And the Winner is...

To top things off (get it?) Kerri had an idea: A "How Vanilla is Your Banner" sundae contest.

Of couse I thought mine was best... from the outside it looked completely vanilla because I hid the toppings (mainly Heath bar pieces) underneath.

So far as I know: there was no winner... only happy people.

What is this thing I have with things on my nose?

It's Alive!!!

The final notifications have been sent... we are doing business with the new system.

I will not speak for everyone... but I might be a touch crazy: I'm starting to listen to Bananas.

We begin the last steps...

User Testing is done and we are putting the pieces in place to bring up our new production system... more soon.

User Acceptance Testing starts

A few bleary eyes entered Millhiser before 5:15am... the system was brought up and poked to make certain it was awake. An email was sent to testers welcoming them to Banner 7. The Bullpen bustles with activity... "bustle" being relative to normal mornings at this time of day, I guess... not that time of day changes the Bullpen's look (we ain't got no windows).

Techy Testing Complete

Techy testing is complete... the food took a hit, too. Next Stop: User Acceptance Testing preparations for which begin at 5:15am Monday... ug.

Power Testing

Polly the Pug Power Tester has been churning through critical system verification steps.

Techy Testing

It's a rainy saturday morning and a bunch of techies have hunkered down in a windowless basement with Breakfast pizza, coffee, fruit, OJ, and a pug named Polly. Yee Ha!

The Upgrade's application steps are now complete. Minor testing shows the big pieces work.

Duplicate copies of everything are being made so we can destructively test in the morning... DBAs and SAs handle these tasks.

I'm going to take a nap.

The crazies come out at night

First, David didn't like his "slouchy"picture from earlier... are these really better, though?

Second, for the first time today we are are ahead of schedule... craziness has its advantages, I guess.

And holding the team together as we plow through compiles and data manipulating script runs is...EGADS!!! It's Andrea!

The Next Shift Arrives

And for the second set of application upgrade steps David has arrived to carry the torch. Very few Release Guides remain; David will lead the compiling and application script changes.

Yee Ha!

From the front it doesn't look this bad.

It's after 4pm... the "SCT Release Guide" portion of the upgrade is on the home stretch... a backup followed by compiles are in the near future... well, a few hours away... which isn't that far when you consider we've been going for almost 24 straight hours.

We hope everyone has a good weekend.

Well, the code monkey has been returned to his seat... and continues to pound away at the upgrade.

CM has recently feasted on a Subway BMT which, to his surprised, contained hot peppers... fortunately, we do not think he suffered permanent damage.

Egads! The code monkey has gotten unchained from his chair!!!

Now that's one busy looking man!

This morning, the TEST database is available for use. The URL has gone out (at some point in the mass of e-mails) to Banner users. Everyone is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning. Coffee helps. Overnight, the Oracle 10g database was organized and loaded with data, and we prepare this morning for the programmers to take the baton and run.

More to come... I need much more coffee. Sumatra is this morning's brew at the Starbucks at the Hugenot Bridge, in case you care. It's rather tasty.

The Moving Parts

Well, morning has arrived. The database is now Oracle 10g and it is time to begin upgrading the Banner stuff. The DBAs and SAs can now rest... for a little while.

No, the highlighter color is meaningless... all colors are equal in our plan.

Serious men wield the blue highlighter marking tasks as tasks are completed.

It has begun. As of 5pm Banner, BannerWeb, and related systems are down. The green flag has waved...

Oh, and this craziness to the left is the checklist. At least we don't have to worry about losing it... it's too big for that :)

We try to accomodate requests... Kerribear and fridge.richmond.edu.

Only a few more minutes of Banner 6...

Kerri here. Lee and I are swapping posting duties.

Here's a Banner tip: if you're entering a date in a field, and you want the date to be the current date, enter a "c" in the field and hit the key. The current date will populate in the proper format. Woo hoo! If you want the date to be within the current month and year, simply enter the day (i.e. "12"), and the date will populate in the appropriate format. Yee haw!

Enough techy talk - if you have folks calling you with questions, I've posted a quick reference document for Banner 7. It's located here: http://is.richmond.edu/techtraining/B7UI_summary.pdf

Happy upgrade!

Happily, Mr Melton begins taking down databases. So far we're only shutting down the test stuff but at 5pm today we break into a run... the upgrade will have begun in earnest.