Upgrade tasks for developers

OpenPages® 9.1.0 includes an upgrade to IBM® Semeru Runtimes 21. In addition, version 9.1.0 removes the dependency on the Cognos® SDK and replaces it with a new proxy service wrapper. These changes require updates to your custom code.

The Java™ upgrade brings substantial benefits, including improved performance, new language features, and enhanced security.

Note: IBM Cognos Analytics continues to run on IBM SDK, Java Technology Edition 8.

Update custom code to use IBM Semeru Runtimes

  1. Rebuild your custom JARs with IBM Semeru Runtimes 21 to determine whether there are compile-time errors that are caused by classes that are no longer supported in IBM Semeru Runtimes 21. If you find errors, update the dependencies.
  2. Ensure that all custom software components are compliant with the new IBM Semeru Runtimes standards.
    For example:
    • javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory changed from com.ibm.xtq.xslt.jaxp.compiler.TransformerFactoryImpl to com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerFactoryImpl.
    • javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory changed from org.apache.xpath.jaxp.XPathFactoryImp to com.sun.org.apache.xpath.internal.jaxp.XPathFactoryImp
  3. If your applications use Nashorn for scripting, add an external JavaScript engine like GraalVM to handle these scripts. Nashorn was removed from IBM Semeru Runtimes 21.
  4. If you have applications that rely on specific time zone formats, make sure that they use the international standards that are supported by IBM Semeru Runtimes 21. Time zone formats supported by IBM SDK, Java Technology Edition might not be interpreted correctly by IBM Semeru Runtimes.
  5. If you are using the following internal packages, you can use a jvm option to open them for unrestricted access in your application environment:
    java.base/java.lang
java.base/java.net
java.base/java.io
java.base/java.util
java.base/java.nio
java.base/java.security
java.base/java.util.concurrent
java.base/sun.security.x509
java.base/sun.security.util
java.base/sun.misc
java.logging/java.util.logging
java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers
java.xml/com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax
java.xml/javax.xml.transform

Update custom code to use the new Cognos service wrapper

In OpenPages 9.1.0, the built-in Cognos SDK dependency was removed, and the Cognos SDK JAR files (cognosClient.jar and cognos-axis.jar) are no longer included in the class path. As a result, all custom implementations that previously used Cognos SDK classes to migrate to a new proxy service wrapper.

For more information about how to adapt your code, see Using a Wrapper Class for Custom Cognos Code Migration in OpenPages 9.1.

Post-upgrade steps

After you complete the upgrade to 9.1.0, you can remove IBM SDK, Java Technology Edition from the application servers and the global search server, if no other applications are using it. Do not remove Java 8 from the reporting servers.