On the road from Web Dynpro to Portal I left an area unexplored, KM. I would term it ignorance that I failed to go into it in depth. I got the first flavor of KM when I was entrusted with the installation and configuration of Trex in my recent project.
With the abundant collection of installation documents that you can come across at http://service.sap.com/instguides, I won't even dream of putting up yet another installation guide. However my experience might be worth sharing for those who might sometime latter travel the avenue that I chose that day (my routine sentence, actually you can find it in almost all the blogs that I have put).
I always doubt; whether it is confidence or rather over confidence that I always choose to read the notes only when I get stuck up during an installation. This case was not an exception either. I started off with my favorite EP 6.0 SP9 SR1 (I call it a favorite only due to the comfort of installation. Go with the SR1 and you have it running in its full glory without any further complications of applying service packs). I planned to have a separate host for the Trex server. A very good guide, the installation manual that is; I succeeded in the installation and the configuration that followed.
For a person who has installed Trex, creating an index was no big deal (sometimes I really go crazy with over confidence). I never even bothered to check the application log to see if there were any errors.
Now I was going to search the document in the KM. It proved to be a blessing that I chose not to boast of my installation capabilities then, which I generally do, cos my search failed. What made the things worse was that the result said that no index existed. It was then that sdn came to my rescue. /message/225440#225440 [original link is broken]
The sdn forum post helped not to hurt my confidence much as it said the problem happened due to no fault of mine and was a common known error; but hey I could not just find the note around which the whole discussion was revolving. Now SAP being a good buddy of mine came to my rescue (as it always has been) and advised me to go with the upgradation of SP9 to SP14. (Note no. 893751)
Having learnt the lesson I went through the notes labouriously and upgraded WAS, EP, KM and Trex to SP14 (even applied the patches for Trex and KM). I created the indexes and tried searching. My joy knew no bound on seeing my first Trex search result.
Now I understand that feats achieved with lots of effort put in, only can bring you happiness. With no ‘over’ before my confidence and the firm understanding of the importance of SAP notes, I hope every installation brings me joy with its success.
This write up would be incomplete if I failed to mention the people who have helped me in this effort. I would like to thank Santosh, Paul, Pran and Prakash for the help and the suggestions in my installation work. I would also like to thank my friend and colleague Shyam who helped me in shaping out this blog.
