New versions of IBM Cognos 8 BI provide enhancements that may affect many components, such as product features and functionality, performance and scalability, and usability. Because of these improvements, upgrading may not be simple, and should be considered a process that you perform in stages.
You should treat upgrading as an IT project that requires careful planning, adequate time, and resources.
When you upgrade, you perform two distinct activities:
Install the new version of the product.
Move applications to the new version of the product.
You can install the new version of the product in the same location as the existing version after you uninstall, or you can install into a new location.
We recommend that you first install into a new location, such as a test environment. This allows you to test your applications in both the old and new environment to ensure that they work as expected when you upgrade. You can compare the appearance and functionality of the reports in both environments to ensure equivalency.
As part of the upgrade process, ensure that your applications work as expected in the new version. Sometimes, changes may introduce unexpected results. It is important to test your applications before you move them.
In IBM Cognos 8, when you move content from one environment to another, you do a deployment.
Different groups are commonly involved in each of these activities. As part of the project, you should assess both your current IT environment and your existing applications separately, to ensure that the infrastructure can support your business objectives.
If you have IBM Cognos Series 7 content, you can move some of that content to IBM Cognos 8 using migration tools that are available in a separate installation.
If you are using previous versions of ReportNet, Metrics Manager, IBM Cognos 8 Go! Office, or Transformer, you can upgrade your content to IBM Cognos 8. You can also upgrade from previous versions of IBM Cognos 8, including full and maintenance (MR) releases.
The following diagram shows the approach that we recommend when you upgrade. The diagram shows the stages in the upgrade process. Before you start, you plan the upgrade, assess the applications that you want to upgrade and create a test environment. You should iteratively deploy and test content in both the source and target environments before you to move successfully upgraded applications to a production environment.
In some upgrade situations, other tasks may be required. For example, if you use SDK applications that depend on the report specifications, you must upgrade your SDK applications before upgrading the report specifications. If you are upgrading from ReportNet 1.1 MR3 or MR4, you can use Upgrade Manager to automate some tasks in the trial upgrade stage.
See the following topics for information about upgrading:
Upgrading from ReportNet, Metrics Manager, or Earlier Versions of IBM Cognos 8
