Stepping up to LANSA Version 11
Step 2 - Upgrade to V11
| When: | ASAP |
| Benefits gained: | |
| The most important things about this step that managers or planners need to know: | |
| The most important things about this step that application developers need to know: |
More productive application development.
The Visual LANSA development workbench (IDE) has been completely replaced in LANSA V11. Producing 5250, Web or Windows applications is now easier and faster than before. Developers using this workbench are demonstrably more productive than those using 5250 screens for development.
New Built-in Functions.
LANSA V11 delivers a new set of Built-in Functions that make general LANSA programming tasks easier and simpler than before. The areas of improvement include string handling and string formatting, encryption and decryption, data conversions and reading/writing to flat files (e.g. on the iSeries IFS).
These areas have been chosen because they are tasks frequently associated with integrating LANSA applications with other application within and outside the enterprise.
As with any major system change, you need to plan your upgrade.
Here are some guidelines and suggestions for planning your upgrade in a controlled manner to minimise risk and disruption and maximise the benefits:
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Review the iSeries and client
system requirements and upgrade
procedures Refer to the Installing LANSA on iSeries guide for information about upgrading your LANSA installation. This guide contains important information pertaining to:
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Perform your LANSA upgrade in
isolation and in a stable
environment Do not upgrade your operating system or other system software or perform other major system changes at the same time as performing your LANSA upgrade. Instead, perform these changes in advance and ensure the system is stable and operating correctly before proceeding with your LANSA upgrade. If you update more than one major system component at a time, it can be very difficult and time-consuming to identify and resolve any issues that may arise. In the worst cases, this may involve rolling back some or all changes in order to identify the cause of the problem. If you need to, for example, upgrade IBM i (OS/400) or switch to the IBM HTTP server (powered by Apache) then you should complete these changes first. When you have done so, you should verify that your system operates correctly before proceeding – this includes testing your existing LANSA development environment, LANSA applications and your Web applications. We strongly recommend:
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Create a separate LANSA
development installation if you do
not already have one This means more than just having separate development and production partitions in one LANSA installation. It means having separate LANSA installations for development and production work – perhaps even a third "middle" system for consolidation and testing of completed development work. The benefits of installing a separate LANSA development system can be very significant. Amongst other things, this gives you an opportunity to install, configure and test new versions of LANSA or EPCs without affecting your production systems. You can verify that your applications work correctly with the new software before deploying it to production systems. Ultimately this minimises the possibility of production downtime. It is easy to install an additional copy of LANSA for development purposes. Assuming you are installing on a machine for which you already licensed, you do not need to pay additional licence fees or to obtain new licence codes. The only requirement is a little extra disk space. |
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Upgrade to or install LANSA V11 in a non-critical environment
for familiarisation and testing For any software upgrade, and especially system software such as the operating system, you must always consider the possibility of unanticipated effects – including the possibility that the upgrade may adversely affect the running of your operational systems. LANSA is no different in this respect. LANSA serves as both your application development environment and as a run-time environment for your production iSeries, client/server and Web applications. You should approach a LANSA upgrade in the same planned and methodical way that you would approach, for example, an operating system upgrade. Therefore it is simply good practice to first apply LANSA V11 in a non-critical environment and verify that your applications operate correctly before proceeding to upgrade production systems. This also gives you and your developers the chance to familiarise yourselves with the new version.
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Upgrade your production environment to LANSA V11 You should first have successfully upgraded or installed LANSA V11 in an alternate LANSA environment and verified that your existing applications work correctly with the new release. Only when you have done this should you contemplate upgrading your production environment. You can refer to resources mentioned above for the detailed procedures. Make sure that you have adequate backups before proceeding and to schedule enough time to perform the upgrade and apply all current EPCs. |
Nothing changes - don't start on step 3 until you are ready.
Have you successfully completed the LANSA V11 upgrade?
Have you tested and verified LANSA V11 and your applications?
If so, then your upgrade is complete, LANSA continues to operate just as it did before and there is nothing further you need do now.
You have the benefit of being on the latest supported version of LANSA; you can benefit from the new Visual LANSA IDE and use the new Built-in Functions. And if you have any issue or question with your LANSA development environment or LANSA-generated applications, then you have the reassurance of full and unqualified support.
By now, you have probably read about some of the other new features of LANSA V11, such as Web Application Modules, new data types and language features and so on. We urge you to continue with later steps to discover how you can exploit these features in your own applications.
But only when you are ready!
In the meantime, there is nothing more you need do now. If you wish, you can plan to execute step 3 at your convenience.
Many new product features can be used immediately.
Refer to the What's New in LANSA Version 11.0 for an overview of the most significant new features in the LANSA product suite.
You have all the benefits of the new Visual LANSA IDE available. Hopefully you have already had the opportunity to acquaint yourself with this dramatically improved developer environment. You can refer to the Visual LANSA User Guide, and especially the tutorials contained in it for comprehensive information on using the new Visual LANSA IDE.
In addition, you can immediately take advantage of a range of new Built-in Functions. Refer to the Built-in Functions chapter in the Technical Reference Guide for further information on the new Built-in Functions.
