Do URL's Change on Upgrade

[JasonKritter]

I reference PDMLink object URL's in external sources. When I upgrade to V9.1 will those URL's become invalid? How about in the future to V10? With the assumption I am upgrading the current Prod system in place. Thanks

[avillanueva]

I am sure nothing in certain. What version are you on now? From past
experience, upgrading from 8.0 to 9.1 did not affect my links to Cad
Docs that I had hosted externally. I would think that keeping the OID
(IDA2A2 in the DB) the same would be logical. However, sometimes
changes are necessary. Take for example supporting versions for change
objects. This required master tables to be created and linked back to
the existing tables. Since URLs depend upon OID, that portion probably
won't change. The JSP page that called might. UI changes are far asier
to do but it should be easy to convert if you can find the differences.
My advice, put it as part of your test plan.

[jessh]

To add to this a bit, oids don't change, and old info page URLs are
generally handled even if the new URL is different.

For a URL to just any JSP page in the system, however, this might change
and not be handled. If so, and this is a problem one can map such URLs
to their new equivalents at the web server or servlet engine level.

[JasonKritter]

Thanks Antonio and Jess. I am looking for confirmation from the community. PTC is telling me:

Object URL’s might not change for point releases like between M020 and M050, but they will change between 9.0 and 9.1. It will depend on how the source code is structured in the Windchill release. Also, this is not a recommended way of referring to documents because any changes to the file structure (file path in the source) would render the URL invalid. The best way to maintain references is by referring to the Document Number & Name pair rather than a link.

Jason Kritter
Sandia National Laboratories
Dept. 2994 - Engineering Tools Development
Phone: (505) 284-1466
E-mail: -

[MikeLockwood]

Sort of on this topic...

In workflow assignment instructions and also on wizard pages, we have relatively extensive hyperlinks to best practice / how-to / guideline documents stored in Windchill. These links are a maintenance headache for three reasons:


- They are tied to a specific document Iteration and we can't find any way to tie them to the latest.

- They only work with the machine name rather than an alias - which forces us to replace rather than swap server hardware.

- On rehosted systems (training, test, etc.), the links are to the production server, not local.

Would love to have a solution to these issues.

[jessh]

On 12/3/2010 11:44 AM, Lockwood,Mike,IRVINE,R&D wrote:
>
> Sort of on this topic...
>
> In workflow assignment instructions and also on wizard pages, we have
> relatively extensive hyperlinks to best practice / how-to / guideline
> documents stored in Windchill. These links are a maintenance headache
> for three reasons:
>
> -They are tied to a specific document Iteration and we can't find any
> way to tie them to the latest.
>
So produce an URL to the latest iteration instead?
>
> -They only work with the machine name rather than an alias -- which
> forces us to replace rather than swap server hardware.
>
I'm missing something here -- they should work with a host alias just
fine, right?
>
> -On rehosted systems (training, test, etc.), the links are to the
> production server, not local.
>
Only thing I can offer here is DNS mapping, though an ability to use
machine-relative URLs (i.e. everything after the protocol, host, and
port) sounds like a great solution.

--
Jess Holle

[sdrzewiczewski]

" So produce an URL to the latest iteration instead?"

I think the issue is it needs to be the latest iteration of the latest
revision. I'm not sure that is possible. If it is, i know many of us would
like to know how to get that? It isn't apparent that anything in the UI
provides you a link to click and copy the URL to get a latest iteration
and revision URL.

I'm sure that it could be done programatically, have a custom JSP page
that accepted number as an input then redirected you to the latest
revision and iteration.

> On 12/3/2010 11:44 AM, Lockwood,Mike,IRVINE,R&D wrote:
>>
>> Sort of on this topic...
>>
>> In workflow assignment instructions and also on wizard pages, we have
>> relatively extensive hyperlinks to best practice / how-to / guideline
>> documents stored in Windchill. These links are a maintenance headache
>> for three reasons:
>>
>> -They are tied to a specific document Iteration and we can't find any
>> way to tie them to the latest.
>>
> So produce an URL to the latest iteration instead?
>>
>> -They only work with the machine name rather than an alias -- which
>> forces us to replace rather than swap server hardware.
>>
> I'm missing something here -- they should work with a host alias just
> fine, right?
>>
>> -On rehosted systems (training, test, etc.), the links are to the
>> production server, not local.
>>
> Only thing I can offer here is DNS mapping, though an ability to use
> machine-relative URLs (i.e. everything after the protocol, host, and
> port) sounds like a great solution.
>
> --
> Jess Holle
>
>

[jessh]

Latest iteration of a given version is feasible via the UI, I believe.

Latest iteration of the latest version, is probably not, but you could
certainly produce a JSP page that would figure redirect you to the right
page given just a document master oid, number, or such -- and then
probably add something somewhere in the UI from which you could easily
copy this URL.

[MikeLockwood]

The need is for the links to work from:
- Wizard pages
- Workflow assignment instruction text blocks

[ddemay]

URL's using OR: or using nothing take you to that exact object.

URL's using VR: for version reference will take you to latest iteration of a rev.

There is no intelligence to just take you to the latest copy of something.

However, as Steve said this is a fairly lightweight customization. Some of it, if you use apache mod rewrite can do some cool stuff.

Then you don't have to change URL's generated all over place in UI. You write simple JSP to redirect to the latest iteration of latest version and have its request data populated/seeded via mod rewrite.


Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

[MatthewHoover]

I know with WTChangeRequest2 you can:

if(your WTChangeRequest2.isLatest())

{code}

but with WTDocument that code is not avaliable.

I have made the simple code below but was wondering if anyone had a faster solution?

where qr is a query result returning all the iterations of a doc i passed in.

String rev=" ;
while (qr.hasMoreElements()){
wt.doc.WTDocument doc = (wt.doc.WTDocument)qr.nextElement();
String revision = doc.getVersionDisplayIdentity().toString();
if(doc.isLatestIteration()){
String a = doc.getVersionDisplayIdentity().toString();

if (a.compareTo(rev)>0){
rev = doc.getVersionDisplayIdentity().toString();
name = doc.toString();}
}
}

This will return the latest revision and latest iteration. and then i can place the string that is returned into a JSP page hyperlink that works fine.

Thanks