MIS recently applied Banner DB-Upgrade version 9.1, to production Banner.  The Banner DB Upgrade is a new upgrade method to deliver database changes for Banner XE applications.  It is a consolidation of all 9.x XE specific database upgrades into one upgrade. Earlier, i.e. prior to Banner 9.3 versions, each XE application would ship together its own database changes and also its own product zip file containing the application .war file. These are now being consolidated so that database upgrades for 9.x applications can be done once, and common objects across the different XE applications need not be duplicated. This consolidation helps applications to be installed in a ‘stand-alone mode’ removing the need to run sequential upgrades to get to the latest version of an application.

With all independent Banner 9 application upgrades, it became very difficult to maintain all of the product dependencies. To address these dependencies issues and to make the Banner 9 upgrade process more streamlined, the Banner DB Upgrade was created.  The idea is that you can now install one large common and cumulative database upgrade for all of the Banner 9 products and then install smaller individual application specific upgrades that contain the zip/war files.

By using this process, we can minimize Banner downtime and facilitate getting new Banner XE applications into production.

Written by Greg Snider, Senior Database Analyst, Management Information Systems, Computer Services