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Upgrading from Community to Enterprise

Learn how to change Bonita edition: move from a Bonita Community to any Bonita Enterprise or vice-versa

Upgrading means moving from a Bonita Community edition environment to any Bonita Enterprise edition environment.

Downgrading means moving from a Bonita Enterprise edition environment to a Bonita Community edition environment.

To check before upgrading / downgrading

A Bonita edition upgrade can only be performed between environments having the same Bonita version.

  • POSSIBLE - upgrade from a Bonita 2021.2 Community edition to Bonita 2021.2 Enterprise edition.

  • NOT POSSIBLE - upgrade from Bonita 2021.2 Community to Bonita 2021.3 Enterprise.

Updating to a newer version at the same time as upgrading to the Enterprise edition is NOT an option.

Everything above is also applicable for the downgrade process.

Upgrade process

An upgrade has to be performed independently on Bonita components.

Bonita Studio

To upgrade a Community edition of Bonita Studio and its resources (such as process diagrams, data models), follow these steps:

  1. Install a Bonita Studio Enterprise edition.

  2. If you are using GIT, clone your project, it will be upgraded during the clone operation

  3. If you are not using GIT :

    1. Export your projects from the Bonita Studio Community edition to .bos archives. We recommend that you keep those archives as a backup.

    2. Import your .bos archives into the Bonita Studio in Enterprise edition.

The upgrade is performed automatically and silently when importing resources into Bonita Studio Enterprise edition.

Bonita Runtime

Upgrading a Bonita Runtime allows you to keep its data (process definitions, cases, BDM…​) while benefiting from the Enterprise edition features.

The upgrade procedure is quite simple with an execution time of less than 30 minutes.

A service downtime will be required.

A Bonita Runtime upgrade can only be performed on the same database vendor (E.g. PostgreSQL) and on the same Bonita version (E.g. Bonita 2021.2 (=7.13))

To upgrade a Bonita Runtime from a Community edition to an Enterprise edition, follow these steps:

  1. Download and unzip the Bonita Enterprise bundle (to retrieve the bonita.war Web App later)

  2. Retrieve an Enterprise license file

  3. Run <bonita-installation>/setup/setup(.sh/.bat) pull to fetch your current Community configuration in <bonita-installation>/setup/platform_conf/current

  4. Create license folder <bonita-installation>/setup/platform_conf/licenses/

  5. Copy your license file into this newly-created folder

  6. Push your new license in the database: <bonita-installation>/setup/setup(.sh/.bat) push

  7. Stop Bonita Community platform with <bonita-installation>/stop-bonita(.sh/.bat) script. Do not remove the WAR file before stopping Tomcat, or many errors would be issued in the log (See note 1 for explanations)

  8. Remove Bonita Community Web App from <bonita-installation>/server/webapps: both bonita.war and the auto-extracted folder with the same name bonita/

  9. Copy the Bonita Enterprise Web App (extracted from Bonita Enterprise bundle) where the Community version was: <bonita-installation>/server/webapps/bonita.war

  10. âš  (Optionally rename the <bonita-installation> folder with a name that does not contain anymore the word community, for clarity)

  11. Start the upgraded Bonita Runtime using <bonita-installation>/start-bonita(.sh/.bat) script

At this stage, everything is functional.

If you remove Bonita webapp folder while Tomcat is running, Tomcat server considers that the webapp should be completely unloaded and removed. It also deletes the webapp configuration file <bonita-installation>/server/conf/Catalina/localhost/bonita.xml, resulting in many errors in the log files. Hopefully, Bonita restores this file during next run of start-bonita(.sh/.bat) script.

The upgrade is now finished, you can verify that you are now running an Enterprise edition in the Super Administrator application; the edition displayed in the "BPM Services" page should indicate Enterprise edition.

Once you have started Bonita Enterprise Runtime at least once, you can pull your Enterprise configuration (<install>/setup/setup(.sh/.bat) pull) and change the Enterprise-specific configuration files to match your needs. See Bonita Runtime setup tool for details about how to apply configuration changes.

Bonita Applications

Starting with Bonita 2021.2, Bonita Portal has been replaced with Bonita Applications. In Enterprise edition, an additional application for administrators is available for manual import - Bonita Administrator Application.

Here are the steps to follow :

  1. Go to <bonita-installation>/server/webapps/bonita/WEB-INF/classes/org/bonitasoft/web/application/.

  2. Unzip the file bonita-admin-application-sp-7.x.y.zip. You should have an xml and a png file.

  3. Connect to the bonita platform using a super administrator user.

  4. Go to applications, import the xml file.

  5. âš  (Optionally, click on more details of your newly imported application, and import the png file as logo)

  6. âš  (Optionally, delete the community version of the administrator application to avoid unnecessary confusion)

Downgrade

Downgrading to Bonita Community edition means you will not be able to use Bonita Enterprise edition features anymore, so a prerequisite is to ensure you do not use any of these features before downgrading. Neither in your processes, nor in the Runtime settings.

Bonita Studio

To downgrade an Enterprise edition of Bonita Studio and its resources (such as process diagrams, data models), follow these steps:

  1. Install a Bonita Studio Community edition.

  2. If you are using GIT, clone your project, it will be downgraded during the clone operation

  3. if you are not using GIT

    1. Export your projects from the Bonita Studio Enterprise edition to .bos archives. We recommend that you keep those archives as a backup.

    2. Import your .bos archives into the Community edition of Bonita Studio.

The downgrade is performed automatically and silently when importing resources into Bonita Studio Community edition.

If you want to import a project built with Bonita Enterprise edition from Git, you just need to clone the project from GitHub in Bonita Studio Community edition.

Bonita Runtime

To downgrade a Bonita Runtime from an Enterprise edition to a Community edition, follow these steps:

  1. Download and unzip the Bonita Community bundle (to retrieve the bonita.war Web App later)

  2. Stop Bonita Enterprise Runtime with <bonita-installation>/stop-bonita(.sh/.bat) script. Do not remove the WAR file before stopping Tomcat, or many errors would be issued in the log (See note 1 for explanations)

  3. Remove Bonita Enterprise Web App from <bonita-installation>/server/webapps: both bonita.war and the auto-extracted folder with the same name bonita/

  4. Copy the Bonita Community Web App (extracted from Bonita Community bundle) where the Enterprise version was: <bonita-installation>/server/webapps/bonita.war

  5. âš  (Optionally rename the <bonita-installation> folder with a name that does not contain anymore the word subscription or enterprise, for clarity)

  6. Start the downgraded Bonita Runtime using <bonita-installation>/start-bonita(.sh/.bat) script

The downgrade is now finished, you can verify that you are now running a Community edition in the Super Administrator application; the edition displayed in the "BPM Services" page should indicate Community edition.

You should also ensure that there are no errors in the log file, referencing Enterprise features.