Installation Considerations

To install a plug-in, service provisioning administrators load the plug-in JAR file.

Plug-In Upgrade Considerations

To upgrade from an existing version of a plug-in to a newer version of a plug-in, you provide a patch JAR file that contains only the contents needed for the patch . For example, if you only changed two component types between version 1.2 and version 1.3, then your upgrade patch would contain only those new component type XML files. Define your patch so that it can be applied in series to upgrade multiple versions . For example, to upgrade from version 1.0 to version 1.2, a user would first apply the upgrade from 1.0 to 1.1, then apply the upgrade from version 1.1 to version 1.2. Update patches are strictly additive with respect to the previously loaded version of the plug-in. You can also create a patch that would upgrade from a specific existing version (for example, 1.0) to a specific newer version (for example, 1.3). However, you cannot create a patch to upgrade from any arbitrary version to a higher version.

Uninstalling Plug-In Versions

You cannot uninstall an individual patch of a plug-in, and you cannot delete objects created by previous versions of a plug-in. To remove this content, you would need to uninstall the current version of the plug-in and reinstall the older version of the plug-in. Alternatively, you could create an anti-patch that would install the old plug-in version's code while creating new versions of the plug-in defined objects.

Component Versions and Dependencies

Objects that are defined by a plug-in are loaded at installation time in the order in which they are defined in the plug-in descriptor file. These objects may only reference other objects that were defined either earlier in the plug-in or in a plug-in on which the defining plug-in directly depends. Any dependencies must be declared in the plug-in descriptor file. If a plug-in attempts to create a versioned object that matches a same typed and named object existing in the system, a new version of the object is created. The minor version of this object is incremented unless the plug-in definition explicitly defines the object as requiring a major version increment. If a plug-in attempts to create a non-versioned object that matches a same typed and named existing object, the plug-in object replaces the previous definition of the object. In both the versioned and unversioned cases, the existing object must have been created by a prior version of the same plug-in that is attempting to create the new version of the object.