Bookshelf v8.0: About the Siebel Database Upgrade Process

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About the Siebel Database Upgrade Process

Upgrades from: All Supported Siebel releases.

Environments: Development, production test, production.

Upgrading to a new release involves two aspects:

The order in which to upgrade your environments
The flow of the upgrade process within each environment

Environment Upgrade Order

If you have a development environment, you must upgrade it first, before upgrading other environments. This merges your customizations with the new release. A merged repository file and database schema file are created and become inputs to the production test environment upgrade and production upgrade.

If you do not have a development environment or have not customized your repository, no repository merge is required. You can use the repository and schema definition files included in the new release to upgrade your production test environment and production environment.

Flow of the Upgrade Within an Environment

The basic flow of the upgrade process is shown in Figure 3. This flow applies to development environment and production test environment upgrades. You also use this flow to upgrade your production environment, with the addition of several deployment steps.

Figure 3. Flow of the Upgrade Process

Upgrade the Infrastructure

The first phase is to upgrade your hardware and software to meet system and implementation requirements, which includes upgrading the Siebel Enterprise to the new release. This action upgrades the Siebel Servers and provides the programs, scripts, input files, and other files required to merge the repository and upgrade the Siebel Database. For information on how to upgrade the infrastructure, see Siebel Installation Guide for the operating system you are using.

Perform Pre-Upgrade Tasks

This phase prepares the Siebel Database for upgrade and includes such tasks as closing the database connections, clearing pending workflow tasks, and disabling customized triggers.

Perform Upgrade Tasks (Development Environment)

This phase merges your customizations into the new release. This phase also upgrades the development environment database and includes these tasks:

Prepare application data. These tasks prepare test data for migration.
Upgrade database (upgrep). You run the Database Configuration Wizard in upgrep mode. They perform a basic upgrade of the Siebel Database schema and load repositories to prepare for the repository merge. Both upgrep and upgphys modes are run as a single step in the Database Configuration Utility.
Merge repository. You use Siebel Tools to merge your existing repository with the repository in the new release. Postmerge utilities upgrade form applets and verify that applets and views are configured correctly.
Run postmerge utilities. You use Siebel Tools to run a set of utilities that examine the merged repository. The utilities analyze your customizations and apply changes to them as needed to conform to the user interface in the new release.
Upgrade database (upgphys). You run the Database Configuration Utilities in upgphys mode. They further upgrade the Siebel Database with changes resulting from the repository merge and complete the database upgrade.
The Database Configuration Utilities also generate the customer repository definition file and logical schema definition file that are used as input to the production test environment and production upgrades.

NOTE: During the synchronization process, custom columns in the Siebel Schema that are not in the Siebel Repository are not deleted but custom indexes in the Siebel Schema that are not in the Siebel Repository are deleted.

Perform Upgrade Tasks (Production Test Environment)

This phase upgrades a production test environment Siebel Database to the new release and includes the following tasks:

Prepare application data. These tasks are about preparing application data for migration.
Upgrade database (upgrep). You run the Database Configuration Utilities in upgrep mode. They perform a basic upgrade of the Siebel Database schema:
- You run the utility in Prepare for Production mode before running it in upgrep mode. The Prepare for Production mode reviews the upgraded development environment database schema and creates input files. The upgrep mode uses these files to make schema changes to the Siebel Database.
- The upgrep mode imports the repository and schema definition files from the development environment upgrade. It uses these files to upgrade the Siebel Database.
- The upgphys portion runs automatically. It makes several administrative changes to table data, including updating the schema version in S_APP_VER. It does not make schema changes.

Perform Upgrade Tasks (Production Environment)

This phase upgrades a production environment Siebel Database to the new release and includes the following tasks:

Additive Schema Changes. This step is optional and is run in the production environment. You can run this mode of the Database Configuration Utilities without taking the database offline. This mode makes schema changes that do not affect the operation of the application. This reduces the amount of time the production database must be offline to perform the upgrade. Testing Additive Schema Changes is also included in the process checklist for tuning the upgrade. This allows you to verify Additive Schema Changes in the production test environment before running it in the production environment.
Prepare application data. These tasks are about preparing application data in the production database for migration.
Upgrade database (upgrep). In the production test environment, you start the Database Server Configuration Utilities in upgrep mode, and enter configuration information for the production environment. This includes an ODBC definition for connecting to the production Siebel Database.
This step causes the wizard to use the SQL for upgrading the production test database to upgrade the production database.

The SQL generated for the production test database upgrade is preserved, and no new SQL is generated. This SQL has been tuned using the Upgrade Tuner and has been revised by the Prepare for Production mode. You do not have to repeat these two steps before upgrading the production database.

You do not have to run the Database Configuration Utilities in upgphys mode. The upgphys steps are included in the production environment upgrep.

Perform Postupgrade Tasks

This phase is where you set up the environment, configure applications, and test the system as follows:

Set up the environment. These tasks set up the postupgrade environment, which includes extracting the developers' databases and running database statistics.
Application administration. These tasks set up the applications and include such tasks as setting up user access and visibility of views and screens.
Application configuration. These tasks prepare applications for testing, including data migration for specific applications.
Test the system. These tasks test the system. For development environment upgrades, you perform basic unit tests to verify the operation of the application. For production test environment upgrades, you perform a full suite of regression and stress tests to verify the system is ready for production.

Siebel Database Upgrade Guide		Copyright © 2008, Oracle. All rights reserved.