Blue Prism Backward Compatibility

[GaneshSanthanam]

Hi
We are looking to upgrade from our current 6.4 to 6.5.1 (or 6.6.1).
I wanted to seek this forum's help with two points:
(1) Has anyone done such migration? If yes, then which version did you choose to go with?
(2) Are both 6.5.1 and 6.6.1 backward compatible? Or, did you have to change your current automations to make it compatible?
(3) What has been your experience with 6.5.1 or 6.6.1?
(4) Is there full backward compatibility? 
In one of the forum postings I read that "there may be some subtle changes, handling of queue retries logic on session end, which was changed in 6.5 and reverted in 6.5.1 I think.."
https://community.blueprism.com/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=253&MessageKey=272399f5-1f70-4ce8-a7e6-d743b1f09053&CommunityKey=efee3494-8a01-4798-9b11-4370e0257314&tab=dig...
In another post I read "BP 6.6 and above have changed the way XMLs are stored".
https://community.blueprism.com/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=301&MessageKey=6ce0262a-e667-406e-a972-3195741e87ee&CommunityKey=fa047dc0-20a4-4608-af34-ae6578160b33&tab=dig...

I will appreciate if folks here share their experiences and provide some answers to the above.

Thanks
Ganesh

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GaneshS
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[VivekGoel]

Hi Ganesh,

If you want to upgrade from 6.4 to higher. I would suggest to go with 6.6.1 directly.

(1) Has anyone done such migration? If yes, then which version did you choose to go with? : We chose 6.6 directly 
(2) Are both 6.5.1 and 6.6.1 backward compatible? Or, did you have to change your current automations to make it compatible?: No changes required to import 6.4 based automations into 6.6.X version. However, you need to remember that, once you have imported into 6.6, You may not be able to re-import the automation (after export from 6.6) into 6.4.
Hence, if you decide to go with 6.6 , please maintain appropriate backup (just incase you want to revert back to 6.4 later).


(3 ) What has been your experience with 6.5.1 or 6.6.1?: No major difference.
(4) Is there full backward compatibility?  : Yes, all automation built on 6.3.x and later can be imported into 6.6. Just remember if you upgrade from 6.5 to 6.6, there may be need of changing the code a little bit to handle queue items as posted in some other posts as well. 
Hope it helps.

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Vivek Goel
RPA Architect
Asia/Singapore
"If you like this post, please press the "Recommend" Button.
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[AmiBarrett]

If you're migrating upward, there shouldn't be an issue. Just check the release notes to be absolutely sure. Going backwards is a whole other story, as there was a change to how the XML was formatted in Blue Prism 6.6.

Per the published changelog, page 16 of the 6.6 release notes:
"The format in which objects and processes are stored has been optimized to reduce their size in the database. All new objects created in version 6.6 will utilize the new format and pre-existing objects and processes will be updated to the new format when they are opened in version 6.6.
Objects and processes exported from version 6.6 cannot be used in previous versions of Blue Prism."

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Ami Barrett
Sr Product Consultant
Blue Prism
Plano, TX
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[ZdeněkKabátek]

Hi, Ganesh,

I would comment only the last point about backward compatibility to make it clearer.

In 6.6 Blue Prism made some optimization in XML structure of Business Objects so whatever is done in 6.6 is not compatible with previous versions. So at the moment when you upgrade to 6.6 there is no way going back unless you backup your database before upgrade.

Regards,

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Zdeněk Kabátek
Head of Professional Services
NEOOPS
http://www.neoops.com/
Europe/Prague
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