Progress
Developer’s Toolkit


Upgrades

After you distribute your application and users have been using it, you might want to upgrade, fix, or modify either the application procedures or the application database. It is a good idea to develop a strategy for dealing with application upgrades before distributing an application. That way, when you have to upgrade an application, you are less likely to have unexpected problems. This chapter helps you prepare an effective upgrade strategy; it covers the following topics:

Modifying an application is relatively straightforward if you have not made changes to the database schema. If you have made changes to the database schema, modifying the application requires more steps.

Figure 4–1 illustrates the steps needed and options available when upgrading and distributing changes to the database structure or application procedures. When making changes to the database structure, you must to create an incremental .df file that contains the changes in the database structure. You can then load this .df file into the existing database structure to update that database. For information on creating an incremental 4GL .df file, see the Progress Database Administration Guide and Reference. See the Progress Programming Handbook for more information about deploying changes to database structures.

When modifying application procedures, you can choose to deploy either unencrypted or encrypted source code, or to deploy modified r-code. An important consideration in which method you choose is whether there is a full development product (4GL Development System, ProVISION, ProVISION Plus, or WebSpeed) capable of compiling code at the deployment site. When deploying to users with Progress products that cannot compile unencrypted source code, developers will have to deploy encrypted source code and compile it at the site, or deploy r-code. If you deploy r-code, you must ensure that the platforms, operating systems, and Progress versions at the deployment site match those at the development site. Otherwise, you will have to compile the r-code at the deployment site to ensure compatibility. The following sections address these considerations in more detail.

Figure 4–1: Deploying Upgraded Database Structure and Application Procedures


Copyright © 2004 Progress Software Corporation
www.progress.com
Voice: (781) 280-4000
Fax: (781) 280-4095