Since our EntireX operation environment streches over platforms and serves a great number of applications, an upgrade involves Windows servers, company wide workstations, Internet and Windows applications, as well as Natural programs.
I decided to take the follpwing approach for the upgrade:
1. Put together a seperate EntireX V711 environment on the mainframe: Broker, NATRPC servers, ERX Servers in CICS, Security started task, etc…
2. Perform basic verification of the new version and open it for the devleopers to run version compatibility tests.
3. After CS developers had tested their V62 applications against the V71 mainframe world successfully, we were free to perform the upgrade independently.
So, I upgraded the EntireX Development, Test and Production environments on the mainframe, but ended up having a mixture of versions on Windows. The reason was that while the mainframe upgrade still was taking place, our developers started a new EntireX development project. Since the new CS development platform is .NET, EntireX V7.1 was the choice. It may be different in other companies, but in our shop CSD development schedules are always thight and there is usually no or very little time for upgrades. Add the fact that EntireX versions go out of support so quickly… So, CSD decided to take one of the test servers and upgrade the runtime to V7.1.1. This allowed them to test the new V7.1.1 application, but the existing applciations still were using the V62 DCOM dlls. Before .NET, we used to create EntireX DCOM dlls. CSD also tested successfully the combination “Application with V62 DCOM dll on V711 runtime against V711 Mainframe Broker” and decided to move on to production the same way. That means whereever a new V71 application will run, the runtime will be upgraded, but the existing applications remain as they are. CSD takes the approach to upgrade those V62 applications next time when the application is being enhanced/changed, or a problem arises that prevents us from receiving support from Software AG.
I would like to know how other DBA’s handle such situations. Do you have the policy to be in the current version and follow through on all platforms (which would be my choise) or do you also give in to business requirements? I hope for suggestions and concerns that you might have.
Thanks in advance for your time,
Rabia
Hi Rabia,
obviously the DBAs out there do not have any suggestions yet…
To me (developer, no DBA) your approach seems perfectly valid. As development schedules are tigh everywhere these days, it is hard to justify upgrade effort that is not really required. As EntireX development tries hard to mainatn backward compatibility, it is absolutely reasonable to leave running applications un-touched as long there is no need for change.
My 2 cents.
Regards, Dietmar.