Application Upgrade Appears as a New Separate Application
Summary
This article applies to the following:
- BlackBerry® Tablet OS
- BlackBerry® Tablet OS SDK for Adobe® AIR®
- BlackBerry® WebWorks SDK for Adobe AIR
Description
After attempting to upgrade an application the new version of the application appears as a second icon and does not have access to the shared data from the previous version of the application.
Background
The BlackBerry Tablet OS currently uses a combination of the code signing Signature and Application Identifier to recognize an application as unique.
Cause 1
The upgraded application was signed with a different of BlackBerry Tablet OS Code Signing Key than the original application, which causes the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet to believe the application was written by a different author.
Resolution 1
Sign the upgraded application with the same BlackBerry Tablet OS Code Signing Keys that were used to sign the original version of the application. If you use different sets of keys on different computers, refer to the following knowledge base article, which can be use to distribute the same set of keys to multiple computers.
Backup and Restore BlackBerry Code Signing Keys
Cause 2
If the Application Idenitfier changes then the upgrade is seen as a new application. The Application Idenitfier is specified when creating the project and is a unique identifier for one specific application.
Resolution 2
Change the Application Idenitfier in the <app_name>-app.xml file (located within the the <id> tag) to match the same value used in the original application.
Cause 3
The BlackBerry WebWorks SDK uses the name of the .zip archive, containing your application assets, to generate an internal package name. The package name is used by the Tablet OS to identify an application as unique.
If you change the name of your application .zip archive, the generated package name changes as well. When you install this updated version of your application, the Tablet OS will identify it as a brand new application and not overwrite any existing installed versions of the application. The net result is that you will see two icons for your application on the home screen: the first is the old version of the application, and the second is the updated version.
Resolution 3
Ensure that you do not change the name of your WebWorks .zip archive when you produce a new version of your BlackBerry PlayBook application using the WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS.
This requirement is documented in the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS Developer Guide article, titled Creating a BlackBerry WebWorks archive:
"If you have previously submitted the application to BlackBerry App World™, you can not change the .zip file name for subsequent releases; it must remain the same. If the .zip file name has been changed, an attempt to upgrade the application will not succeed."
