This topic describes the steps necessary to upgrade your local XperienCentral development installation to a new version. After the upgrade, your website will remain unchanged and the newer version of XperienCentral will be in place. Upgrading an XperienCentral installation can be accomplished using the zip archive (GX_XperienCentral_x.x_SDK.zip), where x.x represents the version you are upgrading to.


Upgrading XperienCentral 

Static Preliminary Steps

  1. Stop XperienCentral (Tomcat server).
  2. If your XC content is valuable and you want to be able to revert the upgrade, make a backup copy of your database.
  3. Rename the root directory where XperienCentral is installed to something else.

  4. Create a new directory with the name of the old XperienCentral installation directory. 

  5. If your XperienCentral project is stored in a revision control system such as Subversion or GIT, execute the following steps:"
    1. Check out your project to the new directory created in the previous step;
    2. Update the parent version in your project's root pom.xml to the new XperienCentral version.
    3. Copy the zip archive of the new version of XperienCentral to the new directory and extract the archive. Overwrite all files that you are prompted to.

    4. Verify the changes to the overwritten files. Revert any changes that are irrelevant for your project.

    5. If settings.xml is not one of the files in your revision control system, makes sure all properties in the new settings.xml are the same as in the  version of settings.xml. 

    Do not copy and paste the old settings.xml over the new one — Newer versions of XperienCentral sometimes contain new properties that will be overwritten if you paste an older settings.xml over a new one.

  6. If you are not using a revision control system, execute the following steps:

    1. Copy the zip archive of the new version of XperienCentral to the new directory and extract the archive.

    2. Set all properties in the newer settings.xml (project-based, database, etc.) to the same values as the older version of settings.xml. 

  7. If you run XperienCentral in a standalone Tomcat environment, copy the apache-tomcat directory from the old installation to the new one.

    1. In the new installation, delete the folder apache-tomcat/work.
  8. When not copying the Tomcat directory from previous installation, duplicate the logging levels found in the files /src/main/config/tomcat/conf/logging.properties and
    /apache-tomcat/conf/logging.properties with the corresponding files in the older version.

Building the New XC Version

  1. If you are working on a server compare the resulting repository.xml with the repository.xml on the server (in the /work/jcr folder) and merge the changes into the repository.xml on the server. Then open the /work/jcr/repository/workspaces/wm9/workspace.xml file on the server and replace the content of the <Workspace name="x"> tag with the one you find in the <Workspace name="x"> tag of the repository.xml file.
    1. You can skip the next two steps.
  2. Open a Command prompt and navigate to the root folder of the newer version of XperienCentral.
  3. Execute this command to build the JCR:

    mvn -s settings.xml -P configure-jcr-repository

  4. Open the file <XperienCentral root>\upgrade.txt in the new directory.
  5. Make all configuration changes that are listed for upgrading from your specific previous version of XperienCentral to the newer version.

  6. Open a Command prompt and navigate to the root folder of the newer version of XperienCentral.

  7. Execute the following command to build the new version of XperienCentral.

    mvn -s settings.xml -P build-project clean package

  8. Copy the file Webmanager-webapps/Webmanager-backend-webapp/target/XperienCentral-backend-webapp-1.0-SNAPSHOT/WEB-INF/siteworks/configuration.xml from the old installation to the same directory in the new installation.

Copy the following directories containing all Media Repository, Who-is-Who, Product Catalog uploads as well as Flash files from the old installation of XperienCentral to the same location in the new project directory:

Webmanager-webapps/Webmanager-static-webapp/target/Webmanager-static-webapp-1.0-SNAPSHOT/cfg/*
Webmanager-webapps/Webmanager-static-webapp/target/Webmanager-static-webapp-1.0-SNAPSHOT/upload_mm/*
Webmanager-webapps/Webmanager-static-webapp/target/Webmanager-static-webapp-1.0-SNAPSHOT/upload/*


  1. If the Who is Who or Product Catalog uploads are not stored in subdirectories of the webmanager-webapps/webmanager-static-webapp/target/Webmanager-static-webapp-1.0-SNAPSHOT/upload directory, copy the directories where they are stored to the same location in the new installation.

Start the New XperienCentral

  1. Start the Tomcat server (Apache-tomcat\bin\startup.bat). XperienCentral will perform the following tasks during the initial startup of the upgraded version:

    Upgrade services     — a series of upgrade tasks are run.
    Rebuild the JCR index     — In versions R27 and lower of XperienCentral, a new JCR index will be generated. For large websites, this may take some time.

  2. Start the XperienCentral Setup Tool and log in.

  3. Configure the contentindex_queue_reindex_schedule setting in the "application_settings" section on the General Tab in the Setup Tool to ensure that a reindex will be executed.

      All accounts from the old version of XperienCentral are carried over to the upgraded version.

Check the Upgrade

  1. Check whether /web/setup shows the correct configuration.
  2. Check whether the STARTUP_SETTINGS on the [General configuration] tab are correct.
  3. Check whether the CENTRAL DATABASE SETTINGS and DATABASE CONNECTIONS on the [Database configuration] tab still refer to the correct databases.
  4. Test the Edit environment and the public website.
  5. In the Workspace, navigate to Configuration > Channel Configuration and ensure that the settings are configured the way you want them.

Your version of XperienCentral is now successfully upgraded.


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