About Siebel Anywhere Version Settings

This topic 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 those for Siebel configuration files, Siebel database schemas, Siebel client executable programs for Siebel Innovation Pack releases (formerly Siebel Fix Pack releases), Siebel Patchset releases (which incorporate multiple quick fixes), Siebel repository files, third-party software, and customer revisions. Any component that you are upgrading using Siebel Anywhere must have its own upgrade kit. For more information about Siebel Anywhere components, see "Upgrade Components".

A Siebel client user 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 must 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 must 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 briefly describe the kinds of version information that Siebel Anywhere uses and how Siebel Anywhere uses them:

"About Specifying a New Version Number for a Component"
"About Specifying the Versions That Can Use the Upgrade Kit"
"About Specifying Acceptable Version Ranges for Upgrade Components"
"About Storing Version Information"
"How Siebel Anywhere Component Versions Are Used"

About Specifying a New Version Number for a Component

A Siebel administrator who creates an upgrade kit specifies the version number that the component being upgraded will have after the upgrade kit is installed. 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, then a Mobile Web Client on which an upgrade kit successfully installs is upgraded to version 3 of the customer revision component.

About Specifying the Versions That Can Use the Upgrade Kit

The Siebel 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, then a client or server must already have one of those versions 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 upgrade 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 Chapter 4, "Defining Upgrade Kits."

As an example, suppose you assign the following values when creating a customer revision upgrade kit. (These values might be suitable when New Version is set to 3 for the upgrade kit.)

Minimum Old Version = 1
Maximum Old Version = 2

These example values cause the following results:

Mobile Web Clients with version 0 of the customer revision component cannot download the upgrade kit until they execute an upgrade kit that changes their customer revision number from 0 to either 1 or 2.

Mobile Web Clients with version 1 or 2 of the customer revision component can download the upgrade kit.

As a second example, suppose you assign the following values when creating an upgrade kit for a custom component:

Minimum Old Version = NULL
Maximum Old Version = NULL

Null values for both of 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 upgrade kit. Use null values for these settings only 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 upgrade kits for the same custom 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 runs, you would create one upgrade kit for the report and a second upgrade kit for the batch file, and you would make the upgrade kit for the batch file dependent on the upgrade kit for the report. The settings shown in Table 2-1 would accomplish this objective.

Table 2-1 Example Settings for Upgrade Kits Where Kit #2 Depends on Kit #1

Upgrade Kit Description	Minimum Old Version Value	Maximum Old Version Value	New Version Value
Report (upgrade kit #1)	NULL	NULL	1
Batch file to manipulate the report (upgrade kit #2)	1	1	2

About Specifying Acceptable Version Ranges for Upgrade Components

Siebel Anywhere also stores the acceptable range of versions for each upgrade component. For each subscriber, Siebel Anywhere checks the following:

Which upgrade component versions are acceptable for running the Siebel application
Which components must be upgraded

The acceptable range of versions is defined by the Min Version and Max Version settings. Min Version specifies the earliest acceptable version for a component. A component must be upgraded if its version number is less than the value of Min Version. A component does not require upgrading if its version number falls between the values of Min Version and Max Version, inclusive.

Min Version and Max Version values are assigned automatically when you apply an upgrade kit (that is, when you update a compiled information string with the component version information, before distributing the upgrade kit).

There are two ways to apply an upgrade kit. For more information about applying an upgrade kit while using the Upgrade Kit Wizard to define the upgrade kit, see Chapter 4, "Defining Upgrade Kits." For more information about applying an upgrade kit using the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box, see "Applying an Upgrade Kit".

Regardless of when the upgrade kit is applied, the values that are assigned to Min Version and Max Version are as follows:

For each upgrade kit, the default value for Min Version is set to the current Min Version value for the component to be upgraded. This value makes the upgrade kit optional for all users who have at least that version of the component.

If you prefer to make the upgrade kit required for all users, then you can do so by performing either of the following actions:
- Select the Required Upgrade Kit check box in the Upgrade Kit Wizard.
- Click the Require Upgrade Kit button in the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box.
Either of these actions sets Min Version for the upgrade kit to match the value of New Version for the upgrade kit.
The value for Max Version for an upgrade kit always matches the value of New Version for the upgrade kit.

