Product: TIBCO Spotfire®
Can a newer version TIBCO Spotfire Analyst connect to an older version of TIBCO Spotfire Server?
In many scenarios you may be working in environments with multiple different versions of the TIBCO Spotfire Server and TIBCO Spotfire Analyst client. For example, if the Test environment has been upgraded to the latest mainstream version but the Production environment is still using the earlier LTS version. If you upgrade the client when connecting to the new Test environment then you might encounter the situation where you need to connect back to the older LTS version. This article explains the situation of a newer Spotfire Analyst client trying to connect to an older TIBCO Spotfire Server deployment area.
A newer version of the TIBCO Spotfire Analyst client can not connect to an older version of TIBCO Spotfire Server, unless the local machine still has the modules from the same older version of Spotfire Analyst available. This means that if the older version (same as the older server version) of the Spotfire Analyst was previously installed on the machine, and the older modules have not been deleted from the old installation directory after the Spotfire Analyst upgrade, then it will be able to connect to the older version of the Spotfire server. This is because at runtime, the client will dynamically choose which set of modules to run depending on the version of the modules in the deployment area to which is being connected.
For example, there has been an upgrade performed on Spotfire Analyst client version 7.11 and it has now been updated to Spotfire Analyst version 10.3. If this 10.3 Analyst tries to connect to a Spotfire Server 7.11 (with 7.11 modules in the deployment area), it will show the following notification:
Older version available You are running version 10.3 of the Spotfire client, but an older version (7.11) is available. What would you like to do?
This is because the Spotfire Analyst version 7.11 client was previously installed on the same machine and the 7.11 Analyst modules are still available on the machine. After clicking "Install Now", the 10.3 Analyst will be updated back to 7.11 Analyst and will connect to Spotfire server 7.11. However, if "Do Not Install" option is clicked, it will connect the 10.3 Analyst to Spotfire Server 7.11.
This pop-up shown above will only be seen if the 7.11 was previously installed on this machine and the 7.11 Analyst modules have not been deleted from the installation directory. If Spotfire Analyst 7.11 was never installed on this machine, meaning the modules for Spotfire 7.11 are not available on this machine, it will not show the pop-up as above. Instead, it will clearly say that the current version of Spotfire Analyst cannot connect to the older version of Spotfire server. The message shown will be as below:
The server http://myTSS/ (myProductionDeploymentArea) has an older Spotfire client deployment than the version you are running or no deployment at all. Contact your Spotfire administrator if the server needs to be updated. Log into a different server, or select Work Offline, to continue working with this Spotfire version.See KB 000020708 TIBCO Spotfire Analyst client fails to launch, with this error: 'The server has an older Spotfire client deployment than the version you are running or no deployment at all'. for more details.
KB: 000020708 TIBCO Spotfire Analyst client fails to launch, with this error: 'The server has an older Spotfire client deployment than the version you are running or no deployment at all'. KB 000035216 Location of Modules folder in Spotfire Analyst installation