1 Overview of the Upgrade Process to WebLogic Portal 10.3.7

This section provides an overview of the strategies and procedures for upgrading Oracle WebLogic Portal to 10.3.7. You can upgrade directly to Portal 10.3.7 from the following WebLogic Portal applications:

Oracle WebLogic Portal 10.3.6
Oracle WebLogic Portal 10.3.5
Oracle WebLogic Portal 10.3.4
Oracle WebLogic Portal 10.3.2
Oracle WebLogic Portal 10.3
Oracle WebLogic Portal 10.2

Note:

If you are upgrading a WLP application that uses Autonomy Enterprise Search and you would like to continue to use Autonomy Enterprise Search, you must first purchase the required license and obtain the binaries from Autonomy Corporation at http://www.autonomy.com. For more information on using Autonomy with WLP, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Autonomy Search Integration Sample Guide for Oracle WebLogic Portal.

You can also elect to use another search engine in place of Autonomy, such as Oracle's Secure Enterprise Search, which comes as part of WebCenter Suite.

The following topics are covered in this chapter:

Section 1.1, "Definitions"
Section 1.2, "Portal 10.2/10.3/10.3.2/10.3.4/10.3.5/10.3.6 to 10.3.7 Upgrade Overview"
Section 1.3, "Library Module Changes"
Section 1.4, "Event Handling"

Some of tasks associated with a WebLogic Portal upgrade are performed by running the WebLogic Upgrade Wizard. The WebLogic Upgrade Wizard is described in Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Guide for Oracle WebLogic Server.

1.1 Definitions

To clarify the different activities described by this document, a brief list of terms is included:

Migration – Moving an application and domain from a third-party technology to an Oracle product. (For example, migrating a customer from IBM to Oracle.)

Upgrade – Updating Oracle platform (and components) from older release or Service Pack to newer release or Maintenance Pack. This includes updating existing application and domain to run in a newer version, for example, 10.2 to 10.3.7.

The process required to upgrade an application environment depends on the scope of the application. An application environment includes a WebLogic domain and any applications and application resources associated with the domain. It may also include external resources, such as firewalls, load balancers, databases, and LDAP servers.

Interoperability – (1) The capability of an application deployed in one release or service pack to communicate with another application that is deployed in a different release or service pack. (2) The capability of WebLogic Platform components to communicate with third-party software using standard protocols.

Compatibility – Application built using one release or Service Pack running in another release or Service Pack. This might involve rebuilding the application.

1.2 Portal 10.2/10.3/10.3.2/10.3.4/10.3.5/10.3.6 to 10.3.7 Upgrade Overview

You can upgrade WebLogic Portal release 10.2, 10.3, 10.3.2, 10.3.4, 10.3.5, or 10.3.6 to release 10.3.7. The upgrade process involves upgrading the WebLogic Portal domain and applications. When upgrading WebLogic Portal, upgrade the portal domain before you upgrade portal applications. However, if you are upgrading WebLogic Portal 10.3.6 to release 10.3.7, you can optionally choose to upgrade only your portal applications, without upgrading your domain.

The WebLogic Portal APIs have been maintained in the latest version of WebLogic Portal (except for the Commerce API, which was deprecated in 10.0 and removed from the current version), and most core formats for the database and file-based assets have not changed. Where changes have been made, tools are provided to upgrade to the new format, or provide manual changes where needed.

After you upgrade to WebLogic Portal 10.3.7, you cannot go back to a previous portal version. When you upgrade, the Derby database version also gets upgraded.

The 10.2/10.3/10.3.2/10.3.4/10.3.5/10.3.6 portal application upgrades are performed on a .project file. You can choose one of the following methods to upgrade your portal applications to 10.3.7:

Open your existing portal application as a workspace in Workshop for WebLogic
Import an existing exploded project into Workshop for WebLogic
Import an archived project file into Workshop for WebLogic

Tip:
You cannot upgrade an existing EAR application; only a project can be upgraded.

For information about the upgrade procedures, see Chapter 2, "Upgrading to WebLogic Portal 10.3.7."

1.3 Library Module Changes

The Domain Upgrader tool is responsible for adding or removing library modules, as necessary. It also modifies existing library module path information to point to the new product installation.

Removed libraries are deleted from the config.xml file. During upgrade, the module version number changes to 10.3.7 in your config.xml file.

1.4 Event Handling

Events can target content to a desired audience.

Note:

Events will fire for a content repository that was upgraded to 10.3.7 (unless you turned event tracking turned off at the repository level). Events can include repository configuration changes, as well as content additions, updates, and deletions to the repository.