Top 10 Reason to Upgrade From 6.7.1 to 8.0

[boblopez1]

Hi Gang,

We are looking at upgrading from 6.7.1 to 8.0 and I'm wondering if anyone has any opinions/concerns about such a move? Figured a top 10 like David Lettermen would at least make it fun.

Specifically does anyone know when support for 6.7 will be sunsetted?

what benefits we would see(bug fixes, functionality)?

what risks we might have (would we need to modify each of our existing partner maps, or retest each of them?).

Any potential issues or costs?

Can anyone point me to documentation that may be of help?

Allow me to thank you for any assistance you may provide.

Since I brought it up, I'll start the list.

TOP 10 Reasons to upgrade:

10. I can finally stop calling it Mercator it's been years :-D

 

[OllyC]

For me:
1. performance has improved by 10-20%
2. Resource manager rewritten
3. XML handled by Xerces parser

there lots of little fixes too, launcher.txt renamed and moved to logs dir, event agent has a proper start script, some extra functions.

you can find more stuff in the what's new section of the user guide.

Mercator's a great name, WTX/DSTX wtf?

Olly.

 

[eyetry]

1. There's debugging/performance tuning tools you can't get in 6.7.1. I've found them very helpful on several occasions.

2. If you deal with HIPAA data you'll need to go to 8.n eventually as the 50nn type trees are not available for older versions of the tool.

3. In 6.7.1 you can only run 1 set of systems at a time...ie.. stop one system stop them all. You can configure 8.n to run groups of system file separately.

4. I agree with Olly on performance.

Contrary to Olly, I have issues with the launcher file move. You can't assign a path so logs are forced to the application path. We don't assign most application people any writes to production application paths. The install directory also contains other log files and the directory gets cluttered. You'll need to write something if you don't have something already. It may not be an issue for you though. If it is it shouldn't be a big deal to write something though. For us it was one of the reasons not to move to 7.5. Just didn't see enough benefits in 7.5 to make the move at that time.

If you go to 8.1, the interface has a new look. Color scheme and icons suck! Hard to tell the diff from one icon to another and default colors hurt the eyes (heard more than one comment about this from internal and external developers). Some good news is that other, than the icons, you have the ability to alter the background colors to a greater degree that before.


eyetry

PS: Keep in mind as you read the following that my story is probably unique. I'm sure I'm the customer that everything has gone wrong for. It's just exceptionally frustrating because Mercator and Ascential really had provided us with great service. If you go to 8.n make sure you get everything you are licensed for. We had a terrible time with IBM getting our licensing right. They didn't know what we had so they assigned something (apparently at random) that was incorrect. They also decided to assign an internal contact at our end without finding out who our contact person was. The person they chose is in the wrong department has no idea what we should have or what the tools do. Internal politics have made it impossible to resolve from our end and even though IBM does have the correct contact information they haven't been able to correct the error at their end.

 

[eyetry]

5. 8.n is certified for Windows 2003, 6.7.1 isn't.

 

[OllyC]

Your customer service experience is not unique!

We got all the server software in Passport Advantage, but it took ages before they would release the Design Studio to us (kind of important!!).

We've had no problems since its been set up - the Passport Advantage process is a pain though, it only works for small companies where everyone knows each other at a site.

 

[janhes]

My experience of 8.1 licensing was much the same. Took ages to get Launcher license sorted out.
Also 8.1 is full of bugs. First service pack didn't sort them out so I'm waiting for the next one - possibly June - before I consider upgrading.

 

[eyetry]

Just RUMOR but what I heard caused much of the licensing problems is that there were so many licenses to work on that IBM assigned help to the former Ascential staff related to setting up licenses in their systems. The IBM people's lack of understanding as to what all the tools did caused a mess......

 

[boblopez1]

Hi Gang,

Thank you all for your responces, keep them coming please, as my IBM rep(don't want to say how long it took to track that info down) is putting information together for me.

Also wondering if anyone has run 8.x in a Virtual enviroment? We have a mandate to eventually get all systems on VM but I hear that this may not be supported on any version, any thoughts?

Thanks Gang

 

[eyetry]

Running 8.N on virtual W3K test upgrade machine Waiting for IBM to release the next SP before seriously testing for upgrade. So far no problems but we don't really use it much as we could.

 

[dstxaix]

janhes

You mentioned you will wait till june for upgradation. Can you update your experience with the new service patch?

Others - If you have any updates please share.

 

[smerck]

Hi All,
I would like to add my experiences with you all. We have currently upgraded from Mercator6.7.1 to Wtx8.
There are many bugs in the wtx8. Your current application may not support directly.
We have multiple requirements out of which one is Support of UTF8 chars. Initially we faced few issue. But later found that the debugging and performance improvement is a Big boost to a developer.
Few points are as follows.
1. Debugging Option
2. Performance Monitoring
3. Creating your own Functions
4. XML handled by Xerces parser
5. Utilities for converting of Type Trees
6. Can read or interpreted the Data in Bytes or Characters as per requirements.
7. Parsing is done faster.
8. Audit Log is little modified
9. Launcher.txt is no more and the files are created with new date time stamps.
10. Stylish icons


So I would like to suggest you to look into you application apply the patch as per requirement if any.

We have found some bugs as our application was not being supported and reported to IBM. We got few patches & applied to application now the code is in testing phase. I will let you know as and when new issue is reported.

Thanks,
smerck