Assistance Needed with Decrypting Encrypted Attachment Files in Windchill Vault Folder

[ozclkonur]

Windchill_12.1\Windchill\vaults\defaultsystemrootfolder folder. I want to decrypt these files so that I can check the files within the attachments from this location, but I can't access them because they are encrypted. I can't tell which files are PDFs. Could you help me with this issue?

Note: The files appear encrypted with names like 000000000000a8.

[HelesicPetr]

Hi @ozclkonur 

They are not really encrypted they are just saved with some database sequence. 

If you rename the file to correct one, you can open it.. 

If you need to find correct file name you have to go to the database and find the correct file.

Here is a description how to find the file vault name based on epm number

but you can change some conditions and you will find what you need.

CS322648 - Find vault file path for WTDocument or EPMDocument objects in Windchill PDMLink

PetrH

[ozclkonur]

This is the part I mentioned. There are such files inside the vault, and I assume these are the files within the attachment. However, the existing files do not have extensions, and their names are also different.

[avillanueva]

Yes, the vaults list files (unencrypted) based on a hexadecimal value stored in FVItem table. Your not expected to try and access files with extension from this location. All metadata about this file is stored in the database. A SQL query is needed for you to reverse this and extract the actual filename from the database matching what you see in that image. Any reason the web interface cannot help you in this area?

[avillanueva]

Agree with @HelesicPetr . Any reason you are at such a low level access the files in the vault?

[ozclkonur]

Honestly, I’m not familiar with the permissions. I logged in directly from the account where Windchill is installed. If this issue is due to unauthorized access, I would appreciate it if you could assist me with this. Where can I obtain the necessary permissions?

[avillanueva]

Your system should have an administrator account or person who can grant you access. 

[ozclkonur]

Actually, the account we logged in with is an admin account, yet it still appears this way. Is there a place in Windchill where we can check these permissions?

[BenLoosli]

Let's back up a step.

Why do you need to find the file type of the attachments and content files contained in the Windchill file vaults?

What are you doing with the files that you need this information?

Since you are looking in the vault folders directly, you are seeing the hashed filename that is assigned by the Windchill database using a sequence generated number. You can open these files in any simple text editor (Wordpad, Notepad, Notepad ++, etc.) and see some of the data that is in stored as ASCII text. Most of the file contains binary data and is not man readable.

I doubt file permissions within Windchill have anything to do with what you are trying to do, but they are controlled from the information in Site/Utilities/Policy Administration.

[avillanueva]

Agreed, permissions in Windchill have nothing to do when you are at the server looking at the vault folders.

[ozclkonur]

The PDFs are sent to the attachment section. For example, there are four PDFs created in sequence, but later a user adds a PDF in between, for instance, between 1 and 2, and assigns it a sheet number of 2. However, because it was originally a PDF with a page order of 5, it appears at the end rather than between 1 and 3. To address this, I developed an intermediate application in C# that scans the incoming PDFs using OCR, rearranges them according to the sheet number, and converts them back into a PDF. However, I haven't found an API that allows me to re-upload this modified PDF back into Windchill. I considered whether the encrypted files inside the vault might be useful, but it seems that they aren't related to this, and even if I modify them, the system might not automatically detect it.

[rleir]

How to determine the business object for a given vault file in Windchill PDMLink
https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS36696

Windchill PLM - WContentVerify Tool (has a list of other articles)
https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS50445