Creating a local version of the Rational Software Development Platform update server

If your organization has many users of Rational® software development products, you might prefer to construct a local version of the Rational Software Development Platform update server.

By default, Rational Product Updater connects to the Rational Software Development Platform update site on the Internet to find product updates. The updates that you choose to install are downloaded and installed directly from the Rational update server.

However, product updates are also made available as ZIP files that can be downloaded from the IBM® Support download site to your local system. After you extract the files of the update or feature from the ZIP file on your local system, you use Product Updater to install the update or feature directly from your local system, instead of the Rational Software Development Platform update server. Detailed instructions for installing a product update or optional feature from the ZIP file are provided with the ZIP file.

Similarly, if you administer a set of Rational Software Development Platform product installations, you may want to place the extracted update and optional feature files on a server on your Intranet. Then, developers in your organization can configure the Product Updater tool on their systems to connect to your local server instead of the Internet to find, download and install the updates or features.

You might want to create a local version of the Rational Software Development Platform update server in the following situations:
  • You administer a set of product installations that do not have direct access to the Internet.
  • You administer a set of product installations that have a slow or unstable Internet connection.
  • You administer a set of product installations that have difficulty accessing the live IBM update servers from behind a firewall.
To locate the ZIP files for Rational product updates and optional features for Rational software development products at the IBM Support Web site:
  1. Go to www.ibm.com/support/.
  2. From the navigation bar, select Downloads and drivers from the navigation bar.
  3. On the next page, in the Category list, select Software > Rational, and in the Sub-category list select the name of your Rational software development product. The available downloads for that product are displayed.
  4. Click on an update or optional feature to display detailed information, including information on downloading and extracting a ZIP file of the update or feature.

For detailed instructions on installing an update or optional feature from the extracted ZIP files, refer to the installation instructions provided in the contents of the ZIP file.

The main steps for creating a local version of the Rational Software Development update server are as follows:
  1. 1. Download ZIP files for the product updates and optional features from the IBM support site as described above.

    After you download the updates, extract the files to a target directory that will stage your local mirror of the Rational Software Development Platform update server.

    You can extract all the updates to the same target directory. The updates do not overwrite each other. These steps assume that all updates and optional features are extracted into the same target directory.

    Important: Your local update site must include all updates for the Product Updater tool.

  2. Create or edit site.xml files.

    Each downloaded product update or optional feature that you extracted from its ZIP file contains a site_identifier.xml file. Product Updater requires the information contained in this site_identifier.xml file in order to find and install the specific files for the product update or feature, and also for additional information such as prerequisite updates and features.

    Product Updater expects to find at most one site.xml file for product updates and one site.xml file for optional features for each Rational software development product. Each product update or feature ZIP file that you download, however, will contain a site_identifier.xml file containing information only for that specific update or feature. Therefore, if your local update site will contain multiple updates and optional features for a specific Rational software development product, you need to combine the individual site_identifier.xml files provided with each update into a single site.xml file for that product's updates and another combined site.xml file for the product's optional features.

    Instructions on combining the site_identifier.xml files are provided in the ZIP file. In general, you combine the site_identifier.xml files as follows:
    1. If you do not already have a combined file named site.xml, copy one site_identifier.xml file into a new file named site.xml in the same directory.
    2. Copy the <feature><feature/> information (including the <feature><feature/> tags) from the corresponding site.xml file into the <site></site> section of the site.xml file that you created in the previous step.

    The order of the feature information is irrelevant.

    The combined site.xml file must be in the correct directory on the local update site. For example, if the product updates are on the file path product\60\update\features\, then the site.xml file should be in the directory product\60\update\site.xml. Similarly, if optional features for the product are in the directory product\60\discovery\features\, then the site.xml file for the optional features would be in the directory product\60\discovery\site.xml.

    If your local site contains updates and optional features for multiple Rational software development products, you must create combined site.xml files for each product.

  3. Create or edit an update policy file (policy.xml).

    Once you place the files for product updates or optional features on your local site, you must configure Product Updater to use your local site instead of the default Rational Software Development Platform update server. Product Updater can be configured to use an XML policy file (usually called policy.xml) to tell it the location of updates and optional features for Rational software development products. The policy file, in turn, references the site.xml files that you created above.

    A policy_identifier.xml file is included in the ZIP file for each product update or optional feature. However, since the policy_identifier.xml included in the ZIP file references the site_identifier.xml, if you combined the site_identifier.xml into single site.xml files, then you must modify the policy_identifier.xml file to reference the combined site.xml files.

    The ZIP file provides installation instructions that incluce Information on creating or modifying an update policy file (policy.xml).

    If your local update site contains updates and optional features for multiple Rational software development products, the policy file that you create must contain a url-map element for all Rational software development products on the local update site, including Rational Product Updater.

    Refer to Update policy control and policy files for more information on update policy files. Refer also to Changing the update sites preference .

  4. Test the local site using Rational Product Updater.
    1. Start Rational Product Updater:
      • On Windows® operating systems, click Start > Programs > IBM Rational > Rational Product Updater.
      • On Red Hat Enterprise Linux® 3.0, open the main menu and click Programming > Rational Product Updater.
      • On SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.0 (GNOME desktop environment), open the main menu and click Applications > Programming > Rational Product Updater.
      • On SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.0 (K Desktop Environment), open the main menu and click IBM Rational > Rational Product Updater.
    2. Change the update sites preference to use your policy.xml file. (Refer to Changing the update sites preference for information.)
    3. Click the Updates tab. Check that the Product Updater tool successfully locates any updates on the local update site.
    4. Click the Optional Features tab. Check that the Product Updater tool successfully locates any optional features on the local update site.
  5. Make the policy file available to users in your organization.

    Place the policy.xml file in a universally accessible location on the local update site and then inform your local users to change the update sites preference in their Product Updater tool to the URL of the policy.xml file.

Related concepts
Update policy control and policy files
Fix packs and other types of updates
Related tasks
Exporting a list of installed Rational software development products
Changing the update sites preference
Configuring Rational Product Updater to use a proxy server
Finding and installing product updates
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