version)
- Component Maximum Version (also known as Max Version)
About How Siebel Anywhere Component Versions Are Used
After Siebel Anywhere has stored an upgrade kit's version information in the database and the administrator has distributed the kit, eligible subscribers have access to the kit. Siebel Anywhere compares the subscriber's current component version with the version information in the database under conditions that depend on the type of the subscriber and certain settings. For detailed information about when these version checks are done, see Table 4.
Multiple factors affect what happens after Siebel Anywhere performs a version check. These factors include the subscriber type, the state the Siebel application is in when the versions are compared, and the relative numbers of the versions.
In general, if a version check reveals that a subscriber is required to upgrade, that subscriber is prompted to do so, and has limited or no access to the affected application until the upgrade is complete. For detailed information about responses to the version check process when the upgrade is required, see Table 5.
However, if a version check reveals that a subscriber is not required to upgrade, that subscriber generally is not prompted to upgrade, but must voluntarily navigate to User Preferences > Product Updates to discover whether an upgrade is available and to request the upgrade. For more information about displaying optional upgrade kits and requesting optional upgrades, see Retrieving and Installing Upgrade Kits.
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Siebel Anywhere Administration Guide Published: 22 August 2003 |