webMethods Upgrade Responsibility

What are the various roles which are related to webMethods products?

I am aware of a few roles like:

  1. webMethods Developer - Skill about how to use Designer and do webMethods Development
  2. webMethods Administrator - Integration Server Management Skills

Specifically, If there is a need for an activity to be performed: SAG webMethods Version Upgrade (say for example from 9.12 to 10.1, IS Version Upgrade)

Which role is the right skill to have the right knowledge about the upgrades?
Who should be performing the SAG webMethods upgrades?
What kind of certification/workshop is required to build the skill regarding the upgrades?

Please help to collect some details about these queries.

Thank you.

Hi Mandar,

I think you will need both skills available (must not be performed by the same person).

First the Administrator will be prepare the technical pre-conditions for a side-by-side migration, like updating database schema copies and installing the new instances.
Eventually he should be able to run the migration scripts to transport the code from the old to the new instance.

Afterwards the Developer/Designer will review the migrated code and do so the neccessary changes i.e. replacing deprecated services and migrating AdapterServices which were not covered by the basic migraton script.

See the “Upgrading webMethods Products” Guide for further informations.
IMHO you will not need any explicit training or certification for the migration, but working with webMethods Development for some time (esp. across several versions) is definitely of advantage in this case.

Regards,
Holger

Thank you for your Reply.
It is really helpful information.

I believe as the first point, I got the answer that to perform the Migration there should be one person who has appropriate Administrative skills.
Either by experience on the webMethods administration or by the Workshop training or courses from SAG.

Without that the first step cannot be performed by anyone. It will become risky.

The second step I completely, understand that after the migration, if there are some area’s in the code which are deprecated, or not working which might need some code changes for corrections and to work with the new version.
Agreed that will be a Job of the developers.

But without the right Administrative skills performing the upgrade is not possible Or it can be considered with very high risk.

Please correct if my understanding.

Hi Mandar,

in the time of DevOps both tasks can be done by one person: the DevOps Engineer.

I am working with the wM Suite for more than decade now on various versions and I am able to cover both skills meanwhile.

In the first I had an Administrators training and then some Developer trainings.
When doing a migration we had a an “What´s new?” training, which are meanwhile present as webinars.
You can search the community for them.

A good starting point ist the Upgrade Products Guide for the interim and target version as well as the Administrators Guides.
Check the Built-In-Services Guides for the products for all intermediate versions you are using for deprecation notices and potential replacements.

If you have concrete questions you are welcome to come back to this forum and ask them, the community will try to sort them out.

Additionally you can get in contact with Software AG Global Consulting Services to ask for migration assistance.

Regards,
Holger