CODEWITHSUNDEEP
upgradesap-commerce-cloud
pavanjoshi
pavanjoshi

Reputation: 240

SAP Commerce / Hybris upgrade multiple versions

Which is the more feasible strategy for version upgrades when you are multiple versions behind. For example from 6.4 to 2005. Should we really do a version by version approach as SAP suggests. I understand it's recommended way but still. Any one can share their experience regarding this? What difficulties could be faced when directly migrating multiple versions?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1677

Answers (3)

crichton
crichton

Reputation: 11

I recently did a platform upgrade from hybris 6.7 to 2005 and did it step by step, mainly because of the java version change and, other than that, there were certain migration steps in each intermediate version that were needed to be done. Also the customer had a lot of custom promotion rules and they needed some special care.

In my case, the process in each step was this:

  1. Upgrade to new version - there is an help.sap.com page for each step, I recommend you follow it and go through each of the section to see what applies to your project, e.g Upgrading Platform from 6.7 to 1808
  2. Compile the project - some deprecated things will be removed in some steps and you have to refactor where needed. This step took me the most amount of time
  3. Start the hybris server - after you finish the refactoring and your project builds successfully with ant clean all there is the possibility that the platform will fail to start due to some (now) incorrect xml config. The "good" part here is that you can see in the console what the problem is and the fix should go faster than the previous step.
  4. Perform the necessary upgrade steps - here is the tricky part, once your platform starts you have to perform the necessary upgrade steps for each extension and add-on that needs it, otherwise you risk working with some broken business logic. You need to do some regression tests and check that everything works as it should.

All in all, an upgrade takes time and depends on how many versions you have to go through, but I think taking it step by step is the most efficient way to accomplish it.

Upvotes: 1

Vikas
Vikas

Reputation: 96

I had a similar requirement of upgrading from version 6.2 to 2005, I went with the One-Shot approach as explained by Yoni, and the biggest challenge I faced was due to Java version change.

I believe One-Shot approach and Step by Step approach will take a similar amount of time in the major version upgrade, though Step by Step approach is safe but redundant. My personal favorite is One-Shot.

Upvotes: 1

Yoni
Yoni

Reputation: 1430

There are several approaches you can take. Which one you take depends on the knowledge your team has and with the amount of customizations you already performed.

Step by Step

This is the recommended way by SAP. This is a more secure strategy, where it's very clear what changed between different versions. With every version, you will experience build failures, startup failures and possibly even data issues that need to be migrated. But it's very clear what version caused those issues. With the SAP help and the upgrade notes, you should be able to easily find what was changed, and how to fix it. Disadvantage with this approach is that you need to download, unzip and build for every version, and that takes time. Sometimes you even need to fix the same code twice, when the implentation was changed multiple times

One Shot

With this approach, you go straight to the latest version. You just put your custom code in the latest version and just see what build failures you get. With this approach, it will be harder to figure out what exact version upgrade caused a specific issue. You should still check all upgrade notes, to make sure that no migrations are needed. Advantage is that you only perform everything once. If you have an experienced team, this is a feasable approach. If you have a new team, be carefull with this approach. You might encounter some difficult errors where you won't be sure what version caused them, so finding info in the SAP help might be harder

Hybrid approach

A third option would be a hybrid approach, where you upgrade several versions at once (For example to versions that contain big changes, like with the addition of backoffice in 6.3). This makes it easier to apply changes for those big changes, while you don't have to go through every version one by one.

Conclusion

I've tried all approaches in the past. The step by step approach takes a lot of time, but makes the changes easier and clearer. With the One Shot approach, you only need to download the latest version, but it might be somewhat harder to find the bugs. If you have an experienced team, you should go for the one shot approach. When you are a lot of versions behind and there were big changes, you could go for the hybrid approach

Upvotes: 5

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