Clarity

Community,

We are beginning our process to upgrade from CA PPM 14.3 to 15.2.  With the current implementation team this is our first major upgrade and we do not have a history or people to fall back to for questions that we have.

In reviewing the Check Install program logs we have seen the following:

check-db-customization.xml – WARNING --  Possible schema customization(s) have been found. Any customization to the system is the responsibility of the customer to maintain and are not supported by CA Technologies. To upgrade successfully, all customizations must be reviewed, changed or removed as needed before the upgrade. After a successful upgrade the customizations may be added back to the system. The possible customizations found are listed in file check-logs/database_customization_triggers.txt, check-logs/database_customization_indexes.txt, check-logs/database_customization_tables.txt and check-logs/database_customization_constraints.txt. Customizations of any type are not supported by CA Technologies.

In particular here we are wondering if we absolutely should delete custom DB elements.  We only have a relative few (<10).  We have a trigger, some views, etc.  From your experience, is it best to remove and script these back in, if needed, in the future version?

check-active-processes.xml – WARNING – Run  Delete Process Instance job before upgrade to resolve potential performance issues. Please see following CA support KB article for more information: https://comm.support.ca.com/?legacyid=TEC544505

The link provided does not appear to work.  We tried searching support.CA.com for the docid; results did not seem to cover the topic.  We can run the Delete Process Instance Job and clear this (assumed).  However, we would really like to better understand what the issue is here so that we can document this for future upgrades.

check-duplicate-filters.xml – WARNING – Duplicate  fields were created for few filter portlets. Please see following CA support KB article for solution: http://www.ca.com/us/support/ca-support-online/product-content/knowledgebase-articles/tec1448231.aspx

No answer requested.  We can/have reviewed the website listed and will work through this.

check-bo-removal.xml – WARNING – Business Objects is no longer supported as a Reporting Server with CA PPM. For more information refer CA PPM Installation Guide and Change Impact and Upgrade guide.

check-custom-interactive-portlets.xml – WARNING - Any custom interactive portlets functionality which require Business Objects will no longer function. Such portlets are listed in the file d:\temp\checkinstall\check-logs\custom_portlets_with_bo_params.txt.

Through review of the xml, we see where this is within PPM and can see that these are BO links.  Our Business analyst will be evaluating and we will remove/rebuild as needed.  What is the worst that will happen if we leave these objects in place?  Will it be that they no longer work?  Something worse?  What is your recommendation based on experience?

We greatly appreciate any guidance on the above items you can provide to us.  As I mentioned, we will be documenting this process so that future operations team members, Business Analysts, and developers have a better understanding of the path we took during this upgrade process.

 Thank you in advance for your input and sharing your experience with us.

Michael Tognetti

Hi Michael,

Glad to hear you are going for an upgrade. Let me go through your questions:

check-db-customization.xml – WARNING

You must only remove the customizations that you're certain are created by you. The rest you should leave, as the script will reveal potential customizations and not guaranteed ones.

At CA Support we recommend to remove all customizations you know of. We know of some customers that got lucky and didn't see upgrade issues after leaving them, but we also know of many who did.

The customers who remove and readd them usually have a best chance to have an error free upgrade.

check-active-processes.xml – WARNING

Try this as the correct link:

https://support.ca.com/us/knowledge-base-articles.tec544505.html

This script will issue as warning when there are Active processes running in the system. If there are any Active processes, they may disrupt or get disrupted by the upgrade. We recommend to delete anything unused and completed with Delete Process Instance job and review current Initiated instances, consider putting the processes on Hold.

check-bo-removal.xml – WARNING – Business Objects is no longer supported as a Reporting Server with CA PPM. For more information refer CA PPM Installation Guide and Change Impact and Upgrade guide.

This is to inform you BO is no longer supported.

check-custom-interactive-portlets.xml – WARNING - Any custom interactive portlets functionality which require Business Objects will no longer function. Such portlets are listed in the file d:\temp\checkinstall\check-logs\custom_portlets_with_bo_params.txt.

If you leave the BO interactive portlets in the system, they will likely not cause any issues with the upgrade. However they will not work after the upgrade anymore.

CA Support recommends for cleaner user experience to plan for those portlets and remove them prior to the upgrade. You also can leave them on Test environment and work to redesign them with the new version.

For Production we definitely recommend the removal as after upgrade users will try using the old portlets and find they no longer work.

I hope this helps -Nika

Nika,

Thank you for you answers.  They are very helpful to our team.  I would like to not mark this question as answered just yet, in case other members of the community have anything to add based on their experiences.

Michael.

Hi Michael,

No worries at all, and glad I could help! -Nika

You can ignore warning message. You need to fix the issue, if precheck reports identified any errors.'

Thanks

Senthil