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Oracle Database Report for SmarTeam

Steve Dunn — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:15:05 +0000

For those of you running an Oracle database as your repository for SmarTeam, check out this helpful utility. The SmarTeam Database Oracle General Report tool is a collection of plain text files containing batch commands and SQL statements that can generate a detailed HTML report of key Oracle statuses and settings. The tool is available from Dassault’s support site by searching for QA00000002533. The output report from the tool includes information on:

Current server connections
Versions of installed Oracle components
Database file names, locations, and sizes
Database object counts by type and owner
Invalid code objects and indices
Scheduled jobs
General database parameters
NLS parameters
SmarTeam-specific information (DB version and last upgrade date)

In our case, the tool was particularly helpful in troubleshooting an ENOVIA SmarTeam Multi-Site issue. The system was generating “Error No. 23325 – Database contains invalid database objects. Please perform necessary steps to fix them” while trying to initiate the primary site.

Although the error message was accurate, locating the problematic database object was tricky. However, running the SmarTeam Database Oracle General Report was helpful in honing in on the Oracle package that was causing the issue. Please contact us if you need help with or have questions about your SmarTeam Oracle environment, or have questions about this tool. Leave us a comment if you have other techniques to share related to Oracle setup, configuration, or troubleshooting for ENOVIA SmarTeam or other PLM systems.

Gotcha with Oracle 11g for SmarTeam

Steve Dunn — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 02:06:21 +0000

For those of you planning to move to Oracle 11g with SmarTeam V5R20, watch out for this one. With 11g, Oracle has introduced a feature called Deferred Segment Creation. Generally speaking, this is a nice feature because it saves space in exports and eliminates unneeded storage allocation in many databases. It can create problems with ENOVIA SmarTeam, however. This is a quick one, but a very important tip. Deferred Segment Creation in Oracle 11g means that Oracle won’t actually create the tables defined in your schema until the table has at least 1 row (deferring creation of table segments). By default, Deferred Segment Creation is turned on in Oracle 11g. So after creating your SmarTeam database in a brand new Oracle 11g environment, your first export will skip a large number of SmarTeam tables (many SmarTeam tables have 0 rows initially). As you’re probably aware, SmarTeam expects certain tables to be present at all times and without those tables, the software can fail to start or become unstable. So your export would be complete and consistent from an Oracle perspective, but worthless from a SmarTeam perspective. To address this issue, you simply need to turn Deferred Segment creation off with this command:

alter system set deferred_segment_creation=false;

Good luck, and leave us a comment to let us know what other goodies you’ve found in working with Oracle 11g for ENOVIA SmarTeam. You can read more about Deferred Segment Creation here, including a methodology for seeing it in action. Please contact us if we can help you with your Oracle for ENOVIA SmarTeam.

Phantom Assemblies in ENOVIA SmarTeam

Steve Dunn — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:45:07 +0000

For any who create or interact with Bills of Material, you know that there are often structures in the design that should be consolidated in the BOM - phantoms (sometimes also called "ghost" assemblies). There are also sometimes components, and even entire structures, that should not be represented at all in the BOM. To help accommodate these needs, ENOVIA SmarTeam’s BOM functionality provides flexibility when it comes to displaying and rolling up items in a BOM structure. In particular, the InBOM attribute and related functionality is worth diving into for addressing these needs. The display and roll-up behavior of a subassembly and its components within a BOM structure is controlled via the SmarTeam tree link attribute, "InBOM". This attribute was introduced as part of the SmarTeam Engineering Express methodology and is present in PLMDB on the Documents Tree link. It controls the roll-up behavior of a document's related item (or child items) within a BOM structure. Valid values include “Yes”, “No”, and “Phantom”. A value of “Yes” includes the subassembly (and any children with a “Yes” value) in the BOM. A value of “No” omits the entire subassembly including children, grandchildren, etc. A value of “Phantom” omits the top level subassembly item, but includes any children configured with a “Yes” value. Additionally, when using “Phantom”, the children will show on the BOM as attached to the parent of the phantom item and the quantities will be rolled-up (with appropriate calculations) for the children configured to be included. Note that each time a subassembly’s "InBOM" value is updated, the BOM must be updated by invoking the Create/Update BOM from Document Tree command for the changes to take effect. This can be done via a right mouse click on the top level assembly. To demonstrate the behavior of the “InBOM” attribute, let’s look at an assembly with multiple subassemblies. The image below shows the Documents Tree of the “2 SEATER JET SKI”. Note that we’ll be configuring the subassembly “PANEL PCB” in the following example.

InBOM = Yes (Full Structure)

By default, a document’s “InBOM” value is “Yes”. This will result in the subassembly being displayed in the structure. The image below shows the “InBOM” attribute on the Composition tab of the “PANEL PCB” profile card:

When the BOM structure of the jet ski is shown in the BOM editor, the "PANEL PCB" item is displayed along with the child "SQUARE BOARD". For clarity, all children in the "PANEL PCB" subassembly other than the Square Board are configured with an “InBOM” value of “No”.

InBOM = No (Exclude from BOM)

In the following example, the “InBOM” attribute is set to “No” on the "PANEL PCB" profile card to demonstrate the effect on the BOM.

