Upgrade from 5.1 to 5.3

[ptc-1795223]

Hello all,

I've got a bit of a problem, along with very little experience in Epic and wonder if anyone can help:

The system I have uses Epic 5.1 with some java (and acl) customisations. I'm testing moving to version 5.3 and whereas the acl seems to work fine, the java doesn't seem to load.

The java is in a sub directory of custom, but not custom/classes. The append_javaclass_path command with the location of the java is in the instance.acl file, so it should be picked up.

As an example, this works in 5.1:

$obj = java_constructor('GenerateId');

$new_name=java_instance($obj, 'removeInternalTags', $name);

but does not in 5.3. When I check I get the error [A30134] Cannot find the class GenerateId.

All my classes were compiled using java 1.4 and I know Epic 5.3 uses 1.5, so I'm wondering if 5.3 can tell the classes were compiled using an older version of Java and therefore refusing to recognise them.

Grasping at straws I'm thinking of recompiling everything using java 1.5 which will be a pain (for various reasons), but before I do that I was wondering if anyone with experience can hazard a guess as to why Epic can't find the java class files.

Thanks in advance

Chris

[jdreystadt]

I am not 100% positive but I think that Java Virtual Machines do not pay
attention to changes in the class path after they have started running.
And 5.3 starts a JVM as it comes up for various reasons. The effect is
that you cannot change the class path using instance.acl. It would be
much better if you could use the supported mechanism for adding java
classes, which is custom/classes. Is there a reason that you cannot use
this mechanism?

John Dreystadt
Software Development Director
Arbortext - PTC
734-352-2835
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[ptc-1795223]

Hi John,

Thanks for the reply, that makes perfect sense.

I can move the classes, but it becomes a pain project wise as we are not moving all users at once and will continue to support the way we do it in 5.1. Not a big deal really, I just want to make the process simple as possible.

Thanks

Chris

[berard]

Just curious, why not custom/classes? We've had no problems migrating from
5.1 to 5.3 using this directory.
keith

[ptc-1795223]

It's a project that was already deployed like this. The desire to keep it as such is to avoid as many changes as possible.

Like I said, it seems it will have to be changed in this case.

Regards

Chris

[ptc-1795223]

Hello all,

FYI: I now have the full picture and have things working without moving my java to custom/classes:

It seems somewhere in between the release of 5.1 that we currently have, and the release of 5.3 that I'm testing, a bug fix was applied to PTC Server that made JVM one of the first things that Arbortext Editor (must stop calling it Epic) did.

I've re-installed without PTC server and things now work as normal.

I'm not sure I agree with the implementation of this bug fix to PTC Server as wanting to append to the classpath is a perfectly valid thing to want to do. The fact that the command to allow you to do this is still available suggest PTC agree there is nothing wrong with this, however from a compatibility point of view it would have been nice if PTC had made the append_javaclass_path return or raise a meaningful error if you tried to use it with the server installed (it would have saved me 3 days).

Anyway, all is now well and thanks for your help.

Regards

Chris