IBM DB2 Content Manager and Information Integration for Content

These past few days, I've been trying to resolve some IBM Content Manager server update issue. We have a service that connects to IBM DB2 Content Manager (CM) v8.3 using the IBM DB2 Information Integrator for Content (II4C) libraries v8.3, namely: cmb81.jar, cmbsdk81.jar, cmbview81.jar and the jdbc driver db2java.zip.
Then for some new business requirements, we need to point that service to a new IBM Content Manager v8.4 deployed on Red Hat Linux. I thought this was going to be a quick and easy change.
That couldn't be any further from the facts.
First, I catalog a new alias to the new server on my local server. Then I added that alias into my cmbicmsrvs.ini configuration. I thought that was it, just test and redeploy. I was wrong. When I tested that configuration I got the following cryptic error message when I run my connection test:

com.ibm.mm.beans.CMBConnectFailedException: DGL0394A: Error in : DKDatastoreICM.connect; [SERVER = CMDEV, USERID = icmadmin]; ICM7123: This is an internal error.  Run the application again with server trace set to Detail and Data.  Save the server log and see your IBM service representative. (STATE) : [LS RC = 7123, LS reasonCode = 8013]
com.ibm.mm.sdk.common.DKDatastoreAccessError: DGL0394A: Error in : DKDatastoreICM.connect; [SERVER = CMDEV, USERID = icmadmin]; ICM7123: This is an internal error.  Run the application again with server trace set to Detail and Data.  Save the server log and see your IBM service representative. (STATE) : [LS RC = 7123, LS reasonCode = 8013]
 at com.ibm.mm.sdk.server.DKDatastoreICM.logon(DKDatastoreICM.java:3687)
 at com.ibm.mm.sdk.server.DKDatastoreICM.connect(DKDatastoreICM.java:3273)
 at com.ibm.mm.beans.CMBConnection.connect(CMBConnection.java:1685)

To make the story much shorter than what actually happened, I've check and test many things. Eventually I called IBM support and was finally informed that II4C 8.3.0 is not supported with CM 8.4. In order for me to connect to CM 8.4 using II4C 8.3, I must use fixpack (fp) 7 or 8. Fixpack 7 or 8, as a prerequisite need fixpack 3A to be pre-applied. The CM server fix pack are the same for both DB2 II4C and DB2 CM.
To solve my issue, I download the fixpacks and extracted the libraries that I needed from fp 8, use that with the connection test and it worked. Getting it to work with the actual app and isolating the properties and ini file so that it will stand alone without affecting other running services and application is off course a different issue. Being able to connect, however, told me that the basic requirements are in proper order.