Upgrade to 8.9, SQL Server Unicode??

Hi, I'm the DBA for my company's JDE running on Windows 2003 with SQL Server 2000.

We are planning to upgrade from ERP 8.0 to ERP 8.9. As ERP8.9 is using Unicode as default, what tasks do I need to do on the database side (SQL Server) to support this upgrade.

FYI, the current server and database collation for SQL Server is Chinese Simplified (Chinese_PRC_CI_AS).

Run, do not walk, away from 8.9.
Seriously why upgrade to 8.9 when later releases are available.
As someone else here on the forums said, 8.9 was released too early by Peoplesoft, was bug riddled, and was quickly superceded by 8.10.

As far as the database questions read the 8.9 or 8.10 upgrade guide - it should answer your specific questions.

8.9 is just tentative, we might upgrade to 8.10 or 8.11 as well.

But my main concern would be on the database part.

I've read the EnterpriseOne Release 8.9 Data Conversion PeopleBook about the data conversion but got quite confused so would like to have the following problems clarified:

1) Is the Unicode Conversion Executable provided only for converting databases that stores JDE objects and meta-data?

2) If I am on SQL Server, then is it the actual conversion work is to change the original char, varchar and text columns to nchar, nvarchar and ntext columns repsectively?

3) About the manual conversion of business data (are these the data owned by CTL and DTA users?), what are the detailed steps required? I am thinking of the following 2 methods:
a) in-place: on the existing database, use ALTER TABLE xxx ALTER COLUMN to change the char column to nchar columns (like from char(30) to nchar(30))
b) out-of-place: create a new empty database, use DTS to copy all the objects (without data) from the existing database to the new database, then alter the column to nchar, then insert data across from existing database to new database.

Am I getting things wrong with all these?

Many thanks

For an upgrade the easiest way is to keep Business Data and Control Tables in a non-unicode format (Be careful of the datasource parameters during the workbench).
If you really need to user Unicode, you can use the R98403 batch to convert your data after the update
Regards,
Loïc

I'll answer your 1st question. if the table objects are defined in OneWorld's Metadata and conforms to their standards then the conversion tool will convert the tables regardless of whether or not its a custom table or standard table. (Assumption: tables reside in standard path codes also).