Database Modifications

[asilarow]

Dear BP Team,

I would like to know what is the official stance on modifying the Blue Prism database in any capacity.
Is this something that clients are allowed to do themselves if they have the technical expertise? or does BP Support have to do it for them?

I am specifically interested on the stance towards changing indexing, adding views, foreign keys, and modifying the stored procedures that are contained there by default.

And If this is something that Blue Prism allows, then are there any written guidelines for such modifications?

------------------------------
Andrzej Silarow
Blue Prism Mentor
Smart Automation Services LTD
Europe/London
------------------------------

[david.l.morris]

I'm gonna go ahead and say Blue Prism will never encourage edits to the database, other than to values in records or deleting records etc. Usually Blue Prism handles this kind of request with direct conversations on a WebEx to see what you're trying to achieve. It's possible that the edits you want to make could benefit others and they'd also want to consider making the change to future versions of Blue Prism. I'd definitely reach out to your Partner Manager about it.

------------------------------
Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
------------------------------

[John__Carter]

I'm 99% sure the official line will be No Andrezj, in particular due to the support agreement. Obviously the risk is making changes that have a detrimental effect and the difficulty in trying to support unknown modifications. That said, I've no doubt some do make adjustments and may even be directed to do so by the support team in order to improve some problem.

If you've specific ideas then perhaps you can document them and pass them on to your BP representative?

------------------------------
John Carter
Professional Services
Blue Prism
------------------------------

[asilarow]

Cheers John,

Is the support agreement available anywhere publicly? Or does this relate to the support clause in the EULA?

I've looked through the EULA and the only thing mentioned there is this:

• The Agreement does not permit you to modify or adapt the Products, or render any Software human-readable. You may not reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation.

However, as far as I can see the database is NOT actually part of the product... although the product does create it.

The Product is classified as such:

• When we issue a license key to you, we grant you a non-exclusive license to use the Software in the format it is provided to you. We will provide you with license keys which last for twelve (12) months unless otherwise stated in the order. If a license key expires before the Agreement does, and provided you are compliant with the Agreement, we will provide further license keys. We will do this to cover the whole term of the Agreement. Each license key permits you to deploy a single instance of the Software in a single live, production environment, to make copies as reasonably required for back-up, testing, development or archive and to use all the written materials we make available to you. The Software and these materials together form the "Products".

Which means that only the actual software being deployed via the installer and and training/config documentation is covered by this clause.

As SQL server is subject to it's own licensing under Microsoft's terms, the database therefore is not included in the above.
It is then a logical assumption, that the client owns the database and it's contents, and therefore the structure... which should be fair enough in my opinion, as the client needs to host it and support it themselves if they go for an on-prem deployment.

So I guess my next question is... is there anything written anywhere to state that the database created by the product is subject to any further restrictions?

------------------------------
Andrzej Silarow
Blue Prism Mentor
Smart Automation Services LTD
Europe/London
------------------------------

[John__Carter]

You're right that the DB is owned and hosted by the client but to imply it's not part of the BP product is incorrect. We all know it's the core without which the software cannot function and that each DB version has been designed, built and tested to work with specific versions of BP. I suggest you raise the question regarding contractual definition to our support and/or legal team - this forum is not the right vehicle for this kind of discussion.

------------------------------
John Carter
Professional Services
Blue Prism
------------------------------

[asilarow]

Cheers John, will do.

Just to clarify - when I say it's not part of the product I mean it's not contained within the legal definition as stated in the End User License Agreement.

I agree with you, it is essential to running the product itself which would not function without it... but the same can be said about config files, and we all know config files can (and sometimes have to) be modified to suit client needs.

Cheers,
Andrzej.

------------------------------
Andrzej Silarow
Blue Prism Mentor
Smart Automation Services LTD
Europe/London
------------------------------