Im looking for developers who are upgrading from 7.705 or s...

[Tom Evans 2]

Im looking for developers who are upgrading from 7.705 or similar to 8.2.07. Trying to find answers to questions about moving fexes and HTML to the new release.

[Manoj Chaurasia]

Hi Tom

Here is a link to the migration documentation. Let me know if this doesnt answer all your questions.

 

 

webfocusinfocenter.informationbuilders.com

 

 

 

wf_migrate_8207.pdf

 

1289.53 KB

[Tom Evans 2]

Thank you Chuck. Ill let you know if I have any questions.

[Toby Mills]

Hi Tom

Do you happen to have any specific questions yet Ive been going through the upgrade process from 8105m to 8207 and might be able to help.

Since you mention 7705 instead of saying like 8.0.09, I have to wonder if youre on a mainframe, or if youre mostly concerned about server side information Or are you really running WebFOCUS 7705 Is this Windows or a Unix install

Just trying to get a feel for where youre going.

Thanks!

Toby

[Jerry Casper 3]

I will be watching this because I will be doing the same upgrade hopefully soon.

Jerry Casper

[Toby Mills]

Hi guys

Im curious to know what all parts of WebFOCUS youve been using in your 77x versions.

It will help to know as you begin down the path of upgrading.

Are you using the Business Intelligence Dashboards (BID)

Do you make much use of HTML pages created in Dev Studio

Has anybody talked with you about the security differences between 7x and 8x WebFOCUS

I can probably help you on that topic. Ive talked to a lot of folks about that leap.

Thanks

Toby

[Steven Hall]

Be aware that there has been A LOT of code tightening between those versions. Be prepared for reports to break.

[Anthony Cool]

Good luck. And if you can do it w/o growing bitter towards the product, you are a better person than I was lol I did a migration from 7.6.11 to 8.0.0.9; then to 8.1.05, then to the M variant, then to 8202, then to the M variant of that. Weve been on that version ever since Cuz we give up. LOL

[Tom Evans 2]

We are on 7.7.05

We are using Business Intelligence Dashboards (BID)

We use HTML pages created in Dev Studio for those Dashboards

We also use ReportCaster a lot.

We have a small group of power users in InfoAssist

We have only spoken at a high level about the security differences.

[Tom Evans 2]

We are on a mainframe IMS and DB2 and server for SQL. We run a Unix and Windows install. The Windows install is only for one application.

[Marisa Guy]

Following this thread as I hopefully will be going from 8.1.5.m to 8.2.x

Started down this road once but could not get our portals (BIP) with RDT html pages to come up.

Ive been told I was just doing it wrong.

If at first you dont succeed try try again

[Manoj Chaurasia]

Just to be upfront there is no migration of BID they have been removed from WebFOCUS 8.2 So you will need to create portals to replace those. Not a difficult task but if you have a lot of BIDs you need to plan for replacement. You can reference your same html pages in the portals.

[Marisa Guy]

Hi Chuck,

Thanks for the information. I discovered that during the last attempt and that is why I listed my portals as (BIP) that was the one thing I got done during the last attempt, I got rid of all the Dashboards and converted to portals.

[Toby Mills]

Hi Marisa! long time no see!

Im doing an 8105m to 8207 migration too. Mine is going pretty well but I started when the migration tools werent done yet. So - easily enough, the CM packages from 8105m will import into 8207 so I started with a new database to load my 8207 repository into. As I go along, were migrating one domain at a time to the new world of 8207 by using CM packages.

Ive hit a few weird things, but mostly thats because the 8105m environment was not put together well in the first place. For example, they left the repository as Case Insensitive rather than Case Sensitive. This led to programs that would work in 8105m, but they fail in 8207 because of some mixed case stuff.

One thing to note also - the BIPs created in 8105 are V3 BIPs This means they probably wont show up for you in the default view of Workspaces (we felt the need to change the name I guess). Youll probably want to switch to the Legacy view for most things anyway. You can re-code them again as collaborative portals and they should be visible from the default view.

Lets all keep talking as you guys hit things. Ive run into a few.

I wonder if this should be an administrative thread since most developers will not need to be involved in the upgrades

Anyway - good to see you in here.

Later!

Toby

[Marisa Guy]

It has been a long time, Nice to hear from you.

Thanks for the information. I am still in the hope to do this phase and COVID has impacted many things at work. You may be correct that this should be a admin tread. I also agree that we should keep it going so that we dont all have to stumble thru the same issues, or we can collaborate if we get stuck on something. Keep in touch, Phone number is still the same.

Later,

Marisa

[Tom Evans 2]

Thanks for all of the feedback. Can anyone tell me about the Change Management tool. Am I going to have to go to a later release like 8105 and then to 8207 or can I go directly to 8207 from 7705. Ive been working with IBI and we havent spoken about the CM tool yet. I use a lot of case sensitive variables and procedure names. Is the new release going to break those naming conventions.

[Toby Mills]

Hi Tom

Ill first say you should always look at the manual. Im not in techsupport anymore, so I dont speak on IBIs behalf.

