Upgrading Cognos Analytics

When upgrading Cognos® Analytics, you need to back up the content store, upgrade your data, understand the implications of the upgrade on other components in a distributed environment, ensure that files that must be preserved are not overwritten, and possibly perform other upgrade tasks.

Important:
Do not upgrade your 11.2.4 FP3 content to version 12.0.0, 12.0.1, or 12.0.2. If you do so, you may need to run specialized scripts before you can do another upgrade to version 12.0.3 or later. If you want to upgrade 11.2.4 FP3 content to version 12.0.x, you must wait until 12.0.3 or later to do so.
Reason:

Schema changes are made in the content store of 11.2.4 FP3 (and future releases) to support faster processing of content retention rules. Therefore, when you upgrade from 11.2.4 FP3 (or later), you must upgrade to a release with the same content store enhancements, for example, 12.0.3 (or later).

You can still upgrade any 11.2.x content other than 11.2.4 FP3 to any version of 12.0.x.

Over-the-top installations are supported

You can upgrade your version of IBM® Cognos Analytics with Watson by performing an over-the-top installation. This is the default upgrade method, and the simplest and easiest way to upgrade. All components are upgraded to a newer version using the same configuration details, ports, themes and extensions as your previous installation.

The over-the-top upgrade procedure takes advantage of the Cognos Analytics continuous delivery model, and deploys new features quickly and easily.