You have two strategies for upgrading Rational® ClearQuest®: Upgrade your entire environment
at once or upgrade in phases. Both strategies offer their own advantages
and disadvantages. In the end however, all clients and Rational ClearQuest servers
must be upgraded to the same release.
Upgrading everything at one time
By upgrading
all at once, you can avoid problems that arise from supporting software
components from different releases. All version 8.0 features are available
immediately. However, the Rational ClearQuest environment
is not available until all clients and servers are upgraded, all changes
are made to the user databases and schema repositories, packages are
upgraded, and other IBM Rational products
are reinstalled. Any unforeseen problems must be resolved before the
environment can be made available to users.
Upgrading in phases
When you upgrade in
phases, the ClearQuest environment
is only down for several short periods and risk is reduced because
problems can be addressed as they arise. If you are upgrading in phases,
identify which
Rational ClearQuest servers
and clients to upgrade first and which to upgrade later. For example,
you might want to upgrade the clients and servers for one project
team before another team. If some people are members of both project
teams, you must consider whether upgrading their clients affects their
ability to work with the user databases of the second project. In
addition, you must consider these issues when you are choosing this
upgrade strategy.
- Some clients, servers, and vendor databases are not compatible
with clients and servers from version 8.0. This software must be upgraded
in the first phase of the upgrade process.
- A mismatch of feature levels in a phased upgrade approach can
also present numerous compatibility issues that require more attention.
You can avoid these problems by maintaining a single feature level
throughout the phased upgrade strategy, and then increasing the feature
level after the entire environment is upgraded. For more information,
see Decide on the feature level for schema repositories and databases.
- If you have a MultiSite configuration and you want complete bidirectional
replication between all sites, you must upgrade all Rational ClearQuest MultiSite
synchronization servers and Rational Shipping
Servers at the same time. If you can accept unidirectional replication
(that is, some sites cannot receive updates from other sites), you
can upgrade MultiSite synchronization servers and shipping servers
in phases. This option requires careful planning. For more information,
see Decide on the feature level for schema repositories and databases.