bentleyuser.org - Installing SELECT Server V8 XM Edition

Installing SELECT Server V8 XM Edition
by Marc Thomas - 24 October 2006

Installing this should be straightforward with a little advance planning.
Get your new XM authorisation codes before you do anything else. Allow a few days for this in case of delays at Bentley’s end.
While you are waiting for your authorisation codes, check the SELECT Server XM readme and load up the required Microsoft service packs and patches.
These are currently:

Internet Information Servers (with ASP.NET support)

Microsoft .Net Framework 1.1

MSXML 4.0 with Service Pack 2 or above

SQL Server 2000, 2005, 2005 Express or MSDE with Service Pack 3 or higher

There are some known issues documented in the readme, it is worth reading these to see if they apply to your situation. During my installation I encountered another, a missing Microsoft file, msxml2.dll. This was resolved by Microsoft hotfix kb823490 and had been documented in the bentley.microstation.administration newsgroup. If your server is two or three years old and has had previous versions of MSXML installed this one might come up, search your system for msxml2.dll. Download and apply the hotfix if the file is not found.

If you want to use SELECT Server XM to licence your existing V8 products you will need to install the SELECT Server V8 XM Edition Gateway on either the same or a separate server. I chose to ignore this facility and take the opportunity to put my SELECT Server installation on another machine, leaving the existing V8 SELECT Server running for the time being. I wouldn’t advise doing this if you are planning to run previous versions alongside XM for any length of time. In my case the plan is to switch to XM and take previous versions away immediately. I’m only using the XM SELECT Server for testing at present.

Once the pre-requisites are in place installing SELECT Server XM is simply a matter of running Bentley SELECT Server V8 XM Edition.msi and following the prompts.

Bentley provide guidance and an ADM file for use with Windows Group Policies that automatically directs Bentley products to the SELECT Server. For users of Group Policy this is a trivial exercise. Instructions for using this are in the SELECT Server help under the heading “Configuring Bentley SELECT Server V8 XM Edition Workstation Settings using group policies”.

Note that Group Policies are a fundamental component of the Windows Active Directory and if your IT department are not using them you would be justified in asking why not!

If you don’t have group policies on your system you need to get to grips with the Licence management tools which are beyond the scope of this feature.

Once SELECT Server is running, amongst other new features Bentley now update your licence remotely, as has just happened to mine when various products changed name.

As my SELECT Server is just running during testing I have not yet spent any time looking into the reporting features, my objective was simply to get it up and running to deliver licences. These will be covered in a another feature.