For more information, please read the ProActive DBA Upgrades – Best Practices FAQ.
Guppy
About This Release
The ProActive DBA Guppy release is a stable, semi-annual or annual major release, which includes a rollup of new features, enhancements and fixes that have been made since the last Guppy release. Guppy versions of ProActive DBA are typically released every six to twelve months, depending on what new features have been added during that time.
By the time it is made generally available to customers, a Guppy release has gone through a test cycle of several phases, over a period of several months or more. During this test cycle, the release is sealed off from any major changes, and only bug fixes and minor enhancements are applied to it. The goals of this test cycle are to stabilize the feature set, and to minimize the chance that any undiscovered bugs exist by the time we make this release generally available.
Once a Guppy release is made generally available, we generally do not make any further updates to it until the next Guppy release (typically in six to twelve months). The only exception would be in case a critical bug fix needs to be applied, but this is rare.
Deploying This Release
So, for customers who have to go through a “packaging” or other deployment process in their organization in order to upgrade their software, the Guppy release is the best choice, since it generally will not need to be updated again until the next major release comes out.
Barracuda
About This Release
The ProActive DBA Barracuda release is basically a “Guppy release candidate”—it contains a newer feature set, and is in preparation for it to become the next major Guppy release.
As part of this preparation, minor features, enhancements and improvements will be added.
Thus, if you install this release, you should plan on upgrading at least one more time, when this version becomes finalized as a Guppy major release (typically within one to two months).
Deploying This Release
If your organization has a large installation of ProActive DBA, or if your environment has a complex upgrade procedure, you should install this release on a limited scale (e.g. in a “sandbox”) so that further upgrades can be done more easily.
A sandbox installation is useful in large enterprises, because it gives you the opportunity to perform “user acceptance testing” (UAT) before deploying the new version throughout the enterprise.
Then, when the new version becomes finalized as a Guppy release, you can package that release if necessary, and deploy it enterprise-wide, with a high degree of confidence that it will require no further updates until the next major release.
If you do not already have a sandbox installation, White Sands Technical Support can assist you with setting one up.
Piranha
About This Release
The ProActive DBA Piranha release is a development release which provides the newest features and enhancements being added to the product.
The feature set of the Piranha release is subject to more rapid change, since new features, enhancements and changes are being made to it on a daily or weekly basis. And, since it has not yet gone through a Guppy test cycle, the Piranha release is more likely to contain undiscovered bugs than our other two releases (Barracuda and Guppy).
Deploying This Release
If you can upgrade easily in your environment and want to have access to the very latest feature set in ProActive DBA, then the Piranha release is a good choice for you. Or, even if you cannot perform frequent software upgrades in your production environment, you can still use the Piranha release in a “sandbox,” where it can receive further upgrades without affecting your production use of ProActive DBA.
Either way, installing the Piranha release gives you access to current features being developed in ProActive DBA, so that you can try these features out and provide feedback to White Sands in order to help guide our development to meet your organization’s needs.
Once a given set of features is complete, the Piranha release will begin a release test cycle, at which point it becomes a Barracuda release. This typically occurs every six to twelve months.