Upgrades should never be as big a project as an implementation, and if you're keeping your system up to date that won't be the case.  But what about this time? This is an exceptional circumstance.

Oracle understand that relity and want the upgrade to be as painless and as time efficient as possible.

To support your efforts in this project, Oracle offer tools to help, free of charge to maintenance paying customers.

• Report Manager - You can use Report Manager to search and locate DREAM Writer, WorldWriter, FASTR and STAR reports by last execution date, user ID, version name and system code with a user friendly workbench. This allows for asy archiving, saving and deleting reports.
• Net Change Analyzer - Lists Control File Changes that will occur during merges.  This is helpful for identifying effects for custom code as well as file changes between release levels.  It also lists changes to Dream Writer Processing Options.
• Data Analyzer – gives you the ability to easily Analyze library and file sizes.  You can search for files needing to be reorganized.  This is helpful to review major transaction file record counts by year.  You can also summarize F0911 record counts by batch type.
• Assessment Report Program – Compares source from Pristine, Custom and New release levels. It offers global statistics of custom code changed, percentage of changes in individual programs, and provides you with an audit trail of JD Edwards changes and customer changes.  It also makes it easier to assess and retrofit any required custom code.
  

For more information on Best Practices for an upgrade project, see the Whitepapers in our downloads area.