Any issues when upgrade from 5.1.4 to 5.1.8

system · January 26, 2004, 4:58pm

Hello we are planning to upgrade 5.1.4 to 5.1.8, not 6
becuase we are using more vb sdk
Anyone comeacross major issues, upgrade from 5.1.4 to 5.1.8(webi2.7.4, bo518,bca 558)

Thanks

Shahubar Sadiq (BOB member since 2003-02-28)

system · January 26, 2004, 5:42pm

In theory, no. However, you should check out the calculation engine changes. Tech support has this on the Important Notices page. They even include a macro that will help you identify reports that may be affected.

Steve Krandel (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

system · January 26, 2004, 6:24pm

Thanks Steve
The calculation engine changes were implemented 5.1.4+
we are in 5.1.4 almost a year. do we need report verification/testing?

However, the tools available for 5.1.6, not 5.1.8, any sugesstion?

Shahubar Sadiq (BOB member since 2003-02-28)

system · January 26, 2004, 6:31pm

I never remember which version.

If you’re already on the version with the changes, then you should have nothing to worry about.

The tools would work with 5.1.8. There are no major changes, just fixes in the release.

Steve Krandel (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

system · January 27, 2004, 2:52pm

Hi

From what I’ve experienced so far, I cannot recommend the 5.1.8 release. I installed it on one of our power users’ computer only because we noticed that older versions don’t shrink a big report file properly even if you purge it.
That works but within two days the user encountered two quite serious problems:

Reports with Excel as data source “lost” the connection to some Excel files or sheets within Excel files, although the path settings etc. look ok. We could work around it by pointing the affected data provider to a different Excel file and then back to the previous one. Utterly annoying.

A few, very big reports (several 10’000 rows) would not open but produce “out of memory” errors. Not a problem with 5.1.4 or 5.1.6, though.

There were some more files the user couldn’t open anymore but I didn’t even look into that. We downgraded to 5.1.6 today and the guy’s happy. So am I.

Regards,
Silvan

apollonius (BOB member since 2003-11-11)

system · January 27, 2004, 4:44pm

Silvan,
Thanks for this. I’ve been very happy with 5.1.6 and really didn’t want to upgrade.

Steve Krandel (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

system · January 28, 2004, 7:44pm

We are upgrading to 5.1.8 also. I would appreciate any comments on stability or problems related to the upgrade. We are hoping that the move to 5.1.8 from 5.1.4 will fix our Print Legal formatting issues when using BCA. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Andrew

Andrew Mitchell (BOB member since 2003-06-09)

system · January 29, 2004, 11:20am

Hi Andrew

I’m using BCA 2.7.2 (resp. Console 5.5.6) on Windows. (I think this comes along with the Full Client version of 5.1.6).
Personally, I’m quite happy with this version and I haven’t encountered any formatting problems with any version higher than 5.1.2 anymore.

Since I’ll switch to 6.1 soon, I’ll not use 5.1.8 anymore (see my problems mentioned in the earlier post). But I can recommend 5.1.6.

Regards,
Silvan

apollonius (BOB member since 2003-11-11)

system · January 30, 2004, 3:03pm

Silvan,

Thanks for your comments on 5.1.8 – we’re planning on migrating to it soon and I’m trying to get as much feedback as possible.

Based on what I’ve heard, 5.1.7 is more stable than 5.1.6, and I’m very surprised to hear that you had issues with 5.1.8, which is simply a release that improves 5.1.7. Are you sure it wasn’t a problem with the PC, report or the uninstall of the previous version? How did BO’s tech support respond to the issue?

What do you mean by “BCA 2.7.2?” Are you running BCA without WebI? It would be great if you could briefly describe your architecture.

Thanks again!
Chris

cjweis (BOB member since 2003-10-02)

system · January 30, 2004, 3:29pm

Hello Chris

The issues with the Excel file as a datasource I described earlier were reproduceable on more than one PC. I refresh the report in 5.1.4 or 5.1.6, not a problem. Upgrade to 5.1.8, open the same file and some data providers have DMA0007 error. Deinstall 5.1.8 and reinstall 5.1.6, same file, works. Dosen’t matter whether Office XP or 2000 is in use.
The issue with the big report (lots of rows) I only saw on one PC. Got a memory error with the file, deinstall 5.1.8 and reinstall 5.1.6, open the same file, it works.

For the Excel thing, I had a case with BO. The first thing they came up with was the idea that the link to the datasource file was “lost” and I should re-link the sources. That’s what I did, as described in the other post. However, this is of course quite annoying if you have to do it for a lot of reports. There was no bug mentioned by BO support.
We did not try more reports after that because I’ll deploy 6.1a soon (and reduce the number of full clients significantly) and 5.1.x will become obsolete.

