February 27 2011 Sunday

Downgrading Domino: XPages may fail...

I recently downgraded my domino server from 8.5.2 to 8.5.1 to be able to run Lotus Quickr 8.5.1 which requires older version. This is another issue of 'Dear IBM, please...'

After downgrade, an XPage application failed in some dojo elements like calendar fields. Specifically, I first discovered the problem with missing calendar icon in date picker object.

I have analyzed the code, the only difference between the running testing platform and the production was that my Xpage was loading dojo classes from dojo-1.4.3 folder, coming with 8.5.2.

The problem is that when HTTP task runs, even you specified 8.5.1 in XPages compatibility, it takes the latest Dojo available. In my server's 'domino/js' folder, there were three dojo versions, namely 'dojo-1.3.2', 'dojo-1.3.3' and 'dojo-1.4.3'. Domino 8.5.1 uses dojo-1.3.2 by default. So I deleted the rest and restarted HTTP task. Now it's working!

Downgrade process, normally does not remove all codes from the server. So you have to be careful compatibility issues...

Serdar Basegmez   |   February 27 2011 09:29:45 AM   |    Development  Dojo  XPages    |  
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Comments (4)

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Serdar Basegmez    http://www.developi.com    02/28/2011 8:39:11 AM

Steve,

I accidentally installed 8.5.2 and downgraded without uninstallation. Just installed Domino 8.5.1 and the latest fixpack.

The only problem I faced was the one above. I deleted those two folders and that's all. BTW, Quickr was working fine with the latest dojo as far as I saw. Problem was with my xpages application.

I think it is the best approach to uninstall/reinstall to prevent any potential problems. I may not have noticed some problems yet :)

One more thing, on my test platform, I performed an upgrade from Quickr 8.5 to 8.5.1. I found that qpconfig.xml file has a bunch of new options coming with the upgrade. I suggest to recreate it from scratch, looking at the old one.

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Steve W       02/28/2011 7:45:46 AM

Hi Serdar,

Just about to perform a downgrade from Domino 8.5.2 to Domino 8.5.1 to upgrade to Quickr 8.5.1 from 8.2...so very useful info thanks.

Yes the upgrade documentation is pretty limited for this scenario..... Did you do a full uninstall of Domino 8.5.2 before installing Domino 8.5.1 ..and upgrade to Quickr 8.5.2 at the same time? Any help on top level steps would be really appreciated to help ensure Quickr config etc is not impacted.

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Serdar Basegmez    http://www.developi.com    02/28/2011 2:41:13 AM

@Paul,

I didn't have a chance to try more in production server. But assuming dojo is backwards-compatible, you would be right. Probably a small directory trick would solve the problem.

And yes, you would set it from xsp.properties. I remembered it after deleting these folders :)))

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Paul Withers    http://hermes.intec.co.uk/intec/blog.nsf    02/27/2011 6:06:43 PM

Were they all specifically ibm-related Dojo modules? I know, for example, that there was work done in 8.5.2 on the IBM date picker to show a calendar icon if it's date only but a time icon if it's time only. That could be the cause of this problem. I'm wondering if replacing the IBM folder in dojo-1.4.3 would have solved the problem.

You should also be able to override the Dojo version by amending the xsp.properties folder on the server. There's an article on the app dev wiki about how to do it.