Part Upgrades

Each individual change of the data model between two different software releases is referred to here as a Part Upgrade. In general these Part Upgrades have been designed so that new software releases can work with a database that has not been upgraded and the software will degrade gracefully - that is, the software will continue to work, although new functionality may not be fully present nor will it be possible to write data into these databases (unless the Part Upgrade is optional, The Upgrade Process). This means that it is possible for users to continue to work with Foreign DBs, which may be shared with earlier projects and which have not been upgraded, included in their projects. An example would be a Corporate Catalogue Database used for earlier and multiple projects.

A framework is provided to run all the part upgrades. The user is provided with a single upgrade command, an all or nothing approach, which they can execute. As a consequence of the 'all or nothing' approach, the project must be returned to its original state if any part of the upgrade fails.