WebSphere Portal Support Statement
This document proposes a revision to the definition of "supported" and "unsupported" with respect to the various products of which IBM WebSphere Portal (hereafter " Portal") depends on for proper operation.
Introduction
Portal requires the use of several collateral products for its normal operations. In particular, it requires WebSphere Application Server, a database, a repository for user information (typically an LDAP) and other products depending on specific customer requirements.
During the testing of a new Portal release, Portal Development generally tests the Portal with a prescribed list of these collateral products. These products are designated as "Supported Products" in the "Supported Hardware and Software" section of the "Planning" chapter of the Information Center for that Portal release.
Because the list of "Supported Products" cannot reasonably describe all possible configurations that a customer may need to use, some customers have voiced concerns about the level of support that will be provided for configurations that are not specifically designated as "Supported." This paper is intended to provide clarification of the level of support that can be generally expected for Portal with various combinations of dependent products.
Note: Although the statements in this paper reflect the general level of support that can be expected for Portal, the terms and conditions of any specific support offering, license or other Agreement you might have with IBM will determine the actual delivered support for the Portal product. Nothing herein shall be construed as supplementing, modifying or superseding the terms of your IBM license agreement for Portal or any other agreement you might have with IBM, nor shall it create any obligation for IBM to deliver a level of support other than might be set forth in such Agreements.
Categories of Support
There are three (3) categories of support for collateral products to Portal. They are "Supported Products", "Newer Versions and Releases of Supported Products" and "Unsupported Products". The definition and support statement for each category follows:
Supported Product
A "Supported Product" is a product (at a specified version, release and fix level) that was tested by Portal Development and is known to work with Portal.
Products in this category are supported as per the terms of your Portal License Agreement. PMRs (Problem Management Records) will be accepted by IBM Support in accordance with the conditions of the Portal License Agreement.
Newer Versions and Releases of Supported Products
Many Products outside the specific version(s), release(s) or fix pack(s) of the "Supported" version, (referenced in the Information Center) may not have been explicitly tested by IBM WebSphere Development, yet can reasonably be expected to perform within the accepted bounds of reliability, function and performance by a customer.
Products that fall into this category are typically newer releases or fix levels of a product already in the "Supported Product" category or a product that adheres to a standard API that Portal supports (such as an LDAP server). Some specific examples might include a newer operating system fix level, a WebSphere Application Server (WAS) fix pack newer than the original "Supported "fix pack level, an IBM Java (JVM) fix pack, a new fix pack or release of DB2 or an updated LDAP server.
For products that fall into this category, support is as follows:
For IBM products, such as IBM Directory Server or Domino LDAP, IBM DB2, IBM JDKs (JVMs) and WebSphere Application Server, Portal will fully support fix-pack, release and version updates that do not significantly change interfaces or other underlying support that Portal depends on for its functionality. If and when a newer release of one of these products is shipped that Portal cannot accommodate, that fact will be noted as described in the next section entitled "Unsupported Products". Note that in order for Portal to support an update to a database or LDAP product, WebSphere Application Server must support that update as well.
For non-IBM products, the Portal support team will make a commercially reasonable effort to support products in this category. Portal Support will accept problem reports (PMRs) for the appropriate Portal releases using these untested products. If Portal Support is able to recreate the reported problem using a "Supported" version of the product, we will attempt to fix the problem.
If Portal Support is not able to recreate the problem with a "Supported" version of the product in question and is not able to resolve the problem on the untested version of the product in question, Portal Support will look to the support organization for the product in question to provide resolution. Please note that varying degrees of customer involvement may be necessary to handle this process for non-IBM products.
If the support organization for the untested product in question is unable to resolve the problem, Portal Support will deem that version, release or fix pack level of the untested product in question to now be an "Unsupported Product".
Unsupported Products
An "Unsupported Product" is a product (at a specified version, release and fix level) that is known to not work with Portal and is therefore not supported. A product can be included in this category as a result of an explicit test effort by Portal Development or as a result of discovery from a prior customer problem.
The Portal S upport teamwill maintain a list, by Portal release, of all known "Unsupported Products" and "Newer Versions and Releases of Supported Products". This list will be published on the Web as a techdocand made available to all customers. This list is not intended to be exhaustive. In the absence of an explicit listing of a product and unless told otherwise by the Portal Support team, customers should assume that the status of the product is unknown and that the product may be incompatible with Portal.
WebSphere Application Server has a similar support statement which can be found at: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=180&context=SSEQTP&uid=swg27004311
Note that WebSphere Application Server uses specially customized builds of the IBM JVMs and JDKs. Updates to these most be obtained from WebSphere Application Server support.
WebSphere Portal is particularly sensitive to changes in WebSphere Application Server. Upgrading to a new version the Application Server is usually problematic.
See also
WebSphere is a trademark of the IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.
IBM is a trademark of the IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.