ECF G5.1 Maintenance and Upgrade Guidelines

For the latest information on the build levels and release history please visit ECF G5.1 Release History.

Builds and Release History Notation

ECF G5 release and build levels use the following notation. MajorVersion.SubVersion.Build#_ReleaseDate.

Example: ECF G5.1 Build 25 released on Aug 27 2010 = 5.1.25_Aug272010

Special Notes for Customers and Partners

For ECF G5.1 Customers

Mediachase will make available to you ongoing maintenance releases and build releases (AKA services packages) upon availability for inclusion into your development and deployment lifecycle.

For ECF G5.1 Solution Providers/Partners

As part of our program and defined by our partnership agreements, you access to our live TFS environment will always provide you with both official releases as well as ongoing live development branches as long as you remain in partner status. If you require additional developer access to our TFS, please contact your account representative, or send an e-mail to sales@mediachase.com

General Upgrade Guidelines/Process

Unless special instructions are included in the G5 code distribution/maintenance packages, the general procedure for updates is as follows:

Note: NEVER Perform a direct update into your production environment of any release without testing fully against your own updates and environments and always back up your DB and code base.

Step 1. Perform an Impact Assessment

1. Review the fixes/enhancements list below for each release level to see what fixes and features may apply to your implementation(s).
2. Review the TFS Generated Change Set provided in the distribution/maintenance package.
3. Compare the new code against code and core ECF files you have modified.
4. Determine your approach for code merges, updates and deployment to dev, qa, or test environments.

Step 2. Upgrade Code/Distribution Files Appropriately

1. Backup your existing sites and configuration files
2. Ensure you have merged the modified code accordingly into your solution.
3. Recompile the Solution using VS 2008.
4. If you have a modified source base, you may need to determine errors that arise.
5. Deploy the compiled version to your DEV, QA, and Staging Environments.

Note: Ensure that the configuration files all have the correct database connection string and account information.

Step 3. Upgrade Your Database(s)

1. Backup your existing database(s).
2. Inside the updated solution, find the "[SolutionRoot]\SqlScripts\Helpers" folder .
3. Open a command prompt window.
4. Change the command prompt folder to the Helpers folder.
5. Call the "update-main.bat" batch file. When calling the batch file, several parameters need to be set.

The command prompt call format is:

Run this batch file against the Main database or the database associated with the EcfSqlConnection connection string from the solution.

The command should look something like:

     6. Execute the update-businessfoundation.bat batch file (also in the Helpers folder) from the command prompt.
 Specify the batch file parameters in this format:

Run this batch file against the Library database or the database associated with the MetaDataConnection connection string from the solution. The command should look something like:

      7. Look for Successful Return Codes. If Errors show, then review and, if necessary, contact Mediachase.

Step 4. Perform Quality Assurance and Testing

  Follow your own processes and best practices for deployment of updated solution to your production environment.