Upgrade process

You must plan your upgrade so that you know what to expect at each stage of the process. In the planning stage, you can review the upgrade documentation for information about expected behavior, new features, deprecated features, compatibility between versions, and requirements for preparing your production environment. When you finish the review, you can then conduct a site survey to identify the BI infrastructure, applications, reports, and custom configuration settings. Finally, you can test the upgrade on a subset of your data so that you can fine-tune your reports and data before committing to the full upgrade.

When planning your upgrade, ensure that you perform the following tasks:

• Gather the necessary information, such as the required inputs and expected outputs for each phase.
• Assess the applications in your reporting environment and group similar reports together.
• Install the new software in a test environment and deploy the content to the test environment.
• Test the upgraded applications to ensure that your reports run as expected.

  You can use Lifecycle Manager to compare reports from a different version of IBM® Cognos® BI. For more information, see the Lifecycle Manager documentation.

Deployment and testing is usually an iterative process. Assess any differences between the source and target environments. Move to your production environment when you are satisfied that the deployed applications meet your business requirements.

The following diagram shows a general upgrade workflow and the stages in the upgrade process. The process includes the following stages:

• Creating an upgrade plan, which includes the following activities:
  • Reviewing resources, such as documentation and the Cognos Upgrade Central website (www.ibm.com/software/analytics/cognos/customercenter/upgrade.html)
  • Verifying the supported environments to ensure compatibility with your other software by going to the IBM Software Product Compatibility Reports page (www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27042164). You may also want to check this page if you are thinking of upgrading your operating system.
  • Evaluating your existing system to determine what you want to move to your new version of the product.
  • Creating a detailed plan to implement your upgrade strategy.
• Creating a development or test system with the new version of the product.
• Using the information learned from the development or test system and applying it as you create your QA or production systems.