RE: OS upgrade planning and ODBC

Bryan,

I suggest obtaining a statement of compliance from each ISV before you
upgrade. Ideally, they should (by now) have tested their app against
the v5r4 iSeries Access ODBC driver as well as the SQL engine on the IBM
i host. If any of the apps have issues with the ODBC driver, they
should be able to remain on the v5r3 version of iSeries Access until
those issues can be resolved.

You may also want to consider deleting any SQL packages related to these
applications immediately after you upgrade the host to v5r4. IBM
software support suggested this as good practice after some of ours
became corrupt during past o/s upgrades.

SQL packages hold sql access plan information, and can cause the
requesting application technical difficulties if they fill up or become
corrupt. The ISV's should be able to help you identify which belong to
their respective applications (WRKOBJ *ALL/*ALL *SQLPKG will give you a
comprehensive list)...but it is VERY important that you not delete the
IBM-supplied versions in QSYS.

Steve
--




Steve Rhody
Crate and Barrel
1935 Techny Road Unit 15
Northbrook, Illinois 60062
T 847.239.6426
F 847.562.9611
E srhody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 08:18:43 -0500
from: "Burns, Bryan" <Bryan_Burns@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: OS upgrade planning and ODBC

What the best practice to follow if you're planning an OS upgrade and
want to ensure that the ODBC connections to your system i will work
after the upgrade? That is, does anyone have something on their OS
upgrade checklist they will share with respect to ODBC?

In our case we have 3 apps doing ODBC: Domino, Cognos and UPS Worldship
and we'll be upgrading to V5R4 from V5R3. Do I just ensure with IBM
that the respective iSeries for Access ODBC driver is compatible with
V5R4?

As always, thanks in advance for any replies.

Bryan Burns
iSeries Specialist
ECHO, Incorporated
Lake Zurich, Illinois