Hello,
Is it possible to upgrade the new HTML 5 Dashboard App without having to do a full upgrade to Dataminer? (this way we could have the new components added for this App, without having to update the full system)
Thank you.
Best regards
Bruno Sousa
Hi Bruno,
Although replacing newer dashboard files to older DataMiner version might work sometimes (and at some level), it is definitely bad practice and in most cases it will break part of the functionality in dashboards.
We have a new feature releases every 4 weeks, so the feature release track might be interesting to consider, definitely on your staging platforms.
It is a great suggestion, it might be technically possible, but not without a big effort: we would have to implement new features in a different way than we do now, and we would also have to test everything on different core versions.
For every feature, the client applications/components would have to check if that feature is also available on the server (could be by checking if the server version is greater than, or by checking if a certain flag is available). This would also mean that certain legacy code for previous DataMiner versions would have to stay in the client, so that the client can work on both new and older core versions, which increases the complexity in the client applications.
This is currently all not the case, so if you would now install the latest webpages on an older release (can be done without a reboot), then the UI will show and make use of new functionality that might not even be available on the server, it might even completely crash as some server-side methods have changed and are not available in an older core version (for example new ticketing back-end, new GQI methods, PDF export, sharing, etc).
Some doubts regarding the feature track:
1. Can we install a Dataminer “feature” version on top of a “major” that we already have installed? Or is a clean install needed?
2. Suppose we install a “feature” version and only update the software 2 months after for some reason. The version that we install has now all the features from the previous month plus the one’s for the 2nd month? Is this correct?
Thank you.
Hi Bruno,
Let me answer you two questions one by one:
1. You can safely move from a main release to feature release. The process of installing cumulative updates on your main release is similar to upgrading to a new feature release.
2. Skipping one or more feature releases over time is no problem. The moment you install the most recent one, you also have all the features & fixes included of the feature releases you skipped.
Be aware though that, when you take a hold on upgrading to the latest feature release for a couple of months, you also miss fixes during that time period. We typically don’t provide CU updates on feature releases, like we do with the main release. If you then install the latest feature release after a couple of months, then you’re back on track of course.
Basically, when being on the main release track, it’s good practice to keep track on the CU updates to have all the recent fixes applied.
When being on the feature release track, it’s good practice to keep track on the latest feature release upgrade to have all the recent fixes as well, and as a bonus have an early view on the new features.
But it sounds like a great suggestion Pieter, and I never personally thought about it that way. Would it be conceivable to evolve towards a solution where we would be able to easily supply new or updated components, separate from a core update (maybe even possible to update without a reboot of the system)? Maybe it is wishful thinking from a technical perspective, I have no clue because I’m not knowledgeable enough about this, but I kind of like the thought behind it.