SAP Mobiliser 5.1 installation

Initially I’ve installed version 5.0 – not a problem, but wrong. Due to the new mobile application SAP Utilities Customer Engagement we needed to install version 5.1. This version is currently in Ramp-Up, so we’ve joint the programme.

We’ve decided not to upgrade, but to do a fresh installation inside a virtual machine. So I’ve started the EBF21113 installation (EBF is Sybase slang and stands for Emergency Bug Fix).

As the name implies this is an intermediate version and doesn’t run out of the box. I’ve learned during a Sales presentation that the Mobiliser product (formerly known as Paybox) is more than 11 years old, but the installation procedure doesn’t reflect this. A lot of manual steps including downloading several files is required: I wouldn’t expect this if a product is mature.

First, it’s available for Red Hat Enterprise only, but  my company is running a Windows platform strategy. So RHEL wasn’t available and needed to be purchased, it cannot be supported by the administration.

Well, we bought a developer license and a basic support subscription, but I’ve never used RHEL before. I’m using Linux for decades (Slackware, Debian, SuSE, OpenSuSE), so I’m an experienced user. But each distribution has some differences: other tools and so on. The RHEL knowledge base was very helpful – all my questions could be answered quickly.

A database is a prerequisite for SAP Mobiliser: I’ve chosen Oracle 11g (XE) for Linux 64bit and downloaded and installed the RPM. The post-installation problems were caused by missing firewall setup (ports) and missing DNS setup. Helpful answers came through Google.

Second, the documentation. Some documents are available, but the official document Installation and Configuration Guide (Document ID: DC01871-01-0510-03) is not precise enough for a beginner. Inside the EBF package, an additional installation documentation for Oracle is provided, but there are differences to the official document and the installation process was changed too.

Brief summary: without the quick response of the SAP support (thanks!) to my OSS messages, I most probably would have failed to get the server up and runnning.

One tricky part was the encryption of preferences – too complicated in my opinion for a vanilla installation. I’ve installed the 5.0 version prior to this installation: the encryption wasn’t an issue. The encryption concept is good though – but for this first installation without additional knowledge, it was very hard to understand what went wrong.

This week the basic installation suceeded – some minor configuration items I’ve changed myself.

Currently, I’m pleased about the installation result – only one issue is open: running the Mobiliser server as a service (i.e. in the background / as daemon). As described in the Installation Guide (page 19), the server is started by the Sybase user using the start script:

{MOBILISER_HOME}/bin/startup.sh

If the Sybase user logs out, the process will be killed and this stops Mobiliser server. I’ve filed an OSS message for this behaviour, perhaps anyone has a quick idea? I’ve used the & character, but this didn’t help.

For the future: I cannot see how the product SAP Mobiliser will fit into the SAP Mobile Platform. As I understood, the product will be renamed to SAP Consumer and co-exist without integration. The technology is quite different from the SUP and Syclo products. Will it ever be integrated with the other platform components?

The next step was the installation of the new mobile application SAP Utilities Customer Engagement – I’ll start a new blog for this.