My feeling is that that mechanical process of moving from 77x to any 8x release will probably involve all the same steps. I dont feel like an intermediate release would be necessary or advantageous.

The mixed case variables shouldnt bite you unless you are not consistent with your names as far as capitalization goes.

Change Management is different enough in the 8x world that you wont be able to use the trick Im using of moving a domain at a time via CM exports. But - something rolls around my head saying you could choose to only migrate certain domains during your migration process. This might be something you do with batch files. If thats right, you might be able to just bring over one domain at first to experiment with to see whats working and whats not.

Yes - this is possible. Look at the migration Manual Chuck sent starting on page 20.

Pre-Migration Steps for Migrating Managed Reporting Content by Group or Domain

That manual can be somewhat dizzying in the amount of information there. Remember IBI has to cover as many (or all) of the scenarios they think people will need to know. It may take several looks at the manual to feel like you know the steps that will apply to your installation.

The good news is - if youre familiar with the utilities bat (or shell scripts) files, you can always wipe out your new Repository tables and start over if you need to try a few times.

Please feel free to ask any questions either in this thread or start a new one. Again, Ill suggest this topic is more of an admin topic than a developer topic, so maybe start the new thread under that Category.

Thanks!

Toby

[Tom Evans 2]

As long as Im included in the conversation, I am fine with it being in an Administrative topic. I just wanted to get feedback from people who are in my situation or have been through the upgrade process. Even the responses I have received to this point has been very enlightening. I started the migration manual yesterday afternoon but havent gotten very far. I will continue to work my way through it. Again I really appreciate everyones feedback.

[Tom Evans 2]

Hi Toby,

I went through the Migration manual. I can see that in order to make the move to 8207 we are going to need some kind of professional services. We dont have a good grasp on the environment we are moving to so, we will have trouble configuring the data and reporting in a way that is efficient and well thought out.

[Toby Mills]

Hi Tom

You could check with your local branch that sold you WebFOCUS. IBI Professional Services will have resources available to them that the rest of us mortals may not.

One thing they used to have for the jump youre about to make - there was an upgrade tool of some sort that would run through your code to see if it found things that would need remediation. I dont know if they still use that sort of thing or not.

It would be worth a call to them to ask how theyd like to proceed. Maybe they can take a look at your code and give you an estimate.

If youd like to talk about anything specific, feel free to direct message me.

Thanks!

Toby

[Toby Mills]

Hi Tom - I also wanted to point out this document on upgrading.

Upgrading from 7.7.03 to 8207

I found this here:

WebFOCUS Upgrade Resource Center

Just passing it along

Toby

[Jay Potter]

It has been 7-6 years since I went from 77 to 8.0 and I ended up totally re-writing me code. 77 lets you get away with a lot more code errors, like semi-colons at the end of a statement. I now upgrade to the next release as soon as possible (1 yr). It makes it easier to keep up. I am on 8.2.6.

[Tom Evans 2]

Hi John

Thanks for your input. We havent had a great deal of errors with syntax. Ours have been with connectivity. We have resolved that and are moving fexes one by one. We are also going to the AWS cloud with this upgrade. Were getting a lot of 504 errors where there isnt a fast enough response between servers. We havent tried any HTML, ReportCaster or Portal at this point.

[Naeem Sufi 3]

Does this (Migration Tool) Apply if you upgrading from 8.1.05M to 8.2.7

I have to upgrade to 8.2.7 from 8.1.5M I mirrored our Production Box to the SandBox

if I installed over the 8.1.5M Does the Tool upgrades the repository any other changes I have to make to the fex, launch pages

Thanks

[Toby Mills]

Hi Naeem

The migration should work to do the upgrade for you. The migration tools were not available when I started my migration so I just went with a clean install and then used Change Management to move one domain at a time over from 8105m to 8207.

Doing one domain at a time was helpful in getting a handle on what all was going to be broken.

There is a dbupdate utility under the utilities folder that you can use to update your repository.

The tricky part that I didnt have to worry about was getting all your users brought over. We use a custom security setup that guarantees the users get added before they ever start WebFOCUS.

As others have pointed out - things like semi colons and other syntax tightening is real.

If youre like me and youre going to have to straddle 8105m and 8207 at the same time, I wish I would have stuck with the following methodolgy:

 

CM export out of 8105m and import into 8207 for each domain one at a time.

if you have errors after importing, fix them so theyll work in both 8105m and 8207.

promote your fixes up the 8105m set of boxes. Theoretically, if you did it right, nothing will be broken.

 

The idea is that the 8207 box is actually running the very same code as 8105m by the time you turn it on. If things go south for any reason, you can revert to 8105m and not lose anything.

This sounds like extra effort to fix things for both releases, but really, if anything goes wrong, youre covered with 2 working versions of WebFOCUS at the end of the day.

I also wish I had more time to do this so we could have gotten it all tested more quickly. As the upgrade languishes, were handling new report requests. Those have to be CM imported to 8207 also. So its lots of CM Imports to try to keep all 8 machines in sync.

Looking forward to being done and getting signoff on the whole thing.