SharePlex 8.6.6 - Upgrade Guide

About this Guide

This document contains instructions for upgrading your SharePlex environment to the current version. It is intended for administrators, consultants, analysts, and any other IT professionals tasked with upgrading SharePlex for Oracle.

Other SharePlex documentation

For the complete SharePlex documentation set, go to:

http://documents.quest.com

• See the SharePlex Administrator Guide for instructions for:

  • Operating SharePlex
  • Planning your replication strategy
  • Preparing the environment for replication
  • Configuring replication
  • Starting replication
  • Monitoring, tuning, and troubleshooting replication
  • Failover/failback in a high-availability environment
  • Performing administrative operations on replication systems

• See the SharePlex Reference Guide for reference information that you will need from time to time. It includes detailed information about:

  • sp_ctrl commands that administer, monitor and control replication
  • SharePlex tuning parameters
  • SharePlex utilities
  • SharePlex error messages
• See the SharePlex Preinstallation Checklist for tasks that must be finished before installing or running SharePlex.
• See the SharePlex Installation Guide for instructions for installing SharePlex and performing initial setup.
• See the SharePlex Release Notes for information about new features, enhancements, bug fixes and known issues in this release.

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Where to get SharePlex installers

Download the SharePlex installation package that matches the database version and operating system you are using.

Additionally, download any SharePlex patches, so that you can install them after you install the base software.

1. Go to the Quest Software Support page: http://support.quest.com/

2. Click Download Software.

3. In the search box, type SharePlex and press Go.

4. Click the arrow in the Download column for the version you need. You can also click the file name for access to more information and to download the file(s).

5. Transfer the file to system where you are installing SharePlex.

6. You are ready to begin the installation process. Be sure to thoroughly read the version specific Release Notes prior to running the installer.

About the installers

There are different installers for SharePlex based on the platform type and data store type. This topic helps you understand the differences and the naming conventions used.

Linux and Unix

The SharePlex installer on Linux and Unix is a self-extracting installation file with the extension .tpm.

Oracle:

There is a separate SharePlex installer build for each supported Oracle database and platform.

SharePlex-release#-build#-DatabaseVersion-platform-version-chipset.tpm

Example: SharePlex-8.0.0-b86-oracle110-aix-52-ppc.tpm

Note: If the operating system version that you have is not listed, choose the highest number that is below your version.

Open Target:

The SharePlex Open Target installer supports all Open Target targets on all supported Linux platforms.

SPX-release#-build#-rh-40-amd64-m64.tpm

Important: If installing SharePlex for an Open Target and the source data is anything other than Oracle Unicode or US7ASCII, conversion must be performed before posting to the Open Target. In this case, you must use the Oracle installer rather than the Open Target installer and install an Oracle client on the target to perform the conversion. For more information, see the Open Target section of the Database checklist

The installer creates a temporary target directory, within the current directory, for extraction. This temporary target directory is removed upon installation completion. You can extract the files to a file system that is separate from the SharePlex installation location by using the -t option when running the .tpm file. For additional options, see Appendix A: Advanced SharePlex installer options.

Windows

On Windows, the SharePlex installer is named sp_setup_version.exe. It is a bundle that contains SharePlex binaries for all of the supported databases and versions.

The installer installs the following items:

• The SharePlex binaries and files
• The SharePlex for database program
• The MKS Platform Components program from Parametric Technology Corporation (default C:\Program Files\MKS Toolkit)
• Windows registry entries under \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432node.
• One or more SharePlex port_number Windows services (depending on the installed configuration)

Do not remove or modify any of these components while SharePlex is in production, including SharePlex Installer. These components all support SharePlex operation or upgrade.

Before you upgrade

This section contains important information that you need to know before you select a SharePlex installer and begin the upgrade procedure.

Gather the required information

You will need the following information about the installation that you want to upgrade:

• Location of the SharePlex product directory
• Location of the SharePlex variable-data directory (or directories) in this instance of SharePlex.
• Name of the SharePlex administrator group (that contains the SharePlex administrator user).
• The ORACLE_SID and ORACLE_HOME (Oracle) or the database name (Open Target) associated with the installation you are upgrading. To determine this, look in the defaults.yaml file in the data sub-directory of the product directory.

Check interoperability

If you are upgrading some SharePlex installations in a configuration, but not others, view the SharePlex Release Notes for interoperability support between versions.

