Database Upgrade Utility

[Rich]

Does anybody have any experience using the "Database
Upgrade Utility" Microsoft distributes for converting
Project 2000 databases to the Project 2002 format? I
could really use some help here.

I have been trying to use the upgrade utility to convert
some projects we have stored in Oracle. First, I
converted a couple of projects to Access, just to make
sure it would work and to see what it did before trying it
with Oracle. That worked pretty well (the new tables and
columns didn't exactly correlate with the Microsoft
documentation but it's pretty close...I guess that's about
what one should expect).

Having done that, I went into a test database and deleted
all the objects owned by MSPROJECT (which is what we will
eventually have to do in our production database when all
out users upgrade to Project 2002 - because there are
other needed tables under different schema). Then, I set
up a DSN for the test database and followed the
instructions in the doc. that said to create an empty
project in PROJECT 2002 and save it via ODBC, using the
TEST DSN.

So far so good, I now have an empty database with the new
tables and columns for PROJECT 2002. So, the next step is
to use the Database Upgrade Utility to convert projects
from the production (source) database to the test
(destination) database. But it is no longer possible to
do this because the utility issues the following message
as soon as I try to select the source DSN.

"Cannot upgrade because source is already in Microsoft
Project 2002 format".

I can tell via SQL Plus that the source database does not
have the new tables and columns and has not actually been
converted. (Thank God, it is a production database!)

So, this makes no sense. For one thing, I didn't do
anything to change anything in the Source DB - and it
especially makes no sense because it won't let me convert
anything, even the projects that I had not converted
previously. It almost appears as if this utility gives
you one shot per database...and if it so happens you
didn't convert all your projects at once, then tough
toenails. Kinda cheesy, if you ask me, even for a free
download.

There's evidently an undocumented feature (to put it
politely) that sets some form of status indication in the
source database and makes the utility think an entire
database has been converted, whether it has or not.

So...does anyone happen to know what I need to do to reset
the status so I can use this thing? Does Microsoft plan
to release a bug fix for the Database Upgrade Utility? (I
see where there's a service pack for PROJECT 2002, but it
didn't say anything about this particular issue.)

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Gary Chefetz [MVP]]

Rich:

You should be able to point Project 2002 at the existing database and open
and close the projects without converting anything.

--
Gary Chefetz [MVP]
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"

*** Remember to look for line breaks in links posted to the news group, use
cut and paste for these.

 

[Gary Chefetz [MVP]]

Rich:

Can you post the link to the tool you're using. You shouldn't need to run a
conversion on plain old project data sitting in a database. The db formats
are forward compatible.

--
Gary Chefetz [MVP]
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"

*** Remember to look for line breaks in links posted to the news group, use
cut and paste for these.

 

[Rich]

Here's the link...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?
FamilyID=F173F267-007C-4837-B916-
4D8774B0663D&displaylang=en

I can see why you say we shouldn't need to run a
conversion. However, in our environment, it really seems
like it will be the thing to do. We support
approximately one hundred users who are mangaging quite a
large number of projects and, for a number of reasons, we
are going to have to coordinate each user's project
upgrade with a mass database conversion. Part of this is
modifying each users data views of the PROJECT tables
which, as you may know, precludes the ability of a
PROJECT 2000 users to be able to access PROJECT 2002
tables. I have also observed that PROJECT 2002 only open
PROJECT 2000 tables (at least in Oracle) on a read-only
basis. We also have a customer expectation to
test/verify the results of whatever we're going to do
before we deploy.

It all adds up to a coordinated, managed deployment as
opposed to individual users upgrading the format of their
plain old project data.

If I can't get this utility to behave, I can always write
the DDL code to create/alter the Oracle tables then user
SQL loader or something like that to convert and then
verify. The utility is SUPPOSED to be a whole lot easier.

Thanks for trying to help