Developer

Those who came to IT a long time ago or very recently have a Pavlovian response to upgrade whenever a new version of anything is released. The old timers have this habit because in the early days you had to upgrade, either to keep from being locked to an early release forever or to fix all the issues from the earlier release (and prepare for the new issues). The newbies tend to upgrade because a) they were taught by the old timers and/or b) they have not been through enough upgrades to know that some are not worth it, and others actually detrimental to the goal.

Those of us who know better still forget sometimes. You have to be optimistic to get into IT, and pragmatic to survive. Sometimes what is new is just too alluring to take the time to evaluate thoroughly. If you are lucky, everything works out. If you are luckier, it becomes mildly painful. Just enough to remind you that it could have been much worse and make you cautious again.

The upgrade we will consider in this article is to WebLogic Server (WLS) 10.3. If the article starts out with reminders why upgrading in general is not always the best decision, it is to temper the enthusiasm that mostly positive points tend to generate.

While the benefits are definitely well worth the effort of upgrading for many environments, I cannot begin to imagine all the environments that are out in the wild (at least, without getting dizzy) and what is a huge boom for one application group maybe a headache for another.