Who should perform the upgrade

Some steps in the upgrade procedures require the Administrator authorization level, which normally is only granted to the person or persons designated as the SharePlex Administrators. An upgrade can only be performed by a person who has this authorization and is familiar with SharePlex.

Requirements to support character set conversion

When replicating to an Open Target target (non-Oracle target), SharePlex supports replication from any Oracle Unicode character set and the US7ASCII character set. SharePlex posts data to Open Target in the Unicode character set, and therefore if the source data is Unicode or US7ASCII, no conversion on the target is required.

However, if the following are true, conversion is required on the target:

• If the character set of the source data is anything other than Oracle Unicode or US7ASCII, you must install an Oracle client on the target to perform the conversion to Unicode for posting to the target.
• If the data must be posted to the target database in any character set other than Unicode, you must install an Oracle client on the target to perform the conversion and use the target command to identify the target character set for Post to use. See the SharePlex Reference Guide for more information about this command.

To perform conversion with an Oracle client on Linux

1. Install an Oracle Administrator client on the target system. The client must be the Administrator installation type. The Instant Client and Runtime installation types are not supported.
2. Set ORACLE_HOME to the client installation. Set ORACLE_SID to an alias or a non-existing SID. SharePlex does not use them and a database does not have to be running.
3. Download the Oracle-based SharePlex installer, rather than the Open Target installer, to install SharePlex on the target system. The Oracle-based installer includes functionality that directs Post to use the conversion functions from the Oracle client library to convert the data before posting to the target database.
4. Follow the instructions for upgrading SharePlex for Oracle (not the ones for installing on Open Target).
5. Make certain the SP_OPX_NLS_CONVERSION parameter is set to the default of 1.

To perform conversion with an Oracle client on Windows

1. Install an Oracle Administrator client on the target system. The client must be the Administrator installation type. The Instant Client and Runtime installation types are not supported.
2. In the SharePlex Registry key \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\QuestSoftware\SharePlex\port_number, set ORACLE_HOME to the Oracle client installation location, and set ORACLE_SID to an alias or a non-existing SID. No Oracle database is required. SharePlex only needs to use the client libraries.
3. Upgrade SharePlex using the Windows installer.
4. Make certain the SP_OPX_NLS_CONVERSION parameter is set to the default of 1.

To apply Unicode and US7ASCII data without conversion

If the source data is Unicode or US7ASCII and you are not replicating LOB data, no conversion or Oracle client is needed. Set the SP_OPX_NLS_CONVERSION parameter to 0 to disable conversion, and then restart Post if it is running.

Verify inclusion of one-off builds

If you have received one-off builds of SharePlex, confirm that those builds are included as fixes in the new release that you are installing. This applies to Linux/Unix only.

To verify one-offs

1. Run the sp-bininfo utility from the util subdirectory of the product directory of your current SharePlex installation.

   $ cd path_to_SharePlex_proddir/util

   $ ./sp-bininfo

2. Compare the CRs of each one-off shown in the sp-bininfo output with the CRs in the Resolved Issues section of the Release Notes that are included with the new SharePlexversion.
3. If any CRs of your one-offs are not shown in the Resolved Issues, the new version does not include that functionality, and you should not proceed with the upgrade. Contact SharePlex support to obtain the missing fixes.

Check for deprecated parameters

Check the release notes and Deprecated Parameters section of the SharePlex Reference Guide to determine if any of the parameters that you are using were deprecated in this release. SharePlex retains backward compatibility of your current parameter settings, including those that are newly deprecated, so that you do not need to stop processes to reconfigure settings. However, you should familiarize yourself with the new parameter or default functionality that replaces a deprecated parameter to determine whether any configuration changes are appropriate.

Where to get the installer

Download the SharePlex installation package that matches the database version and operating system you are using.

Additionally, download any SharePlex patches, so that you can install them after you install the base software.

1. Go to the Quest Software Support page: http://support.quest.com/

2. Click Download Software.

3. In the search box, type SharePlex and press Go.

4. Click the arrow in the Download column for the version you need. You can also click the file name for access to more information and to download the file(s).

5. Transfer the file to system where you are installing SharePlex.

6. You are ready to begin the installation process. Be sure to thoroughly read the version specific Release Notes prior to running the installer.

About the Open Target installer

There is one SharePlex installer for all Open Target targets on all supported Linux platforms. The naming convention is:

SPX-release#-build#-rh-40-amd64-m64.tpm

The Open Target installer does not install SharePlex with any functionality to perform conversion of character sets. See Requirements to support character set conversion to determine if you need to take special steps for character conversion.