Upgrading to Java 7 for EPM 11.1.2.4 - It doesn't need to be difficult!

First, some background information to put this post into proper context.

All Oracle EPM / Hyperion systems in the 11.1.2.x on-premises series of releases have Java SE 6 and JRockit 6 bundled with the software.  Oracle KB article # 2244851.1 states that both Java SE 6 and JRockit 6 will be coming out of Extended Support in December 2018; no new security patches will be issued for Java 6 & JRockit 6 beyond that date.  (Disclaimer: I'm not an Oracle employee and do not speak on behalf of Oracle Corporation)

In mid-June 2018, Oracle published KB article # 2351499.1.  This article contains two crucial pieces of information:
1. That EPM 11.1.2.4 is certified for Java SE 7, which replaces both Java SE 6 and JRockit 6.
2. A detailed technical procedure on how to manually update the system configuration accordingly.

When I first read through the article, the steps made sense... but what a tedious, manual process!  I was dreading having to do it for multiple customer systems, inevitably committing human error along the way, and then spending extra time figuring out what went wrong.

What we need here is automation to streamline the process, so let's get to it!  The process I'm about to describe was written for Windows-based systems, but could easily be adapted to a UNIX shell script as well.

• SwapJava.bat - This is our main wrapper script that guides us through the process.
• RecursiveReplace.ps1 - This Powershell script is used behind the scenes to recursively descend through a folder structure and replace any arbitrary text specified.  There are tools such as UltraEdit that do this, but I wanted to script the whole thing.
• sed.ps1 - This Powershell script is very similar to RecursiveReplace.ps1, except here we are editing a single file at a time.
• ScriptEnv.bat - This defines environment variables that I leverage across my entire suite of scripts; SwapJava.bat only needs a handful of them.

We double-click SwapJava.bat and it does the heavy lifting. The things you have to do yourself are:

• Download and install Java into the location suggested by the messages you see from SwapJava.bat.
• Export the Hyperion Solutions section from the Windows Registry.
• Import the Hyperion Solutions .reg file once SwapJava.bat finishes manipulating it.
• Inspect essbase.cfg, to see if anybody customized the jvm setting.
• Import your Root and Intermediate certificates into JDK 7's cacerts file, if you had previously configure the system for SSL.

Oct 21, 2020 Update:  Due the end of my employment with Datavail, I needed to delete the code for the scripts I mentioned above.  The good news is when you upgrade to on-premises EPM 11.2.x, you won't have to worry about this because it uses java 8.  You can get the scripts from Datavail - I don't know if you'll be charged a fee or not.

Conclusion

With these scripts in hand, you can get through the process quickly, and with less human error.

If you're not comfortable doing this yourself, reach out to me on LinkedIn or contact a Datavail sales executive, and we can get a conversation started.

Best of luck out there!