8 Upgrading and Patching

Oracle Communications Marketing and Advertising uses Oracle WebLogic Server mechanisms to support upgrades. Depending on what is being upgraded, there are two main supported strategies:

Hitless upgrades
Rolling upgrades

Hitless upgrades are performed using the Production Redeployment strategy, also referred to in WebLogic Server as side-by-side redeployment. For more general information, see "Redeploying Applications in a Production Environment" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Deploying Applications to Oracle WebLogic Server at:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/web.1111/e13702/redeploy.htm#i1032371

For more general information on rolling upgrades, see "WebLogic Server Rolling Upgrade" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Guide for Oracle WebLogic Servers at

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/web.1111/e13754/rolling_upgrade.htm#i1065782

Upgrading the Web Application

Marketing and Advertising is a Web application running within the WebLogic Server container. As an application it can be upgraded using the Production Redeployment strategy. The old and the new versions are deployed side by side. WebLogic Server automatically brings the new version online as it phases out the old. In this case, traffic continues to flow seamlessly.

Upgrading the Delivery Mechanism

The communication services that contain the plug-ins that the Web application uses to deliver its messages to the network are themselves deployed as applications and can thus use the Production Deployment strategy. The same is true for the interceptors that route traffic to the Web application to have promotional material inserted into them and other enterprise application EAR files.

Container services, on the other hand, are more tightly integrated with WebLogic Server. To upgrade container services, use the rolling upgrade strategy. Each individual server within the cluster must be restarted after the upgrade, but the entire cluster does not need to be re-started as a unit.

Upgrading the Container

For updates of the WebLogic Server itself, minor releases use the rolling upgrade mode, whereas major releases require cluster re-start. Upgrades of the Coherence caching module follow the WebLogic Server model.

Upgrading Overlay Installations

For overlay installations, where a full-featured Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper carries normal traffic and is also used as the delivery mechanism for Marketing and Advertising, upgrading one product goes hand in hand with upgrading the other. The same strategies as upgrades for stand-alone installations apply.

For information on both upgrade strategies in the context of Services Gatekeeper, see "Hitless Upgrade Using Production Redeployment" in Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper System Administrator's Guide at:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E16625_01/doc.50/e16623/adm_hitlessupgrade.htm#i1100852

Patching

Patches are applied to Marketing and Advertising in two ways, depending on what is being patched. The two mechanisms include:

Patching Using Ant
Patching Using SmartUpdate

Patching Using Ant

EAR files, which include communication services with their plug-ins, interceptors, and ocma-network-node in the Network cluster and ocma-admin-adf, and, if you have deployed it, ocma-ws, in the Web cluster, are patched using the same Ant-based mechanism as is used in communication services for Services Gatekeeper.

For information on using this mechanism, see the "Version Handling and Patching of Communication Services" section of the "Deployment Model for Communication Services and Container Services" chapter in Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper System Administrator's Guide.

The patching build.xml file for use with Ant is located in Middleware_Home/ocma_5.1/server/bin.

Patching Using SmartUpdate

Container services and WebLogic Server are patched using SmartUpdate.

For information on SmartUpdate, see Oracle Smart Update Installing Patches and Maintenance Packs at:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/doc.1111/e14143/title.htm#BEGIN

The SmartUpdate tool is in Middleware_Home/utils/bsu.