Staying current with your Tools Release is as important as maintaining your patch set on your Oracle Database or in keeping current on Microsoft Critical Updates.  Below is a list of 10 reasons for upgrading your current Tools Release.  Before we get into that, there are a couple of approaches to upgrading your Tools Release, and they are the Big Bang or Multiple Foundations. Big Bang does not involve much testing and is done over a weekend. Multiple Foundations allows you to upgrade an environment weeks in advance and test, then move forward to the next environment. It is a commonly accepted EnterpriseOne architecture that enables multiple instances of EnterpriseOne foundation code to run simultaneously on a single physical machine. This architecture works on all EnterpriseOne releases and platforms.

Generally a Tools Release upgrade will provide base system level fixes, such as memory and CPU utilization, increased UBE and Call Object Kernel performance, and various other fixes to issues that have been reported to Oracle. Staying current on major releases rolls all one-offs into each release (e.g. your issues may have been resolved already).

1.  Platforms - Upgrading a Tools Release is also generally required to support newer platforms, such as:

     *  A new version of an OS (V5R4, Windows 2003, 2008, Vista x64, Mac OS, Linux and AIX).

     *  A new web browser (IE8, Mozilla Firefox 3.0, Safari 1.2).

     *  A new release of Application Servers (Oracle Application Server 10g, IBM WebSphere 6.0/6.1).

     *  A new version of a database (SQL2005, Oracle 10g/11g).

     *  Clustering Technologies.

2.  New base functionality is often provided with new Tools Releases. For instance, with Tools Release 8.98 you can now monitor exactly what is going on at any point while a UBE is running, prior to that, you could analyze logs after a UBE had run, but had no facility to analyze the UBE while it was running.

3.  Business Intelligence - Tools that are used for reporting such as the integration of Oracle BI Publisher into tools release 8.97, this allows customers to utilize custom forms for free (similar to Formscape or Optio).

4.  Often older Tools Releases fall out of support, so upgrading keeps a client at a supported level.

5.  User Interaction – Enhancements to the web client that improve user productivity.

6.  Often certain Tools Releases are required for an ESU or new module to be applied. The prerequisite or MTR for a specific fix may be a more current Tools Release, meaning you would need to upgrade tools to get this fix.

7.  Process and Integration – Tools that are used to integrate JD Edwards EnterpriseOne with other systems in the enterprise and tools that support a services oriented architecture.

8.  System Management - With the later Tools Release you can take advantage of management tools such as Change Assistant, Server Manager (need Tools 8.97) and Oracle’s Application Management pack (need Tools 8.98). Server Manager alone is justification to upgrade to 8.97 or 8.98.

9.  Identity Management – Tools that are used to secure access and authorizations. Ex. SP22 added a new security algorithm which was compromised in previous tools releases. 

10.  Staying updated means shorter testing cycle with OS upgrades