1 Before you start
If you are upgrading or converting SuperOffice you should make a backup of both the program and data directory (...\SUPEROFF and ?\SO_ARC). If your installation fails, the easiest way to go back to the previous installation is to restore this backup.
Make sure that all users are logged out of SuperOffice and that non of the SuperOffice programfiles are kept open on the server. Remove the write protection from all files in the program directory and its subdirectories.
All Travel Users have to be checked into the central database before you start the upgrade or conversion. After your installation is complete, reinstall SuperOffice Travel on all relevant computers (see installation of ... [2]). Also make sure that you have entered your keycode before generating a update prototype for the first time.
The Superoffice travel user must install Superoffice Travel with Ctree database. For more details please refer to the travel installation[3].

1.1 Protocols
Oracle 7.3 runs on most network protocols. However, we prefer one of the following protocols in this order: TCP/IP, IPX or NetBEUI. For more information on which protocol to run and how to tune this, please look in the Oracle Network Products User?s Guide for Windows. If you can run only one protocol, the server will be faster.
If you are running in a WAN, TCP/IP is the protocol that gives you the easiest way to configure your Oracle clients.

1.2 Client Software
All clients (SQL*Net) have to be Windows 3.1 clients as long as SuperOffice is a 16-bit application. You have to use Windows 3.x clients even if you are running Windows 95 or Windows NT on your workstations.

1.3 Oracle 7.3 preparation
Oracle 7.3 Server can be installed on any platform. To prepare for SuperOffice usage, do the following:

  • Create a special Oracle 7.3 user
    Name: "SO"
    Ident.: "SOSOSO"
    Role: "DBA"
  • Set tablespace association
    If you want SuperOffice 4.0 data to be associated with specific tablespace then assign the tablespace as default tablespace of user "SO". Otherwise default tablespace of Oracle Server will be the default tablespace of user SO.
  • Set Open Cursors
    The maximum number of Open Cursors depends on the memory available.
    In order to run SuperOffice 4.0, Open Cursors must be at least 150.
    To set the number of open cursors, do the following:
    1. In the "OraNT\Databas" directory, open the initoracl.ora file.
    2. At the end of the file, add the line (the example uses 200 open cursors)

      OPEN_CURSORS = 200

    3. Save and close the file.
    4. Restart "Oracle Service" and "Oracle Start" in order to initialize the new settings.

  • To check the number of open cursors, start "Instance Manager" and look into "Initialization Parameters".

1.4 ODBC Driver
Some 16- bit Oracle 7 ODBC drivers does not support left outer joins, and we use that to get appointments and documents from the database. If the rest of the Oracle system have correct versions (SQL*Net, Required Support Files)

The following drivers works OK with SuperOffice 4.0.2:

  • Ver 1.11.0.5
  • Ver 2.0.3.2.2
  • Ver 2.5.3.1.0

The following Oracle 7 ODBC drivers will not work with SuperOffice 4.0.2:

  • Ver 1.15.3.0.1A
  • Ver 1.16.3.1.5

This means that if you don't have a Oracle installation that can't bee combined with one of these drivers the have to upgrade Oracle.

When a third party application communicates with the Oracle database in a Client/Server environment, several dynamic link libraries are involved. The Oracle 7 ODBC driver is a DLL that implements ODBC function calls. The ODBC driver communicates with the OCI layer. The DLLs used in the OCI layer are part of Required Support Files. Required Support Files are bundled with SQL*Net.Each version of the ODBC driver is linked with a specific version of RSF.Each version of SQL*Net is also dependent on a specific version of RSF.

For more information look at:

16 bit -odbc drivers (incl. Required Support Files) can bee downloaded for free from: