A look at Maximo folders # A01

Wondering why SMP is called SMP ? Lets look at how the folders are organized and why it is important to understand them deeper and not just visualize them during deployments.

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SMP for 7.X (till 7.6):

SMP is called System Modification Program. It is a tool designed to manage the installation of software products and to track the modifications to those products. This setup has been inspired from the z/OS system and mainframes world where IBM manages products installation and upgrades. This is a uniform and standard way of managing products and their modifications. By having a SMP folder, managing the folder structures, installations, add-ons can be done efficiently.

Until Maximo 6 the root folder used to be called as Maximo {C:\Maximo}

There are other folders under SMP like license, language which will help us to understand the license information and language packs.

• etc folder can be useful if you want to have a look at the install properties and take the original maximo.properties.

• maximormiregistry is for rmi config files to load them on start up, but from MAS 8.0 I am expecting that this folder structure will be removed.

• If you are looking for WorkCenter root folder you can find it as maximo-x.

• mxiehs is for eclipse help but mostly not used.

  As all of us know, default (under deployment) is the folder where the build ears are generated. There is a big list of build commands, which can be customized.

Build customization using buildmaximoear.cmd

• Name of the ear file can be change under buildmaximoear.cmd (open in notepad++ and modify).

• You can change the default folder and generate the ear in another folder per your convenience

• All the below can be modified.

  • set JAVA_HOME=.\..\tools\java\jre

  • rem set JAVA_HOME=C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\java\jre

  • set ANT_HOME=.\..\tools\ant

  • set TOOLS_HOME=.\..\tools\maximo

  • set MAXIMO_HOME=.\..\applications\maximo

  • set BUILD_DIR=.\default

  • set EAR_FILENAME=maximo.ear

  • set MAXIMO_PROPERTIES=maximo.properties

The buildmaximoear-build.xml can be referred to know how the build is planned interms of path and nomenclature.

Some Key facts:

1. Maximo is based on ANT build, the ANT build utility can be found in tools folder

2. The build xml can help you to understand how the maximo.ear is packaged. It has definitions for each ear file getting generated. You can also notice this in the console when the build is happening.

3. The build files can be exploded using zip utilities in case you want to do hot deployments.

4. To run a sandbox or development environment all you need is a ear file to deploy in WebSphere or Weblogic. You dont need the entire SMP folder to run Maximo. Usually, this is called as soft installation. {This is only for R&D, Dev purposes}.

5. You can have more than one SMP folder in a server/VM to run Maximo based on soft installations {This is only for R&D, Dev purposes}.

We will look into more of this in the forth coming weeks, hope you were able to brush up some basics.

References:

Source: SMP Wiki

Question for you : Can I rename my SMP folder ? will it affect anything ? What do you think ? Let me know in the comments below.