As for your BCA question, the answer is “yes”. I installed “only” BCA on that server although it automatically installs almost the entire WebI software. The configuration is done via the Admin Console you get with WebI as well but has - of course - fewer modules available than with a full WebI installation.
I did it this way because this server will never act as a full-blown WebI server, so there’s also no Web server running on it.

Regards,
Silvan

apollonius (BOB member since 2003-11-11)

system · January 30, 2004, 4:46pm

I think that if you don’t run Webi on the BCA box, you won’t be able to schedule .wqy reports to run. We had some of that going on here. I don’t know whether 6.1a reports can be scheduled to BCA without Webi running there .

Cindy Clayton (BOB member since 2002-06-11)

system · January 30, 2004, 4:56pm

Hello Cindy

You’re quite right. As I mentioned, it installs basically all the WebI stuff anyway and also starts most of the related processes on the system.
However, if installed this way, the only modules you can (and have to) configure are the SessionManager, StorageManager, BOManager and Broadcast Agent itself. And if you restart the setup program, it will “tell” you that only BCA is installed.

But it’s almost a detail, really. The software it puts on your system is the WebI software.

Regards,
Silvan

apollonius (BOB member since 2003-11-11)

system · January 30, 2004, 5:14pm

Silvan,

Thanks again. Could you share your tech support case #? I’d just like to have it for future reference (if we encounter the same problem - which I hope we don’t).

Are you deploying WebI 6.1a with Tomcat? I’ve heard there’s stability issues with Tomcat. :?

Regards,
Chris

cjweis (BOB member since 2003-10-02)

system · January 30, 2004, 5:30pm

Hi Chris

Here’s the support case# I had for the Excel issue: 302457164

Yes, I’m currently running the 6.1a with Apache/Tomcat on Windows2000. But it’s still in a test phase. So far, I’d call it quite stable although I’m struggling with occasional “BoMgr” errors and “unable to find session” and “bad caller workflow” etc. A lot of it is related to parameter and timeout settings, though.
In the future, it should run on Unix with Bea WebLogic but that’ll take a little longer to get in a reliable state…

Regards,
Silvan

apollonius (BOB member since 2003-11-11)

system · January 31, 2004, 12:26am

upgrade from 5.1.4/Webi27 to 5.1.8/Webi274
Uninstall and Reinstall new release or Update with current
which one is best practice? Any Suggestion

Shahubar Sadiq (BOB member since 2003-02-28)

system · February 2, 2004, 10:06am

We had a problem when moving to 5.1.7 from 5.1.3 with Zabo clients as there was some change in the .rss file or something in 5.1.7 (apparently this is in the readme file). This meant uninstalling all our Zabo clients and doing a fresh install - takes the Zero out of Zero Admin. So beware if your using Zabo.

Alex McGibbon (BOB member since 2002-08-15)

system · February 3, 2004, 6:16pm

I just completed my upgrade to 5.1.7 in development. I scheduled a report in BCA that prints legal landscape. When it came out of BCA it was formatted landscape on letter-sized paper and prints over two pages. I thought this was fixed in 5.1.7. Has anyone else seen this and do you have any advice?

Thanks,
Andrew

Andrew Mitchell (BOB member since 2003-06-09)

system · February 4, 2004, 7:38am

Hello Andrew

I had plenty of formatting issues with 5.1.2 and older versions but not after that…

However, did you make sure that the basic settings of the printers installed on your BCA server (“Printing Preferences” resp. properties and available paper in the printer trays) are all set to “legal” format?
In my case, I even had issues with reports sent to the BCA by users who had their local printers set to the wrong paper format. In other words, the report had a setting for “letter” on it, caused by the same setting in the printer driver on the users’ PC - although the setting for the printers on the BCA was correct.

Regards,
Silvan

apollonius (BOB member since 2003-11-11)

system · February 4, 2004, 1:56pm

Thanks for the advice, however I did not change the printer setting to legal. Most of my reports do not print on legal paper. This problem only happens when I retrieve a scheduled report from BCA to Full Client. When I get the same report in WebI and print it is fine.

We have been struggling with this one for a long line and our business thinks that WebI is garbage. Very Frustrating.

Thanks,
Andrew

Andrew Mitchell (BOB member since 2003-06-09)

system · February 4, 2004, 2:55pm

Shahubar,
Another issue with 5.1.7/5.1.8 is that keyboard shorcut keys (Esc, Alt-R, etc.) do not work in the Query Panel (this is bug no. 1085699 and due t fixed in 5.1.9).

Amanjeev (BOB member since 2003-07-10)