DS Upgrade 7.5.1A to 8.7

cdw_aeroplan · Post by **cdw_aeroplan** » Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:46 pm

Hello all,

We are currently in the process of migrating our Datastage PX servers & software.

Currently we have 7.5.1A under UNIX and are looking to upgrade to 8.7 or 9.1 under Linux Redhat

Knowing that this if a big jump since we have such an old version we want to evaluate what kind of impact we should expect during our migration process.

Will our current jobs continue to work with minimal changes?
What are some of the key differences that would impact us directly?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
David

buzzylee · Post by **buzzylee** » Sun Feb 17, 2013 6:11 am

Hi David,

We did similar exercise last year - 7.5 to 8.5 migration (yes - it's not an upgrade as you have to install 8.5 on side of 7.5).

No big surprises on the way, just a few minor issues occurred:

1. O/S commands porting from Unix to Linux may be challenging - subtle differences in shell commands / options / features may have a big impact on your bespoke code behavior
2. DataStage 8.x is not fully backward compatible - for instance some of the keywords are reserved and therefore cannot be used as job parameter names. I found the word "status" one of them.
3. Some jobs after export (7.x) and import (8.x) could be damaged (broken links, lack of part of design) - make sure you test you migration in DEV and apply all corrective actions
4. I remember occuring some DS 8.x bugs that were not there in 7.5 - to minimize impact of it do full regression testing of your migrated jobs
5. Make sure your project / job settings around new 8.x features (like character sets handling, locales, etc.) is consciously set

Cheers
Buzz

cdw_aeroplan · Post by **cdw_aeroplan** » Thu Feb 21, 2013 7:29 am

Thanks for your response!

What about in terms of partionning? We have a lot of old jobs that did not handle the partionning very well (using mostly AUTO). I've heard that this can be an issue in newer version?

And what about 8.7 or 9.1. Anyone have experience with migrating 7.5 to these versions?? Not much documentation yet on 9.1...

Thank you!

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Thu Feb 21, 2013 2:52 pm

There's no shortage of 9.1 documentation; you can get it from the IBM Information Center and, from there, you can get a link where you can go to download manuals.

ssudipta4 · Post by **ssudipta4** » Mon Mar 31, 2014 11:38 pm

Hi David,
I have done the migration work in my previous project.
If it is 'auto' then its not creating any issues but if you know which partition is suitable for that you have to use that should be perform well.
Ex, If you are joining two tables and putting partition is auto then by default datastage can choose Hash partition. Best practice if you are aware or expertise of partitioning technique then only you can choose otherwise put it as auto.

priyadarshikunal · Post by **priyadarshikunal** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 5:50 am

Apart from what Buzz mentioned, there are a few bug fixes "what they like to call it" which may interfere with how it works in 7.5.

For instance in 7.5 you could have 2 environment variables with same name if its has difference in case, so it was case sensitive, in 8.7 onwards its not.