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Administration › Specifics of Updating ELMA

Specifics of Updating ELMA

To successfully update the system and avoid possible issues we recommend that you stick to these recommendations.

General recommendation

  1. Before each update, whether it is major or minor, back up the database or make sure, that a backup copy already exists.
  2. Before updating to a major release, back up the content of the configuration folder (by default, the folder UserConfig with configuration file is located in: ..\ <ELMA folder>\UserConfig). It is necessary to be able to roll the system back to the previous version without issues.
  3. We recommend that you first update the system on a test server, and then, if everything is OK, update ELMA on the production server (see how to organize work using the scheme "Test - Productive": https://kb.elma-bpm.com/article-1836.html).
  4. If you have additional modules, you need to recompile them in MS Visual Studio for the new version.

Additional modules are installed/updated via packages. You can pack source code files to packages. A custom module, configured for the previous version, may not be compatible with the new version of ELMA. There are two ways to solve this issue:

1) place the package with the selected module to the Packages folder (~\ELMA3-Standart\Packages);

2) open the custom module in VS and compile a package. If during the compilation errors occur, read this article: https://kb.elma-bpm.com/article-1837.html.

  1. If you have ELMA Store components installed, follow these instructions: https://kb.elma-bpm.com/article-1838.html.
  2. If you use single sign-on without additional application, perform the additional steps described on the respective help page before updating ELMA.

Most frequent issues

  1. Version 3.9 does not support MS SQL 2005. If you use MS SQL 2005, update it to SQL 2008 or higher before installing ELMA 3.9.
  2. Do not skip a major release when updating, e.g. from 3.7 to 3.9. First, update to 3.8 and only then to 3.9.
  3. Error in version 3.9, related to Linked Server. To work with MSSQL, Linked Server mechanism is used at the moment; the mechanism allows isolating ID generation transactions from the main transaction. At the first start, the system attempts to create a link point and in the case of failure, the Web Application will display instructions for the database administrator.
  4. When updating (as well as restarting the web server after changing the configuration) database integrity errors may occur. Those are not update errors, but merely consequences of incorrect actions of ELMA users/administrators, e.g. editing the database, deleting table entries, etc.

Different time-out parameters when updating

When updating the existing database from version 3.8 to 3.9, a large-scale database conversion will take place, which may take a long time. Therefore, to provide correct updating, you need to increase time-outs for working with the database. Follow these steps:

  • In the Settings.config file, located in: ..\ <ELMA folder>\Web, define the «DbTransformCommandTimeout» parameter (value in seconds). We recommended setting 360000 s. Also, check the configuration file Settings.config in the folder: ..\ <ELMA folder>\Web – and if you find this parameter there, set it to 360000 s.
  • In the file ..\<ELMA folder>\UserConfig\configuration.config find tag <main connectionStringName="MainDB" … /> and add attribute commandTimeOut="360000", if there isn't one. If this attribute is already there, set its value to 360000 s.
  • An update may take a long time; the duration of this process depends largely on the database size and the database server capacity. Average time to update a 100GB database on a server with 16GB RAM and 4-core 2.4GHz is 5-8 hours.

Configuring back up

Before updating the system you must back up the database. You can configure automatic back up at each start of ELMA server. To do so, open the configuration.config file (to learn more about working with configuration files follow this link: https://kb.elma-bpm.com/admin/article-1192.html) find the line <main connectionStringName="MainDB" type="EleWise.ELMA.Extensions.MSSQL.MSSQLProvider, EleWise.ELMA.Extensions.MSSQL" backupPath=""/> and the backupPath="" parameter. If its value is not defined, then a backup copy will be created in the default directory. For the Standard edition, it is C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Backup. If you specify the backupPath="" parameter, then a backup copy will be created in the specified path, e.g. backupPath=" C:\Newfolder\backup".

Manual back up

Manual back up procedure is described in the following articles: