OK, I am running B50c sp6. I have 3 live environments that are somewhat stable.

Service pack 7 is out and I am wondering if I should recommend the installation of it. Also, I would like to know from others like me who have established a guideline on PMC patching and weekly dumps.

I have talked to BAAN who have maintained that I should stay current on all service packs and two weeks behind the weekly dumps. Is anyone doing this?

I think that staying up to date on Service Packs is a good idea. From what I recall, Baan does additional quality testing of the Service Packs compared to the weekly dumps.

Staying up to date on the weekly dumps is not always practical or advisable. For example, Baan does not include translations for secondary languages (i.e. languages other than 1-4, such as Spanish) in individual solutions or weekly dumps. Instead, Baan comes out with translations for entire Service Packs.

Baan's recommendation of staying behind by two weeks is probably because they think that a new problem introduced in a weekly dump will probably have been solved in two weeks. Personally, I'm not so optimistic and will not take that risk if I have a choice.

Two things should be considered:

- the number of customizations on your system
- how many problems occur during your daily business

Installing Service Packs or Weekly Dumps just to be up to date with your software is not a good idea. Normally the old problems get solved an new ones will occur.

Our strategy in case of software problems is:
1. install the newest solution of a certain session and test it very well. In this case your software is much more up to date than with a service pack.
2. when dependencies are increasing (what they naturally do in the course of time) the installation of a service pack might be useful to reduce dependencies
3. service packs sometimes bring new functionality to your system which might by an advantage for your business

Regards

Martin

I install service packs each into their own seperate directory. This allows you to take your time moving your customizations to the new release. The question is how often do you want to move your customizations. If you added your customization in a way that they are independant of Baan's objects, you have almost no maintenance. If you have done it like 80% of the customers that did not isolate your changes, it could be a lot of work.

Baan support contract states that you have 6 months from the release date to apply the service pack, so I will wait till the end of the six months before applying the service pack giving time for other problems with the service packs to pop up.

Good answer.

Now, regarding separation and directories are you saying that you literally copy the entire baan directory into another (like D:\BAAN2\) and then install the service pack into the new directory? This would be an amazing option if true. Please expand.

lol

no no no

You create another package vrc and attach it to another PMC combination. Each service pack gets there own VRC. Then you apply the service pack there. That way you current customizations use the old service pack until you can move them to the new. If you don't what happens is you won't see the patches in anything you cusomized, but would see patches in the sessions you didn't customize. Essentially you may only be installing half the patch.

Sorry about the confusion, you see I know that Package VRC are modeled after SCCS which was nothing more than directories and when I taught tools, students can identify with directories more than Package VRC's. (even though some of it is stored in the database)

I have already set up one test VRC that runs parallel to the standard. We use this for patch testing and is where I intend on installing the new service pack for regression testing. As for customizations, we don't have any; just some small scripts changes and altered sessions.

This brings me to another question however. If I have modified session forms and or reports, after applying a service pack that has changes to these sessions in the standard, could there be problems running my modifications?

This would depend on the customization. If baan has added anything to the form in the patch, you would not see it. If it is a mandatory field, you could have problems. You should always compare what the service packe to your own customizations. Small script changes and session alterations are customization. So check them all.

I have talked with many individuals regarding the term customization. Many have indicated that if you did not purchase the source code then it is not possible to customize. For many, the ability to change scripts etc in the production or test environment is considered a personalization and not a customization.

Please, if you can define the term customization I would appreciate it. I know we are getting off topic now but this quick dialogue is of great benefit.

Jezard,

I asked this same question to one of my colleagues in the US. His reply was:

"In Baan corporate lingo, changes to forms, reports, and menus are called "Personalizations", and changes to program script are called "Customizations".

Regards

the term 'personalisation' only really caught on in the US.

In Europe, its either customisation or development
(as per the Baan licence terminology - you either have a customisation or development licence)

you also have to remember that even customisation to form/report layouts have to be reapplied to PMC updates in case new fields have been added to the session or table.

PS - I wouldn't load SP7 until I'd done some proper testing, SP6 seems OK so far!

As a 5 year vetran tools instructor I will give you the standard answer.

If you look at the tools menus you will see that there is a Customization and a Development sub menu. If you did not buy a development license (this does not imply buying source code) you would only be able to access the sessions under the Customization menu. Here you could "personalize" your menus, reports, labels and forms.

Under development you could make modifications to the program logic, even without source code. When Triton 3.1b came out along with Baan IV it was advertised that all your customizations and development would not be lost between releases. But if you asked anyone how to do this, the answer was always that you had to reapply them. Actually this is more true with customizations than with program development. Program development can be isolated so that it does not have to be reapplied. Customizations always need to be checked out.

Hello everybody.

I'm ready to install one solution for first time for me. I check dependencies and there are a lot of dependencies. I supose that installing a complete service pack ia a hard job, so by now, I'd like to effort installing the individua lsolution.

And I know how to check differences between two versions of a program code. But is there any way to check differences between two versions of other components (screens, reports, messages,...).

And, by the way, how can I download weekly dumps?

Thank you so much.