IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator Support Statement

This document clarifies a revision to the definition of supported and unsupported with respect to the various products on which IBM® Mobile Portal Accelerator depends for proper operation.

Introduction

Mobile Portal Accelerator requires the use of several collateral products for its normal operations. In particular, it requires WebSphere® Portal, WebSphere Application Server, and a database. The Mobile Portal Toolkit requires either Rational® Application Developer or Rational Software Architect.

During the testing of a new Mobile Portal Accelerator release, Mobile Portal Accelerator Development generally tests the Mobile Portal Accelerator with a prescribed list of these collateral products. These products are designated as Supported Products in the Hardware requirements, Software requirements, and Mobile Portal Toolkit development environment sections of the Planning chapter of the information center for that Mobile Portal Accelerator 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 Mobile Portal Accelerator with various combinations of dependent products.

Note: Although the statements in this paper reflect the general level of support that can be expected for Mobile Portal Accelerator, 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 Mobile Portal Accelerator product. Nothing herein shall be construed as supplementing, modifying, or superseding the terms of your IBM license agreement for Mobile Portal Accelerator 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 Mobile Portal Accelerator. 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 Mobile Portal Accelerator Development and is known to currently work with Mobile Portal Accelerator. (Click these links to display lists of supported hardware and software products.)

Use of products in this category with Mobile Portal Accelerator is supported per the terms of your Mobile Portal Accelerator License Agreement. PMRs (Problem Management Records) will be accepted by IBM Support in accordance with the conditions of the Mobile Portal Accelerator 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 Mobile Portal Accelerator Development, yet we reasonably expect them to perform within the accepted bounds of reliability, function, and performance.

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 Mobile Portal Accelerator supports. 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, or a new fix pack of DB2®.

For products that fall into this category, support is as follows:

For IBM products, such as IBM DB2, IBM JDKs (JVMs), and WebSphere Application Server, Mobile Portal Accelerator will support fix-pack, release, and version updates that do not change interfaces or other underlying support that Mobile Portal Accelerator depends on for its functionality. Additionally, Mobile Portal Accelerator will make a reasonable effort to support the use of newer releases of these IBM products and will accept problem reports (PMRs) from Mobile Portal Accelerator customers who are using these newer releases.

Note: In order for Mobile Portal Accelerator to support an update to a supported database, JVM, or WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Portal must support that update as well. The WebSphere Portal support statement is located at the following website: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/portalwiki.nsf/dx/WebSphere_Portal_Support_Statement_wp7.

For non-IBM products, the Mobile Portal Accelerator support plan provides that the support team will make a reasonable effort to support use of products in this category with Mobile Portal Accelerator. Mobile Portal Accelerator Support will accept problem reports (PMRs) for the appropriate Mobile Portal Accelerator releases using these untested products. If Mobile Portal Accelerator Support is able to recreate the reported problem using a Supported version of the product, we will attempt to fix the problem.

If Mobile Portal Accelerator Support is not able to recreate the problem with a Supported version of the non-IBM product in question and is not able to resolve the problem on the untested version of the product in question, Mobile Portal Accelerator Support will direct the customer to contact the support organization for the product in question to provide resolution. Please note that customer involvement is necessary to handle this process for non-IBM products. If the owner of the non-IBM product chooses not to make the changes necessary to be compatible with Mobile Portal Accelerator, the untested product in question is identified as 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 IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator at this time and is therefore not supported. A product can be included in this category as a result of an explicit test effort by Mobile Portal Accelerator Development or as a result of discovery from a prior customer problem. While newer versions, releases, or fix packs of WebSphere Portal may initially be on the Unsupported Products list, this may change in a future release of IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator as IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator depends upon WebSphere Portal interfaces and must always be tested with specific versions, releases, or fix packs of WebSphere Portal prior to claiming support.

The Mobile Portal Accelerator Support team maintains a list, by IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator release, of all known Unsupported Products published on the web as a techdoc available to all customers at the Mobile Portal Accelerator support site.

Note that WebSphere Application Server uses specially customized builds of the IBM JVMs and JDKs. Updates to these must be obtained from WebSphere Application Server Support.