Introducing the Upgrade Impact Checklist

We are excited to announce a new part of InterSystems documentation that makes it easier to upgrade InterSystems IRIS® data platform, InterSystems IRIS® for Health™, or HealthShare® Health Connect. The Upgrade Impact Checklist at https://docs.intersystems.com/upgrade shows you all the things you need to consider – and only the things you need to consider – in an upgrade between any two versions. This takes all the content from our "Incompatibility History" and adds convenient filters, higher-level categories, and the ability to export the list as a CSV file so you can use it as a true checklist as you are working through an upgrade. 

Here is a motivating example: my team recently upgraded an application from 2021.1 to 2023.1, and the behavior of some SQL queries changed. https://docs.intersystems.com/upgrade/results?product=iris&versionFrom=2021.1.2&versionTo=2023.1.1&categories=Core,SQL shows that there are 18 possible SQL-related upgrade impacts. One of them was a (good!) change to the SQL STRING function, and the impact item made us realize our SQL query relied on the old behavior. The checklist made it much faster to track down this issue.

The upgrade checklist is available for all supported upgrade paths for a given product, including upgrades between maintenance releases. We welcome your feedback on this new tool via the "Feedback" button on the page, as with the rest of our documentation. Happy (or at least happier) upgrading!