Go to content Go to navigation Go to search

email us or call Alex Laurie on +44 (0)797 643 6630

Mobbu home
What we do
Our customers
The Mobbu team
Blog


Search this site


Customer extranet log-in:
Username:
Password:

(I forgot my password)


Mobbu's RSS feed

All material © copyright 2005-2009 Mobbu Ltd

Recently Posted


Recent Comments


Links in brief

(See more of our links)

Always keep older versions of your Java apps on BES

24 September 2008 by Alex Laurie

Here’s a service management problem we’ve seen with customers recently. When updating to new versions of Java applications on your BES the natural tendency for an administrator may be to delete the old apps from the \program files\common files\research in motion\shared\applications folder – it’s a good house-keeping principle.

But if you’re administrating a large deployment of BlackBerrys, our advice is don’t.

Why? Because it prevents BES from remotely managing and removing the application, and in larger scale BlackBerry deployments you can’t guarantee that all the devices will be on and in a position to update at the moment that you (or your administrator) push out an application update.

If you delete older versions of your application from the applications folder (the .alx and .cod files), your BES server will no longer be able to remove that application remotely.

In that scenario, a user comes back from annual leave two weeks after the application update, turns on their device, and if BES can no longer delete the old version, they could see both versions of the application on their device. At best that’ll confuse the user, at worst it could lead to application conflicts.

So the simple service management rule is always leave old apps on the BES server, and instead change their disposition to disallowed in the relevant software configurations.

Disallowed applications in BES Manager
Click image to see it larger.

That way, your users’ devices will update properly as and when they switch their device on.


  1. Sounds like a very sensible idea, however the BES sysadmin guide says “You can maintain only one version of each application or tool on the network drive at a time. Delete old versions of
    applications or tools from the network drive as part of your maintenance tasks.”

    Indeed, if I attempt to add different versions of the same application (i.e. Application ID is the same, but Version is different (in the CODs and ALX)), the BlackBerry Manager warns when I open the Software Configuration that multiple instances of the application were found, and tells me to “remove all but the desired version to enable the applications for configuration.”

    Am I missing something here?


    — Christopher    16 October 2008, 11:44    #

  2. Christopher,

    The server will let you keep different versions of the same application, if the version numbers are different – at least in our experience it does.

    As per the image above we have all previous versions of our MFO product on the server.

    If this continues to be a problem it is possible to change the output file name in the project properties. Thus fooling the server to in to thinking the application is a different one. A possible approach to this is to append the version number to the file name so product version 1.1.2 might be product112.

    both methods are working for us (the latter has the benefit of you being able to see the version number with out launching BES Manager).


    — Alex Laurie    21 October 2008, 09:10    #
  Textile Help

Application updates not recognised on new BlackBerry devices? Police Authority funds in Icelandic banks