Data migration required for LiveCycle ES2 to ES4 upgrade?

[Former Community Member]

Hi,

I'm working on planning a LiveCycle ES2 for JBoss to ES4 for JBoss upgrade where we are looking to install ES4 onto new hardware (Windows Server 2008 R2).

The plan is to install and configure ES2 as per the previous installation and then run the ES4 upgrade over the top.

We are looking at performing the installation on pre-production servers alongside the current production environment. The idea being that:

• The application that consumes the LiveCycle services will continue to use the current production environment until a cutover to occurs, during which the consuming application will be pointed at the new environment.
• The test version of the application that consumes the LiveCycle services will be pointed at the pre-production environment so that it can be properly tested by users over a period of time.

Below is some additional information on the current environment:

• The only LiveCycle modules configured are as follows: (LiveCycle is simply used to create PDFs from various document formats e.g. Office, CAD packages)
  • PDF Generator
  • Reader Extensions ES
• We currently have three production installations of LiveCycle, each with its own dedicated database
  • A load balancer is used to distribute requests to each server. Each server has no knowledge of the other two servers and effectively operate independently of each other.
• Persistent Document Storage uses the GDS
  • Similar to the database configuration, the GDS is specific to each installation and is a local folder on the server
  • These folders range from about 5 - 75 MB in size and the most recently modified files are from 2009
    

My question is based on the current LiveCycle setup, is there any need to migrate the existing databases\GDS or can we simply create an empty database and use the Configuration Manager to create\update the appropriate tables? If a data migration is required, is this repeatable (i.e. we migrate once during a pre-production testing and then a second time during a production rollout)?

In addition, is it safe to re-run the Configuration Manager in order to point LiveCycle at a different database\database server?

Thanks in advance.

[wasil_z · Accepted solution]

Going through your notes, it looks like it would be OK (since it's only PDFG and RE), if you just create an empty database and use the Configuration Manager to create\update the appropriate table. Also, it is safe to re-run the Configuration Manager in order to point LiveCycle at a different database\database server OR manually change the datasources through application server console. Please make sure to look at the new ES4 API(in case you are using the LC APIs to invoke the services through your application) documents to check whether anything has changed and test yor application with ES4.

-Wasil

[Former Community Member]

Thanks for your response on this Wasil.