Unboxing Maximo SaaS Flex

I had never been a big fan of Maximo SaaS due to my background comes from a market where labour cost is cheap while license cost is outrageous. As such, we consultants prefer to spend some time building customized apps rather than spending lots of money buying more licenses or add-ons. (To give you a bit of perspective, in Australia, one Maximo license is worth about 15 days cost of an average engineer. In Vietnam, it is equivalent to about 1 year. Which means if you give an engineer a Maximo account; after a year, if it helps to save him or her 15 days, it worth the cost. But in Vietnam, it must save the engineer 1 year of labour to break even).

How to modify (almost) any Maximo data with no database access

Being Maximo consultants, we often come into a scene where the client gives us MAXADMIN access to the system but access to the database is an absolute No-No. This is usually the case with companies which have a clear separation of the App Admin and DB Admin roles. This is also one of the key restrictions with Maximo as a Service.

If you have been doing a bit of admin and config activities, you will surely understand the limitation of having no database access. It’s like having to work with tied hands. Luckily, we can use MXLoader to query/update almost any data tables in Maximo. Below is an example on how to do it.

Let say we're working with a Maximo SaaS and IBM only gives us front-end admin access, but no access to the back-end.

OutOfMemory problem when deploying Maximo

For every client I work with, I always keep a copy of the SMP folder if I can. And every time I need a standard demo instance with exactly the same configuration with the client, I simply deploy it on my local Websphere and Oracle DB.

My current websphere version is 8.5.5.3, and I had problem whenever I deploy a Maximo 7.6 instance with lots of add-ons. I gave up the attempt in the last few times as I didn’t really need it. But recently, as I was working with Maximo Flex (on cloud), having a local instance is a must as Maximo on cloud has lots of limitation in term of what you can do. As such, I when I had the same problem deploying Maximo, I had to investigate and fix the issue. Turned out it is an OutOfMemory issue during the deployment process and it took me quite a bit of time to fix it, so I leave the note here as I’m sure many other will have similar problem.

Solving problems with Update DB process when install or upgrade Maximo

When upgrading Maximo or installing new add-ons or fix packs, new source files will be copied to SMP folder which include Java classes and DBC (database configuration) script files. After that, the installer will run the UpdateDB process to update the database, run the BuidMaximoEar process to build the EAR file, and then deploy the EAR file to Websphere.

The DBC script files contain incremental changes to the Maximo database which add changes to GUI, update data, and modify DB configuration objects. Most of the problems you get when installing fix packs or upgrading Maximo come from the UpdateDB process which execute these DBC files in a set order.