Mendix major upgrades... Whats your experience? What should I expect?

2
Hi guys, I'm trying to understand what to expect from the Mendix cloud, regarding major versions' upgrades. In your experience, how seamless are the upgrades to your Mendix accounts/ environments? When your code is affected by breaking changes, what are your options? Redo the code? Stay in the same version? In your experience, how much time does a Mendix major version upgrade consumes you, in terms or redoing/ verifying the code? And, in terms of testing your applications, to make sure the functionally hasn't broken? (Smoke tests) How often do your applications functionality break? What is Mendix policy, regarding upgrades? They warn about the updates how much time ahead? Do we have a specific time frame to do these upgrades? What happens if you don't upgrade? Does your organization accept the upgrades well (the downtime, the Business Units having to participate in the tests, etc.)? I'm trying to assess how much time should I schedule in future major versions upgrades... Please answer what you can (even if you can't answer everything). If a Mendix employee can help, better. Thanks for everyone's help.
asked
1 answers
6

A few pointers from my experience:

  • Upgrading to a major version has a lot more impact than between minor versions (days vs. hours). Example: going from Mendix 4.x to 5.x is a big change. Going from Mendix 4.3.2 to 4.3.3 will generally not cause any unexpected changes.

  • Don't upgrade to 'first versions' (x.x.0) if you are in production. Wait for a .1 version or a hotfix, and try to identify beforehand if you are upgrading to a stable version

  • Always create a back up of your old version as downgrading is not really possible

  • Look for issues specifically in java / widgets / app store content / (sometimes) layout after upgrading. There could still be issues elsewhere, but the core functionality i.e. forms/pages, microflows, domain model is generally stable across versions

  • Make sure your development team is not working / does not have uncommited work when upgrading, and get everyone on the new version before continuing

  • Read release notes carefully and determine if there are major changes to functionality that will need changes from your side, i.e. CSS / layout between versions 4 & 5 and java.

We don't normally upgrade along with every new version in existing applications. The main reasons we would upgrade are:

  • When starting a new project
  • When the new version fixes or provides functionality that our client needs
  • When a client wants to move to a new version

Last one especially is important. If the new version offers major new functionality that opens up new possibilities (such as in Mendix 5), clients are often quite receptive to an upgrade which they will pay for.

answered