2023.4 Upgrade Guide

Summary

There are many benefits to keeping your current system upgraded. And, remember that upgrades are made easy with SaaS.

Get the latest and greatest software to stay ahead of your competition
Take advantage of new capabilities and enhancements to improve the user experience, increase productivity, increase efficiency, and tackle emerging security threats
Stay current with releases for security, supportability, third-party application versions, latest industry standards, and more
Support new business initiatives, which allows for opportunities to expand the use of the solution and increase business value
Benefit from improved system performance

Customer action may be required. Before upgrading the platform and its add-on components to 2023.4 from an earlier version, customers should be aware of certain system changes. The list that follows may not be comprehensive; however, along with the full release note set, it provides a starting point for upgrade evaluation.

For on-prem deployed systems, it is always recommended to use the latest released version of SPOT (regardless of the current STEP version in use). If upgrading via the --upgrade command, using the latest SPOT version is required.

Details

Automatic purge for Web UI revisions

In the Web UI, there is now an automatic purge mechanism to purge older Web UI revisions. Users will no longer need to manually delete previous Web UI revisions in Workbench. User intervention might be needed to manually purge the Web UI revisions when the number of revisions retained after the automatic purge exceeds the configured maximum number of Web UI revisions.

For more information, refer to the 'Automatic revision purge in the Web UI' release note in Web UI and Instrument Enhancements and Changes.

Change Package Object-Event

The object type name related to a sealed change package, formerly known as ‘Verified package contents,’ has been changed to ‘Change Package (Sealed).’ Additionally, the object type has been made visible in the Select Object Types dialog when setting up an outbound integration endpoint (OIEP), and now, both Oracle- and Cassandra-based systems use the same object type configuration for Triggering Object Types and the Output Template Object-Eventtype. If an OIEP was configured and triggered by sealing a change package in 2023.3, confirm the configuration is using ‘Change Package (Sealed),’ and test the integration before using change package event publishing for normal operation.

For more information, refer to the 'Integration improvements for change packages and VCS repositories' release note in Data Exchange Enhancements and Changes.

Event Mode options are renamed for clarity

The options on the Event Mode parameter for outbound integration endpoints (OIEPs) and event processors (EPs) are renamed to better indicate the functionality being selected. For more information, refer to the 'Event Mode options are renamed for clarity' release note in Data Exchange Enhancements and Changes.

Support, platform, and system admin information

Below is a table outlining the end-of-life schedule for the STEP releases shown:

Version	On-Prem & SaaS v1	SaaS v2
10.2	May 1, 2024	May 1, 2024
10.3	November 1, 2024	November 1, 2024
11.0	June 8, 2025	December 8, 2022
11.1	November 30, 2025	May 30, 2023
11.2	March 7, 2026	December 7, 2023
2023.3	September 30, 2024	September 30, 2024
2023.4	June 13, 2026	June 13, 2024

Refer to the new STEP Update and End-of-Life Information topic in the System Update and Patch Notes section for more information about quarterly release target dates and support end dates for future releases. Additional Platform and Software Support information can be found in the Platform and Software Support Changes topic in the 2023.4 Release Notes.

Customers should update as soon as possible to the latest release of Stibo Systems Enterprise Platform (STEP). Contact Stibo Systems if you have questions and/or to receive help and guidance on how to update to a supported release.

Software errors reported for the versions shown above may be rejected after the listed effective dates. Application support issues in progress for the releases being desupported will be closed on the desupport date. It is not possible to extend the support services for desupported versions.

Updated: New on-premises deployment architecture

One of Stibo Systems' strategic focuses is on delivering a superior SaaS service, which leads to changes in our overall architecture to introduce more and more containerized microservices. These changes cannot be deployed on-premises or in a private cloud without changes to the deployment architecture. As first published in the 2023.3 release notes, to allow on-premises customers to continue to upgrade STEP, starting with the 2024.3 release (and not for STEP 2024.2, as originally communicated), these customers need to change the way that Stibo Systems' software is deployed on-premises so it is aligned with how Stibo Systems' deploys in SaaS. Upgrades to 2024.3 and subsequent releases will require a new deployment architecture where the current application server architecture is replaced by a containerized architecture—just as in SaaS. This in turn requires extra hardware due to an overhead in running the SaaS architecture on-premises. Application operations like starting and stopping the application will be similar in complexity to today—but different.

The database deployment architecture will be exactly the same, so database administration along with backup / restore will remain the same. Any deployment of InDesign and Elasticsearch will also remain the same. Only the application server architecture is changed. On-premises and private cloud customers will receive more detailed documentation separately.

This notification is also included in its entirety in the Platform and Software Support Changes release note.

Deprecated components

Some components are moving into a new stage within the component removal lifecycle with the 2023.4 release. The purpose of these component status changes is to simplify the component list, minimize support on components that have an improved substitute, and remove clutter and uncertainty as to which component or components to use. For users, this means that these components will later be withdrawn and removed. At this time, components will continue to work, but it is important for customers to make plans for replacing them with the recommended components.

Being deprecated is everything that uses IBM WebSphere MQ directly from STEP. Specifically, that affects the following areas:

IBM MQ SSL Receiver and IBM MQ SSL Delivery Method
The WMQInitialContextFactory and FileInitialContextFactory JMS Connection Factory Class within the JMS Receiver and JMS Delivery Method

The ActiveMQInitialConnectionFactory JMS Connection Factory Class will remain available within the JMS Receiver and JMS Delivery Method. Customers that use any of the above for integration with IBM WebSphere MQ should use the Dynamic JMS Receiver and Dynamic JMS Delivery Method as replacements.

This information is also included in the Data Exchange Enhancements and Changes release note.

Online help / documentation changes

With every release, documentation updates occur. In addition to documentation that was updated as part of 2023.4 projects, the following documentation updates that users should be aware of when upgrading to 2023.4 are listed below:

Changes were made to the structure of the faceted search documentation.
As mentioned in the 'Support, platform, and system admin information' section above, a new STEP Update and End-of-Life Information topic is now part of the System Update and Patch Notes section.
Documentation was updated to remove information about unsupported versions. For unsupported platform versions, this includes the removal of the release and maintenance patch notes, which are still accessible via the Stibo Systems Service Portal on the Release Information dashboard. Product MDM for Automotive 10.1 release and maintenance patch notes were also removed and can be provided upon request.