Upgrade considerations

There are a number of factors that should be considered before upgrading your installation of Semaphore:

1. Read the Release Notes: Be sure you have read the Semaphore Release Notes for the version you to which you want to upgrade. Pay special attention to known issues that may have been identified for that version. Release notes are published by Progress for every release of Semaphore.

2. Verify the installation server meets the minimum specifications: New versions of Semaphore might have system requirements that differ from your existing installation. Refer to "Technical specifications" in Requirements to verify that your server has sufficient resources.

3. Contact Progress Semaphore: If you are planning to upgrade your version of Semaphore, we recommend contacting Progress for pertinent information to the upgrade process, as well as to potentially arrange technical and/or information science assistance in the process. Often the upgrade process consists of more than simply installing the new software and changing version numbers in configuration files. Instead, the underlying logic of the application might have changed, requiring a qualitative analysis of the model and/or classification strategy to determine if adjustments are required.

4. Upgrade all components: If upgrading to a newer version of Semaphore, note that all components must be upgraded regardless of what machine they might be installed on. For example, if you upgrade Semaphore on a server, anyone using Ontology Manager will also have to upgrade their software before they will be able to connect to any upgraded models. See "About Semaphore versions" in About this guide for further details.

5. Perform a test upgrade: When planning an upgrade, we recommend that you perform the upgrade in a test environment (that should very closely, if not exactly, mimic the production environment) before upgrading in your production environment. Your test environment should be thoroughly tested to ensure a successful production upgrade.

6. Preserve an existing Semaphore installation: If you do not want to remove/uninstall the older versions of the Semaphore, you should be aware that while most products in Semaphore can be installed multiple times on a single machine, the Publisher component can only be installed once (and cannot be installed on any machine with the former "Rulebase Generator" product currently installed.)