Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Upgrading Unicorn Application

Unicorn is the overall name of our Integrated Library System. WorkFlows is the desktop application that we all use to access the ILS (desktop computers refer to all the individual staff computers throughout the system, as compared to the server which all the desktops connect to). We are currently using Unicorn 3.1 and we need to regularly update the ILS application as new versions are released.


By the time I came on board last year, Symphony 3.2 (the successor of Unicorn 3.1) had been released and Symphony 3.3 was around the corner. I opted to wait for Symphony 3.3, but when Symphony 3.3 was released recently, I noticed that the desktop RAM requirements increased. As you may recall, we had a difficult time with WorkFlows until we finally increased our desktop RAM to somewhere near the 1GB range, which is the recommended amount of RAM. The WorkFlows that comes with Symphony 3.3 has a recommendation of 2GB of RAM.


So I shifted gears and aimed for Symphony 3.2. I then saw that a server requirement for 3.2 calls for a newer version of Oracle (the underlying database embedded within Unicorn/Symphony and not related to the city-wide Oracle database). SirsiDynix can perform this upgrade, but it requires a two-hour downtime. And SirsiDynix can do this for free between the hours or 8am-5pm, but it costs quite a bit per hour to do this upgrade when the library is not open.


Along came the Veteran's Day holiday in which the library is closed and SirsiDynix is open. So, tomorrow, SirsiDynix will upgrade Oracle so that we can upgrade Unicorn in the near future. And we will save a good chunk of change in the process.

Stay tuned for more about the Symphony 3.2 upgrade.