We're in the process of testing 7.1.6 for a Production upgrade from 5.2.8. We were testing 7.6.0 but were finding issues such as;

Testing 7.6 Issues
7.6. prompting

We dropped back and found that some of the major issues also occur in 7.1.6.

I heard one of the big things with 7.6 is that it will be using a "common codebase" (relative to the other platforms). There are a few things in 7.6 that I could use (Coordinated PDFs, RCaster's run x times between time 1 and time 2, etc.) From what I've heard, the Coordinated PDF feature is actually available in 7.1.x but usage is not documented and (quite probably) not supported.

Questions;

1. Any news/updates as to a more definitive date besides "1st quarter 2007" for the 7.6.1 service patch?

2. What are the big differences (if any) between CGI and Servlet on 7.6.x? On page 45 of the 7.6 Release notes it says that "The CGI/ISAPI implementation of the WebFOCUS Client is not supported."

3. For people on 7.1.x, are you finding more or less problems with 7.6.x testing compared to going from 5.x to 7.x?

4. What were/are the huge, critical, showstopper differences for not going to 7.6.x?

The information that is readily available on IBI's site such as this index and the release notes are definitely helpful but sometimes the "real world" experience is more helpful.

We're pretty much a non-MRE, very little WF GUI, Microsoft shop. I'm trying to get a better feel of all the issues and if it's reasonable for us to think about holding off of the upgrade until 7.6.1 comes out (assuming 7.6.1 makes the cut with the patches).

Thanks in advance.

Rick

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RickW,

I too am anxious for a more definitive date for the 7.6.1 release. We backed off of going Prod to 7.6.0 (from 7.1.6) due to the issues with Dashboard. Specifically, the show-stoppers for our shop were 1) the new unsupressable "My Reports" that launch Power Reporter regardless of license and 2) the inability to modify links on the new no-logo group templates (it affects our custom templates with the same crippled behavior). We opened cases on both.

I also have growing concern for the amount of major interface changes that appear to be emerging with 7.6.1 -- a new layout for the domain tree in Dashboard (this is, though, a good thing and overdue), but also the deprecation of Report Wizard in 7.6.1....and other subtle indicators of significant changes in 7.6.1.

We were burned pretty bad on the jump from 7.1.1 to 7.1.3, adapters were overhauled and a lot of changes went into that release really were far more drastic than a sub-minor revision "patch" release. I'm hoping that 7.6.1 is a primarily a bug fix and not *TOO* drastic on "new feature enhancements". We just want to upgrade to 7.6.x and stay there for awhile. Can't keep upgrading for bug fixes and have to contend with feature creep each quarter.


Regards,

Dan Kenny
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Prod: WF 7.1.6 Linux -- Test: WF 7.6.0 Linux

It is my impression that upgrading from 7.1.6 to 7.6.1 would be a fairly major jump. If not, whatever happened to 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 and 7.5?

Hi Rick and all,

CGI is not supported out of the box on WebFOCUS 7.6.x. It will need to be configured. To view the directions on how to configure CGI in 76, the following manual may be of interest:

WebFOCUS and ReportCaster Installation and Configuration for Windows 7.6 , DN 4500816.1006
Chapter 12, WebFOCUS CGI, ISAPI, and Cluster Manager Installation and Configuration

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Kerry

Hi Rick and all,

FYI, heard from internal resources: 7.61 will be shipped at the end of March.

Cheers,

Kerry

Thanks all for replying. We're falling a bit behind on our upgrade due to other work so we'll have to see how comprehensive the 7.6.1 patch is.

Interesting about the 7.1.1 - 7.1.3 adapter thing - that's a bit scary. Maybe 7.1.3 has more 7.6-ish stuff in it.

I think they went to 7.6 to synch up the release numbers across platforms. Makes sense if they are truly going to one codebase.

Good luck!

We found 7.1.6 more stable than 7.1.3.

I should clarify on the 7.1.1 -> 7.1.3 adapter problems we experienced. They were on our JDBC, and native MySQL and MSSQL adapters (MSSQL is implemented as an optimized JDBC on the Linux WF Reporting Server). IBI changed the way they did JDBC driver class library bindings, and in MYSQL, the way of binding driver library references in the OS. It was painful because it broke all dependent data sources built on those adapters on the upgrade. We had to delete the data adapters/recreate the data sources in iWay, then the synonyms would work. Took some time and was just unexpected on a sub-minor-version inline upgrade.

But the big name adapters (DB2) didn't give us heartburn.

FYI --

Daniel Kenny
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Prod: WF 7.1.6 Linux -- Test: WF 7.6.0 Linux