Syteline 5.00.3 Migration to Progress 9.1E or 10.1

[eddiej]

I've also posted this in the Symix section. Not sure which would be better.

We are currently running Syteline ERP 5.00.3 on Progress 9.1C. We would like to migrate to a newer version of Progress (either 9.1E or possibly 10.1) and at the same time stay on Syteline 5.00.3. As I understand it, Syteline 5.00.3 is only certified for Progress 9.1C.

An obvious solution to this would be to migrate to Syteline 6.0, but that would be a daunting task for us. Our programs & environment are heavily modified.

Is there any way to migrate to a newer version of Progress and at the same time stay on Syteline 5.00.3?

 

[TomBascom]

If you can compile the code (and Symix users usually can) then it is fairly straightforward to upgrade Progress.

I'd go to 10.1B.

 

[eddiej]

Tom,
Yes we can compile the code. I'm assuming we we would have to do a systemwide recompile. Correct me if I'm wrong about that.

You said it is fairly straightforward. Is there anything we should be aware of should we decide to do this?

-Ed

 

[TomBascom]

It's usually just a dump, load & recompile process.

Occasionally you'll get a few compile errors. Usually these come from two sources:

1) keyword conflicts. Old code using variable and field names that are now 4gl keywords. Either add the problem keyword to the keywordforgetlist or modify the code. I prefer to modify the code. It doesn't usually take long and it lets you use the new feature if you want to some day.

2) Old bugs that have been fixed. Sometimes old code is getting away with something that never should have compiled in the first place... You just need to fix the problem. This is also usually quite simple.

You should of course test all of this before going live. But, as I say, it's pretty simple and I've never had a serious problem moving old code forward.

The biggest pain point that people sometimes run into is with ADM based (GUI) code. The trick here is to preserve the ADM environment rather than trying to move the code to a new version of those tools. That can get kind of ugly and confusing but it is also quite doable.