As an example, suppose the following values are automatically assigned when you use the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box for a customer revision upgrade kit:

Min Version = 2
Max Version = 4

These values cause the following results:

The upgrade 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 execute the upgrade kit, then they can only access the application in a read-only mode.

The upgrade kit is optional for any Mobile Web Client with version 2, 3, or 4 of the customer revision component. Users with these versions can either execute the upgrade kit or continue using their current version of the component.

About Storing Version Information

When a Siebel administrator applies an upgrade kit by using the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box, the following settings for the upgrade kit are recorded in the form of a compiled information string in the Siebel database:

New Version
Minimum Old Version
Maximum Old Version
Min Version
Max Version

How Siebel Anywhere Component Versions Are Used

After Siebel Anywhere has stored an upgrade kit's version information in the database and the Siebel administrator has distributed the upgrade kit, eligible subscribers have access to the upgrade kit. Siebel Anywhere compares the subscriber's current component version with the version information in the database under conditions that depend on both the type of subscriber and certain settings. For detailed information about when these version checks are done, see Table 2-2.

Table 2-2 Version Check Occurrence

Subscriber Type	When Version Check Occurs
Mobile Web Client and Developer Web Client users	Mobile and Developer Web Clients perform the version check when the client starts up and connects to either the server or local database. Mobile Web Clients also perform a version check during each synchronization session.
Regional Node Servers	Performed as the Regional Node Server starts up, dependent upon the version check flag on the Regional Node Server. The Replication Agent on a Regional Node Server also performs a version check for each synchronization session, dependent upon the same Version Check parameter.

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 version numbers.

In general, if a version check reveals that a subscriber is required to upgrade, then 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 2-3.

However, if a version check reveals that a subscriber is not required to upgrade, then that subscriber generally is not prompted to upgrade, but can voluntarily navigate to the Component Upgrades view in the User Preferences screen 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".

Table 2-3 Response to Version Check Process Based on Application Status

Client or Server	Status of Application: Running	Status of Application: Startup
Mobile Web Client	During synchronization, if a version check discovers a required upgrade kit, then a prompt appears asking if the user wants to download the upgrade kit now. The choices are: Yes. The upgrade takes place. No. Synchronization does not occur. If you restart synchronization prior to exiting from the application, then you will be prompted again.	If a version check discovers a required upgrade at application startup, then a message such as the following appears: Client is being started in read-only mode. Please start a Siebel Remote session to retrieve the upgrade kit required to upgrade your system.
Developer Web Client	Not applicable.	If version check discovers a required upgrade at application startup, then a prompt appears asking if the user wants to download the upgrade kit now. The choices are: Yes. The upgrade takes place. No. The application starts in read-only mode.
Regional Node Server	If Version Check is TRUE, then Replication Agent automatically downloads the upgrade kit and shuts down the Regional Node Server. If Version Check is FALSE, then Replication Agent stops merging but does not shut down the Regional Node Server.	If Version Check is set to TRUE, then the Regional Node Server downloads the upgrade kit and shuts down. The Siebel administrator must invoke the Upgrade Wizard manually, from the command line, to perform the upgrade. If Version Check is FALSE, then the Regional Node Server starts up.

Client or Server

Status of Application: Running

Status of Application: Startup

Mobile Web Client

During synchronization, if a version check discovers a required upgrade kit, then a prompt appears asking if the user wants to download the upgrade kit now. The choices are:

Yes. The upgrade takes place.

No. Synchronization does not occur.

If you restart synchronization prior to exiting from the application, then you will be prompted again.

If a version check discovers a required upgrade at application startup, then a message such as the following appears:

Client is being started in read-only mode. Please start a Siebel Remote session to retrieve the upgrade kit required to upgrade your system.

Developer Web Client

Not applicable.

If version check discovers a required upgrade at application startup, then a prompt appears asking if the user wants to download the upgrade kit now. The choices are:

Yes. The upgrade takes place.

No. The application starts in read-only mode.

Regional Node Server

If Version Check is TRUE, then Replication Agent automatically downloads the upgrade kit and shuts down the Regional Node Server.

If Version Check is FALSE, then Replication Agent stops merging but does not shut down the Regional Node Server.

If Version Check is set to TRUE, then the Regional Node Server downloads the upgrade kit and shuts down. The Siebel administrator must invoke the Upgrade Wizard manually, from the command line, to perform the upgrade.

If Version Check is FALSE, then the Regional Node Server starts up.