Preparation and Planning
Software AG strongly recommends that you plan and prepare for your upgrade before performing the procedure described in this guide. Planning and preparing can include the tasks listed below.
Read this guide in its entirety so you are familiar with all tasks you will need to perform.
Read the product release notes. The release notes provide information on new functionality. Read the information for every release for your old release + 1 through the new release.
Read the product readmes for the new release, including the readme for the Software AG Infrastructure. All readmes are available on the
Software AG Documentation website. The product readmes contain this information:
Critical information and known and resolved issues for your products.
Changes (that is, additions, changes, deprecations, and removals) to product behavior, services, parameters, properties, and APIs. This information is especially important because you might need to modify product files or assets after migration to accommodate the changes.
Product readmes contain information for the 9.5 release and later. Read the information for your old release + 1 through the new release. For example, if you are upgrading from 9.0 to 9.12, read the information for releases 9.5 through 9.10.
Define an upgrade approach and a cut-over plan. If you have a large landscape, you might want to do a phased upgrade.
Set up operating guidelines that cover normal project management requirements across all affected groups in your organization.
Define an approach to source control, and set up release management tools and procedures that support the migration of data into target environments.
Account for externals to your
Software AG environment, such as clients that communicate with your and
Software AG products and that might need endpoint URL, host name, or IP address updates.
As part of upgrading, you will take a baseline of the old environment and use that baseline to perform the upgrade procedure.
Software AG recommends a code freeze while you are migrating the baseline to the new environment.
Many upgrade issues are caused by forgotten environmental settings. Plan, document, and test these thoroughly.
For complex projects that require extensive system testing, extended code freeze might not be possible. In this case, define a change management strategy to track code changes that occur in the old environment. After testing is complete on the baseline, this will enable you to merge the code changes into the baseline and re-test the new baseline.
If you need help creating your planning approach, contact
Software AG Global Consulting Services. You can also go to the
Software AG TECHcommunity and find tips and tricks and other information in the upgrade wiki (Wiki > webMethods > Upgrade).