Upgrade guidelines

To prepare for an upgrade, read these guidelines before you install IBM® Rational® Change.

Rational Directory Server

For Rational Change 5.3, ensure that you installed Rational Directory Server 5.1.1 (Apache) or 5.2 (Tivoli®).

For Rational Change 5.3.1, ensure that you installed Rational Directory Server 5.1.1.2 (Apache) or 5.2.1 (Tivoli).

For information about installing Rational Directory Server, see the IBM Rational Directory Server help.

If you have a previous Rational Directory Server, you must migrate your users and data to the new server.

Project security

If you plan to use the project security feature, see Managing project security and Planning for more details.

Dynamic required attributes

This feature is available only in version 5.3.1 or later.

If you plan to use the dynamic required attributes feature, see Enabling dynamic required attributes.

Rational Change Distributed

If you use Rational Change Distributed, see information about compatibility with IBM Rational Synergy Distributed in the "Administering Rational Synergy Distributed" section of the IBM Rational Synergy help.

Customizations

Use the Lifecycle Editor to upgrade your customizations. Copy your XML file to the new Rational Change 5.3 or later CHANGE_APP_HOME/WEB-INF/cr_process directory, load the XML file, and follow the instructions in the window that opens. In most cases, all that is required is saving the XML file, creating the package, and then installing the package.

You can also upgrade a customization that was made manually. However, depending on the extent of the customization, extra work might be required to make it compatible with Rational Change 5.3 or later.

Save your manual customizations in a package template. Then, copy your package template into the Rational Change 5.3 or later CHANGE_APP_HOME/WEB-INF/package_templates directory. Then, use the package template to re-create your package.

You must apply customizations that were made in the ptcli.cfg file.

In version 5.2 and later, this file is in this directory:

CHANGE_APP_HOME/WEB-INF/wsconfig

In versions before 5.2, the file is in $CCM_HOME/etc.

Attributes of web type CCM_NUMBER

In releases before 5.3.1, the attributes of web type CCM_NUMBER were stored as strings in the database. For 5.3.1 and later, for attributes of web type CCM_NUMBER, you can set the DB Type as integer.

In queries, mathematical operators such as =, !=, >, < >=, or <= are enabled for the CCM_NUMBER web type attributes of DB Type integer.

TRELATIONS

If you use pre- and post-transition TRELATIONs, they are no longer supported. Their functions can be duplicated with bean scripting framework (BSF) trigger scripts, found in the CHANGE_APP_HOME/WEB-INF/wsconfig/triggers directory. Although the built-in TRELATIONs are automatically mapped to the replacement BSF scripts when the CR process is upgraded, other TRELATIONs might require manual replacement.

Central server cluster

A central server cluster consists of a central server and one or more remote servers. Always upgrade the central server first, as its release level must be greater than or equal to that of its remote servers. The central server must be the most up-to-date server in the cluster.

The remainder of this section contains information about how to handle issues with a heterogeneous encoding environment in Central Server Mode.

Rational Change 5.2 and earlier releases that are supported either the CP1252 or UTF-8 character encoding. The UTF-8 encoding was only applicable with the Asian-line of Rational Synergy. However, the products did not support heterogeneous encoding between servers in a central server cluster. The encodings were either all UTF-8 or all CP1252.

As of Rational Change 5.3, UTF-8 is the only supported encoding. It might not be possible to upgrade all servers in a CP1252 central server cluster to UTF-8 at once. Therefore, a heterogeneous encoding environment might result during the upgrade.

To prevent data corruption:
  • Upgrade the central server first. Doing so ensures that the central server is updated to UTF-8 before the remote servers, preventing data from getting garbled in the central server.
  • If you are an existing Asian-line customer using central server and you want to add non-Asian (CP1252) databases through a remote server, add them after upgrading the databases to UTF-8.
Here are some possible problems that you might encounter when you use non-CP1252 characters in a heterogeneous encoding environment:
  • Ghosted CR data (CR data that is replicated in the remote database) might be garbled. This potential corruption is only an issue when you use CR-based reconfigure or when querying for CR data from Rational Synergy in the remote database. The de facto CR data in the central server remains intact.
  • Task data for remote CP1252 databases might be garbled when written from Rational Change. For example, a string of Chinese characters can be used in a CR. However, saving this same data in a task from a remote database through Rational Change would result in garbled characters. Although there are no safeguards to prevent this potential corruption, you should see the problem immediately after you view the update.

Rational Change version 4.7 or older

If you are upgrading from version 4.7 or older, attribute controls (for example, base.CCM_LISTBOX) were updated in Rational Change 5.0. Most of the JavaScript that previously existed in the controls is extracted into the file CHANGE_APP_HOME/trapeze/js53/ctrlUtils.js, which is included on base templates. While an effort was made to preserve compatibility with earlier versions, certain types of customizations, such as interdependent controls, must be manually upgraded.


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