Desktop Integration (DTI): Request to support several releases or even minor versions

[mschulze]

The Windchill Desktop Integration (DTI) does currently (WT 10.1M10) support the connection to serveral windchill servers.

But all these Windchill server must have the same Release and Datecode.

It is unlikely that all the different Windchill servers have the same datecode,

if often working with different Windchill Servers.

Therefore there must be a supported way to connect to different Windchill servers and datecodes from one client maschine.

The solution could be one of the three suggestions:

1. Support of upgrade compatibility (older versions of the DTI can work with later versions of Windchill Server)
2. Support of downgrade compatibility (latest version of the DTI can work with older Windchill Server)
3. Support of parallel installation of different buildcodes from the DTI on one client maschine to be able to use
   the correct DTI buildcode with a Windchill Server of the same buildcode. The user is able to choose,
   or even better DTI chosses, which buildcode is to be used with a Windchill Server.

I recommend that solution 3 should be the preffered solution.

[OliverDroop]

I agree that there are several usecases where this would be benefitial. But overall this is a low priority request right now

1. Upgrade testing: typically you do these tests from the same machine you are using in production, reinstalling every time during test and production use is not really feasible. On the other hand the user impact is rather low

2. Working as a supplier: If suppliers work for different companies which provide access to their windchill environment directly or via Projectlink Collaboration spaces they would need several DTI versions. Maybe they use Windchill in their own environment as well and have to choose on version. In the moment the supplier would need to work without the DTI integration. If we introduce a document mgmt. solution this would be required as well as some offline capabilities.

3. Service Providers: This group is challenged with this most since they work on many different customers and versions.  and often have to store their documentation as well in Windchill

[sm]

I agree this would be a very convenient feature in Windchill DTI for those folks who have a need to connect to different Windchill servers at different release or maintenance levels. In most cases, this is for admins and system managers and not everyday users.

I have heard of a few customers with more than one WC server at different release and maintenance levels in production, but this is not the norm. For admins and system managers, I typically suggest creating a virtual machine for either the test or production system client, or both. This give you a unique environment for each DTI client.

PTC would like to support option numnber 2 identified by Mathias, but this type of backwards compatibility has not been committed yet. Hopefully we can incorporate this in a future release of DTI.

[MorganBelais]

Scott,

Scenario 1 is also happening more and more often.

For large deployment you are generally working on the new version of Windchill for something like 1 year

For example we spent almost to year with our 9.1 production, and our tests on 10.0

The point is that it is very painful to switch from 1 DTI to another one when switching from 1 environement to another one.

During the pre upgrade period we are involing more and more users, and in case of the 10.0 update they were not able to test the DTI, cause for installing a software they need to open an It ticket ... an another one to go back to 9.1 DTI ...

Hope you will take point 1 into account.

[olivierlp]

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