ESU's

ESU\'s

Just wanted to get an idea on how other shops are handling ESU's. How many are actually merging the entire ESU into production? Or are you only promoting the objects that are affected? How are you dealing with modifications?

Has anyone tried merging the ESU into DV and promoting only the objects you are trying to fix into PY for testing? If the fix works we’d then promote the objects into PD? This way you'd never merge an entire ESU into PY & PD. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Re: ESU\'s

We choose to apply the ESU to each pathcode rather than promoting it. That
gives us the ability to back it out provided we use the backup option when
installing.

FWIW

James A. Wilson
Technical - CNC

Re: ESU\'s

Due to the dependencies of all the objects within an ESU, we promote the entire ESU. That said, we have not been able to promote a sales order ESU since prior to October 2001. Each time we get the latest ESU we find new bugs that that prevents us from promoting it. JDE then tells us that our company is the only one having these problems.

Re: ESU\'s

Do you build a full package after every ESU is merged? If not, how often do you deploy a full package build? If you do not build a full package, won't your clients and enterprise servers be "out of sync" with the deployment server? Could'nt this cause problems down the road...

If you are building a full package and deploying all objects changed by the ESU, how much testing are you doing before applying to prod? On some of these larger ESU's there are hundreds of objects and it would seem you'd need to retest the entire module the ESU is focused on, not just the issue you are trying to fix.

After a not so minor fire, we are reviewing our procedures on applying ESU's in the future, so any comments are appreciated.

RE: ESU\'s

We build full client package which are deployed to our Windows Terminal
Servers. We have very few clients outside our development and technical
area. Whenever we build a full client package, we also build an update
server package. Periodically we build a full server package, usually
whenever we apply a service pack.

As far as testing goes, we do the best we can. Most of the testing is done
by our development people, since they are "testing professionals", where as,
our users are not, therefore, not as thorough. I have asked JDE if we could
go back to paper fixes, but have been told that this is not an option.

Keith Papenfuss
The Vollrath Company, L.L.C.
[email protected]
920 459-5451





Keith Papenfuss
The Vollrath Co., LLC
Xe, SP18, Coexistent, AS/400, NT, WTS (Citrix XP)

Re: RE: ESU\'s

I heard through the grapevine that some companies opt out of ESU and get paper fixes (code changes) instead.

Re: RE: ESU\'s

Will they give you paper fixes? We just upgraded the PY7333 environment and plan to go live in Aug. I believe this ESU thing will be a real problem. I had a problem with an object erroring because it couldn't find the DSTR object. I found the sar which lead to an ESU. The ESU contained more that 100 objects. I turned out the fix I was looking for was just a menu change because an object was obsolete. Fortunately I dd not have to apply this ESU.

We have over 300 users, all fat clients. I heard many on this forum build full packages everytime they apply ESU's. This simply is not a workable solution with our current setup.

Patty

Re: RE: ESU\'s

I don't know if it's true or not. I'm repeating what I hear.

Have you consider putting some of the clients on Citrix?

Re: RE: ESU\'s

As Cho said you may want to consider Citrix (we use it with little or no problems) Also you might consider deployinhg update packages rather than full package deployments each time. There is a way (not sure how) that you can have the fat clients auto update after a package is deployed - saving your IT deparment the "excercise" of updating all of the fat clients. Also with Citrix, you can use "ANTS" rather than full pc which will also be a cost savings. We just went live this week - so I understand your reluctance.

Re: RE: ESU\'s

Doesn't adding Citrix involve buying serveral terminal servers, plus the Citrix software. How much money are we talking here?

Re: RE: ESU\'s

Dollar wise, I honestly couldn't tell you. How many Servers - depends on how many users. I think it would be worth investigating- I am kind of suprized that your consultants didn't suggest this. Any particular reason why all of your users have to have fat clients:?

Re: RE: ESU\'s

I wasn't around when we bought OneWorld. There are quite a few users that don't need fat clients, but a lot who do. We are going to look at the Web after we bring up XE in production this summer. Up till now not having Citrix has not been a problem. I do an update package about once a month which contains custom and jde paper fixes. It's not a problem deploying to 300+ users.

Patty