Upgrade of Product Components

A new capability has been implemented in the Java ES Release 5 to upgrade product components in a few special cases: Application Server, Message Queue, HADB, and Java DB. When the Java ES installer detects the previously installed release versions of these product components, it marks them as upgradable in the Component Selection page. If any of these four product components are selected, the installer will upgrade them using logic similar to that used for a fresh installation.

In particular, before upgrading a selected product component, the installer checks for the existence of current and previous versions of shared components. If the installer detects that a shared component required by the selected component is of a previous version or is missing, the installer will upgrade all shared components currently installed and install any missing shared components required by the selected component. This behavior, which meets the requirements described in Synchronize All Shared Components, applies to non-zone operating systems, global zones, and all non-global zones.

However, there are three exceptions to this behavior:

• In sparse root zones, some shared components cannot be installed or upgraded and the upgrade operation is halted until such time as such shared components have been installed or upgraded in the global zone. (For more information, see Shared Components and Sparse Root Zones) The installer provides the following message: “The following shared components, required by the components you have selected, cannot be installed or upgraded in a sparse root zone. Please install or upgrade these shared components in the global zone before proceeding. Use the All Shared Components option.” (For more information, see Synchronize All Shared Components.)

• Both Application Server and Message Queue are bundled with the Solaris operating system. Neither of these versions can be directly upgraded in a sparse-root zone. For the details regarding these two bundled components, see Product Component Special Cases.

• In a global zone, if non-global zones are present, instead of upgrading all shared components currently installed and installing any missing shared components required by a component selected for installation, the installer synchronizes all Java ES shared components, whether or not they are needed at that time for any of the components selected for installation. This allows all shared components to be propagated to non-global zones, thus assuring that there is no intermixing of shared component versions in the non-global zones.

There are a number of special cases or exceptions that might interfere with the installation or upgrade of product components in non-global zones. These cases are described in Special Cases or Exceptions.