With the "PANEL PCB" set to “No”, the subassembly and all its children do not show up in the BOM structure.

InBOM = Phantom (Children Rolled-up)

In this last example, the “InBOM” attribute is set to “Phantom” to show the effect this option has on the subassembly and its children.

The "PANEL PCB" does not show in the BOM structure. However, the “SQUARE BOARD” is shown as a child of the jet ski with a rolled-up quantity of three since there were three “PANEL PCB” components in the assembly.

There you have it, the flexibility of phantom assemblies in ENOVIA SmarTeam. If you have questions about this functionality, or about BOM methodologies or SmarTeam BOM best practices in general, please contact us - we're experts at ENOVIA SmarTeam BOM.

ENOVIA SmarTeam Multi-Site and RepliWeb

Steve Dunn — Sat, 01 May 2010 02:00:54 +0000

We are sometimes asked the questions, “Should I upgrade RepliWeb in our ENOVIA SmarTeam Multi-Site / Multi-Vault environment?” and “If so, how should I do the upgrade?” These Read More...

Dealing with Timezones in a Global Environment

Steve Dunn — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 03:58:14 +0000

Global collaboration can be tricky for a number of reasons. For instance, when developing an application that is shared between users in two or more time Read More...

Reasons to Develop using VMs

Steve Dunn — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:00:28 +0000

When planning any software development project, whether it is a point or enterprise solution, there are several key questions to answer before a line of code Read More...

Accessing Virtual Disks Via Windows

Steve Dunn — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:30:24 +0000

One of the often overlooked features of VMWare Workstation is the Virtual Disk Mapping utility. Available through the standard VMware Workstation GUI, the tool maps a Read More...

Automating Transfer of SmarTeam Vault Data

Steve Dunn — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:00:59 +0000

With every upgrade to ENOVIA SmarTeam (not to mention upgrades to CAD, Office and database platforms) there's no question about the benefits of building a test environment for validation prior to a production roll-out. An important piece of building a test environment is a properly configured test vault. Quite often, a successful test doesn't require a complete copy of the entire production vault, so let's take a look at a simple process to copy specific files from a production system to a test environment on demand. To get started, build a working ENOVIA SmarTeam test environment with a copy of the production database, scripts, configuration files, NLS files, and icons (learn more about ENOVIA SmarTeam environment duplication details here). Identify and configure the test vaults you'll be copying the files to. Important Note: When building a test environment, ensure that the ENOVIA SmarTeam Vault Server Setup tool is pointing to the newly created test vaults and not the production vaults. To keep things simple, the example script for this article (request the free sample code by contacting us) has just three possible destination vaults: Checked In, Released, and Obsolete. Record the UNC paths of each of these destination (test) vaults and setup NTFS permissions on them so that the logged-in Windows user has write access. Note that this script will copy files for each object selected. It will not copy other revisions of selected objects, nor will it automatically copy any linked objects (such as SolidWorks models if a drawing is selected). The tool will, however, copy viewer files automatically (like PDFs used for rendition management).

Step One - Create the script file

Create a script file named CopyFilesToTest.bs in the script folder on the production environment.

Step Two - Copy the code to the script file

Open the script file you received from Razorleaf and copy/paste the text to the newly created CopyFilesToTest.bs script file.

Step Three - Modify Destination Vaults

The three destination vaults must be configured to match the location of the vaults on your test SmarTeam Vault Server. The code that configures this is as follows: CheckedInVault = "\\UNCPathToCheckedIn" ReleasedVault = "\\UNCPathToReleased" ObsoleteVault = "\\UNCPathToObsolete" The screenshot below shows a sample configuration:

Note that the full UNC path must be enclosed within quotations. Remember to configure NTFS permissions to allow the logged-in Windows user to write to the UNC paths.

Step Four - Hook the script

Hook the script function to a User-Defined Tool (UDT) on the Documents super class in ENOVIA SmarTeam using the Script Maintenance tool.

Step Five - Run the Script

Finally, identify objects for the file transfer. This can be either from browsing a Documents tree or performing a search. CTRL or SHIFT + left-click to select one or more objects. Once the desired objects are selected, simply right-click, select User Defined Tools and choose Copy Files to Test.

A confirmation message will be shown if successful.

Browse to the SmarTeam Vault Server test location using Windows Explorer to ensure the files were copied as expected. Since the CopyFilesToTest.bs script is installed on the production environment, permissions should be set on the UDT to only allow access to an administrator.

Summary

With the test files copied, validation can begin in the test system using copies instead of the actual production files. Not only is this a time saver, but user acceptance testing can be performed on files familiar to the users. Please leave us a comment below to let us know what you think of the tool and if you have ideas for improving it.

64-bit Oracle Support for ENOVIA SmarTeam

Steve Dunn — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:00:35 +0000

The population of 64-bit PCs has steadily increased since their mainstream introduction in 2003, and ENOVIA SmarTeam has supported the use of 64-bit machines since V5R18 Read More...

64-bit Oracle Support for ENOVIA SmarTeam

Steve Dunn — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:00:35 +0000

The population of 64-bit PCs has steadily increased since their mainstream introduction in 2003, and ENOVIA SmarTeam has supported the use of 64-bit machines since V5R18 Read More...