Upgrading an Automation Engine System Manually

As a system administrator, you want to have a complete overview of the comprehensive manual upgrade process. You need to be have all the information necessary, meet the requirements necessary, check for incompatibilities between versions and go through a number of preparation steps before carrying out the upgrade.

Important!

This page includes the following:

General Information

When changing the version of the Automation Engine, the AE DB Load utility processes and monitors all the required steps for changing the database. This is necessary, because it also modifies data that cannot be changed with SQL. All steps that the utility processes during the upgrading process are logged in the uc_upd.txt file.

The upgrading process comprises of several stages:

  1. Planning the conversion time and creating a plan for a possible re-conversion. Never change to a new Automation Engine version without having planned a re-conversion scenario
  2. Make a backup of the AE database and all the components' directories.
  3. Upgrade your system step by step WITHOUT using the new functions.
  4. Only use the new functions when every component has been converted to the new version and after a particular system-monitoring period.

Each stage consists of many small steps. Your AE system is not upgraded all at once but step by step. The old components are not overwritten and the new files are installed in separate directories. Only the AE database is directly upgraded with the utility AE DB Load. This method has two main advantages:

  1. You can quickly re-convert to the old AE-component version if problems occur in your system environment. Therefore, there is almost no risk for your processing.
  2. Depending on the size of your AE system, the complete upgrading process can take some time. The advantage of upgrading step by step is that you can do so in individual and shorter periods of time which makes it easier to coordinate the upgrading process with other departments and processes. And it is also easier to locate errors that might occur.

First upgrade your test system. Possible problems can so be recognized and solved before they occur in your production system. Test the individual upgrading steps, thereby setting up a plan for upgrading your production system.

Please note that:

Requirements

Checking for Incompatibilities

Before upgrading, you need to check for incompatibilities between two consecutive versions. Only new features that might lead to compatibility issues or that should be taken into account when upgrading are listed. All new features of a given AE version are described in full in the 12.3 Release Highlights.

Preparing for the Upgrade

Make sure you carry out all the preparation steps before upgrading your system.

Deny New Job Starts

Important!

Prepare the Upgrading Process of Core Components

Maintain the AE Database

These scripts are provided in the directories IMAGE:DB\GENERAL\<version> and IMAGE:DB\<database type>\<version>. The file uc_upd.txt is especially important.

Duplicate the AE Database

For company-critical processing in the AE system it is best to duplicate and back up your database. In doing so, you may leave one of the databases unchanged and easily re-access your old database, if any problems occur in your system environment.

The database can be duplicated in different ways:

Inform your database-administration group because the current log files must be stored in the duplicated database.

See also: