Although SAS Technical Support does not anticipate any problems with newer versions of MXG working with current releases of SAS IT Resource Management (formerly, SAS^® IT Service Vision), you should review the following checklist before you upgrade MXG.

1. Make a backup of any SAS IT Resource Management performance data warehouse (PDB) or IT data mart that might be affected by the MXG version upgrade.
2. Install the version of MXG (or later) that corresponds to the release of SAS IT Resource Management. See SAS Note 43046, "Instructions for SAS^® IT Resource Management sites that want to request the latest version of Merrill Consultants MXG software," for instructions about how to order a new version of MXG.
3. Review the MXG CHANGES website for any updates by third-party software or hardware vendors that might affect IT data sources and, therefore, that might require a specific version of MXG.
4. Subsequent versions of MXG often include new variables that are not defined in the SAS IT Resource Management dictionary table definitions. As a result, new variables in the upgraded version of MXG are not available immediately in SAS IT Resource Management tables. SAS periodically provides updates to dictionary table definitions in new releases or hot fixes.

   For supplied MXG adapters in SAS IT Resource Management 3.4 and later, staged tables share the same names and columns (variables) to the MXG data set names and columns on which they are based. This behavior enables you to synchronize your SAS IT Resource Management staged tables with more recent MXG columns, before the release of SAS IT Resource Management data model updates. The synchronization of the staged tables is discussed in the section "How to Add Columns to Existing MXG Staged Tables" in "Chapter 7: Staging the Data" of the SAS^® IT Resource Management 3.5: Administrator's Guide.

5. MXG version 29.29 (and later) creates the SHIFT variable in all Resource Management Facility (RMF) interval tables. This SHIFT variable is used by SAS IT Resource Management 2.7. If you want to use your own code for calculating the value of SHIFT, copy IMACSHFT into your MXG user source library and modify it to set the value of SHIFT to blank before using the macro variable &MACSHFT.

   Example

   SHIFT=' '; &MACSHFT;

   You can delete any prior SAS statements that calculate a value for SHIFT, but you still need to keep the LENGTH and LABEL statement definitions for this variable.

   Note: In SAS IT Resource Management 3, the variable SHIFT is not propagated from MXG. It is populated from a formula that is supplied with SAS IT Resource Management.

6. The following table lists each release of SAS IT Resource Management and the SAS^® System, the associated MXG version, and the hot fixes on which the data dictionaries are based.
     SAS IT Resource      SAS        MXG      Hot Fix
       Management        Release   Version     Level
         Release        
     ---------------     -------   -------    --------
           2.6           8.2        20.06
                                    23.05     82IS06
                                    24.02     82IS08
                                    25.08     82IS09
                                    26.07     82IS10
           2.7           9.1.3      23.05
                                    24.02     27IS03
                                    25.08     27IS04
                                    26.07     27IS05
                                    27.09     27IS06
                                    28.07     27IS07
                                    30.30     27IS08
           3.1           9.1.3      24.02
           3.1.1         9.1.3      24.02
                                    25.08     311IS03
                                    26.07     311IS04
                                    29.04     311IS05
           3.2           9.2        27.09 
                                    28.07     D49002
           3.21          9.3        29.04
           3.3           9.3        29.07     H33001
           3.3           9.3        30.30     H33002
           3.4           9.4        30.30
           3.5           9.4        32.04
           3.6           9.4        32.32  
           3.7           9.4        33.09                
           3.8           9.4        34.08       
7. Depending on the release of SAS IT Resource Management, MXGSRC and MXGLIB are used either as parameters or environment variables to locate the MXG sourclib and formats data sets. Verify that these locations point to the appropriate version of MXG.

   For more information about how to set these locations, see SAS Note 33038, "Specifying the location of the MXG source and format data libraries for SAS^® IT Resource Management."

8. Raw data sources that are supported through MXG, such as z/OS data sources, might require that you customize some of the MXG code. These changes might be required in order to stage the data appropriately for the MXG adapters that SAS IT Resource Management provides.
9. It is possible to receive one or all of the following errors when you upgrade the MXG software to MXG 28.04 (or later) and the release of SAS IT Resource Management:

   SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 without the latest hot fix applied, 3.1.1 or 3.2 sites:

   ERROR: BY variables are not properly sorted on data set WORK.DB2STAT4

   SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 or 3.1.1 without the latest hot fix applied, 3.2 or 3.3 sites:

   ERROR: BY variables are not properly sorted on data set WORK.DB2ST225

   SAS IT Resource Management releases 2.7 and 3.x sites:

   ERROR: File WORK.SUMSTSBP.DATA does not exist.

   For more information about how to circumvent and fix these errors, see the following SAS Notes, respectively:

   • SAS Note 41019, "An error occurs when you upgrade Merrill Consultants' MXG software with SAS^® IT Resource Management to release 28.04 or later"
   • SAS Note 45583, "An error occurs when you upgrade Merrill Consultants' MXG software with SAS^® IT Resource Management to 29.29 or later"
   • SAS Note 41019, "An error occurs when you upgrade Merrill Consultants' MXG software with SAS^® IT Resource Management to release 33.12 or later"

   Tip: Depending on the release of SAS IT Resource Management, you might be able to implement the circumventions described in the SAS notes mentioned above by combining the values that you assign to the macro variable EPDBOUT, as follows:

   • SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 without latest hot fix applied, and 3.1.1 without latest host fix applied, and 3.2 sites:
     %LET EPDBOUT=_SDB2ST4 _SDB2225 _SDB2SBP;
   • SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 with latest hot fix applied, 3.1.1 with latest hot fix applied, and 3.3, 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6 sites:
     %LET EPDBOUT=_SDB2225 _SDB2SBP;
   • SAS IT Resource Management releases 2.7 with latest hot fix and 3.7 sites only:
     %LET EPDBOUT=_SDB2SBP;

   For more information about how to set these locations, see SAS Note 33038. "Specifying the location of the MXG source and format data libraries for SAS^® IT Resource Management."

10. The following errors might occur when you upgrade the MXG software to 32.09 or later with releases 3.5 or earlier of SAS IT Resource Management:
    ERROR: Variable NDMUNOD has been defined as both character and numeric. ERROR: Variable NDMUID has been defined as both character and numeric.

    For more information about how to circumvent and fix these errors, see SAS Note 57089, "An error occurs in SAS^® IT Resource Management 3.5 (or earlier) when you upgrade Merrill Consultants' MXG software to release 32.09 or later."

Click the Hot Fix tab in this note to access the latest hot fix for SAS IT Resource Management releases 3.3, 3.2, 3.1.1, 2.7, and 2.6.

Operating System and Release Information

A fix for this issue for SAS IT Resource Management 3.3 is available at:

A cumulative hot fix for SAS IT Resource Management 3.2 is available at:

A cumulative hot fix for SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 is available at:

A cumulative hot fix for SAS IT Resource Management 2.6 is available at:

A cumulative hot fix for SAS IT Resource Management 3.1.1 is available at: