Bookshelf v7.7: 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:

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:

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

Null 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.

Table 3. Example Settings for Upgrade Kits Where Kit #2 Depends on Kit #1
Kit Description	Minimum Old Version Value	Maximum Old Version Value	New Version Value
Report	NULL	NULL	1
Batch file to manipulate report	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:

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 kit). There are two ways to apply a kit. For information about applying a kit while using the Upgrade Kit Wizard to define the kit, see Defining Upgrade Kits. For information about applying a kit by using the Apply Upgrade Kit Version Information dialog box, see Applying an Upgrade Kit.

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

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:

About Storing Version Information

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

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.

Table 4. Version Check Occurrence
Subscriber Type	When Version Check Occurs
Mobile and dedicated users	Mobile and Dedicated 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 per 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 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 > Component Upgrades 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 5. 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 version check discovers a required upgrade kit, a prompt will appear asking if you want to download the upgrade kit now. The choices are: Yes. Upgrade will take place. No. Synchronization ends. If you restart synchronization prior to exiting from the application, you will be prompted again.	If version check discovers a required upgrade at application startup, a message such as the following will appear: "Client is being started in read-only mode. Please start a Siebel Remote session to retrieve the upgrade kit required to upgrade your system."
Dedicated Web Client	Not applicable.	If version check discovers a required upgrade at application startup, a prompt will appear asking if you want to download the upgrade kit now. The choices are: Yes. Upgrade takes place. No. User application starts up in read-only mode.
Regional Node Server	If Version Check is TRUE, Replication Agent will automatically download the upgrade kit and shutdown the Regional Node Server. If Version Check is FALSE, Replication Agent will stop merging but will not shut down the Regional Node Server.	If Version Check is set to TRUE, the Regional Node Server will download the upgrade kit and exit. The administrator needs to invoke the Upgrade wizard manually, from the command line, to carry out the upgrade. If Version Check is FALSE, the Regional Node Server will start up.