Installation and upgrade

Installation and upgrade

The procedure to install and upgrade depends on which platform, that you want to install InterFormNG2:

Installing InterFormNG2 on IBM i

Installing InterFormNG2 on Linux

Installing InterFormNG2 on Windows

Connecting to AS400 from another platform

Install InterFormNG2 on Windows and connect to IBM i

Move InterFormNG2 from IBM i to another platform

 

It is highly recommended to regularly upgrade InterFormNG2 to the newest version available or at least keep within the current spotlight of fully supported versions as described in the section, Spotlight versions.

Regarding updates

Important notice before doing an update of InterFormNG2: It is highly recommended to save a backup of the InterFormNG2 installation - especially the resources prior to an upgrade. With that backup you can be sure, that you can roll back to the old version if necessary.

 

Generally you should read the release log (especially the sections marked with bold) from the version, that you are upgrading from to the target version.

Upgrade to version 3.5.0 or higher from a release prior to version 3.5.0

Before you upgrade to version 3.5.0 you first need to install Java 17, if you are running on either the IBM i or Linux platform. A part of the upgrade is to copy used external jar files e.g. for database drivers to a special libext folder. The path for this folder depends on the operating system and is covered in each of the installation procedures:

Installing InterFormNG2 on IBM i

Installing InterFormNG2 on Linux

​

Downgrade from version 3.5.0+ to an earlier version

Note: If an older version of InterFormNG2 is installed on Windows after version 3.5.0 or higher has been installed (so that you do a downgrade), then the folder

C:\Program Files\InterFormNG2\jre
must be manually deleted before running the installer.

Important information regarding upgrade for *AFPDS spooled file processing

Warning
Warning regarding an upgrade for customers, that are processing *AFPDS spooled files: If you upgrade from an older version of InterFormNG2 to version 2.4.0 or higher, then you should verify which *AFPDS spooled files, that you are processing in InterFormNG2. If you are processing *AFPDS spooled files, where DBCS is not enabled, then you will experience, that the spooled file contents is shifted one position to the left. The spooled file is shifted one position in order to match the real spooled file positions as e.g. shown on a normal DSPSPLF command.

 

This will probably be a problem to your existing templates and perhaps even setup in the workflow, but this is an issue, that should be solved. If you however would like to temporarily keep the old behavior (to avoid any problems immediately after an upgrade), then you can change the spooled file positioning to match the old positions by changing this data area:

CHGDTAARA DTAARA(IFORMNG2/APF716FIX *ALL) VALUE(Y)

(It is NOT recommended to use this for longer than necessary).

 

To switch to the new, correct behaviour you should change the data area with with this command:

CHGDTAARA DTAARA(IFORMNG2/APF716FIX *ALL) VALUE(-)

Alert
IMPORTANT before upgrade concerning DataMatrix barcodes and |

Regarding upgrade to version 2.4.0 or higher: In previous versions of InterFormNG2 the character | has been implemented as a trigger to indicate that a DataMatrix barcode should be in the GS1 format, if the first character of the input data is a |. If you do not want this character to trigger GS1, then you need in version 2.4.0 (and future versions) to start the input data with ||.


Please notice the prerequisites

The port number used by InterFormNG2 (default 8086) can be changed to a different port if needed.

It is possible to store the InterFormNG2 resources and settings in a database. This is covered in the section, Storing settings and resources in a database.

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