The General Process for Software Updates

Regardless of whether you are upgrading to a new product release, applying a SAS (Foundation) maintenance release, or applying a product-specific maintenance release, the general process for updating the software at your site is the same.
  1. Learn about the availability of new product releases or maintenance releases from your SAS account representative, from the SAS Web site, or from this document.
  2. Determine what products you currently have at your site. Run a deployment registry report to determine what products you currently have installed at your site. For more information, see How to Run the Deployment Registry Report.
  3. Assess the impact of upgrading the software at your site.
    After running the deployment registry report, you should know the release numbers for the products at your site. Compare these release numbers to the release numbers of the products in this document. A difference in release numbers will help you identify what products at your site have updates.
    By reviewing the product-specific information in this document, you can determine how upgrading your software could affect your site. For example, you will learn about any new features that are available and how those features might affect your existing SAS content. You also learn any post-configuration steps that you need to complete before you start using the product.
  4. Contact your SAS account representative to request a new product release or maintenance release. To request a maintenance release, the SAS Installation Representative at your site can also use the self-service application that is available from the Maintenance Release Announcement. See the “Request a Maintenance Release” topic at the bottom of http://support.sas.com/software/maintenance.
  5. Review your software order. After you request a maintenance release, a product upgrade, or a new SAS product, you receive a Software Order E-mail (SOE), which lists the product bundle that you ordered and the software revision number (such as SAS 9.3, Rev. 930_11w50).
  6. Prepare your site for the software updates. These preparations include downloading the order to a SAS 9.3 Software Depot, creating backups, determining how long the upgrade will take, and notifying users about the scheduled update. You also perform any pre-installation steps for the products at your site. You determined these pre-installation steps when you assessed the impact of the software update at your site.
  7. Install and configure any software updates. When you run the SAS Deployment Wizard, SAS automatically detects any files on your system that are older than the files in your order. If there are software updates to be installed for products already in your deployment, the SAS Deployment Wizard goes into Update mode. If no software updates need to be installed, then the SAS Deployment Wizard does not go into Update mode, and you can exit the SAS Deployment Wizard.
  8. If your site is running Web application servers, reconfigure these servers.
  9. Complete any post-configuration steps for the products at your site. You determine these post-configuration steps when you assess the impact of the software update at your site. To determine the post-configuration steps, see the “Product Details and Requirements” section.
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