Upgrading from Mendix Studio Pro 9 to 10
Introduction
Mendix Studio Pro 10 is a major version release that provides powerful tools for building your apps and brings a host of improvements and fixes. For the full list of changes, see the Studio Pro 10 release notes.
Upgrading from Studio Pro 9 to 10
The sections below describe how to upgrade from Studio Pro 9 to Studio Pro 10.
Mendix recommends reviewing the Breaking Changes section of the Studio Pro 10.0 release notes as well as the updated System Requirements.
Before upgrading your app to Mendix 10, ensure the app is successfully migrated from your Team Server to Git. Starting from Mendix 10, Git is the only supported Team Server. Mendix 10 will neither recognize nor open apps hosted on SVN Team Servers.
Upgrading from Older Versions of Studio Pro
If your app is on a Studio Pro version below 9, you must upgrade in order of version. This means you must go from 7 to 8 (see details in Moving from Desktop Modeler Version 7 to Studio Pro 8), 8 to 9 (see details in Moving from Mendix Studio Pro 8 to 9), then 9 to 10.
If your app is running on Mendix Cloud, you can check what version the app is currently on by referring to the Control Center dashboard. Alternatively, contact your Customer Success Manager to find out how to check the Mendix version of your app.
Backing Up Your App
Make sure you have either committed your latest changes to Team Server, or created a backup of your local app before you start the conversion.
Preparing Your App in Studio Pro 9.24
It is recommended to prepare your app in Studio Pro 9.24 first to be able to upgrade it to Mendix 10.
To prepare your app in Studio Pro 9.24, follow these steps:
- Download the latest patch release of Studio Pro 9.24.
- Open your app in Studio Pro 9.24.
- Allow Studio Pro to update and convert the app.
- Run your app, test all functionality, and ensure it works without error.
- Fix any depreciation warnings you see in development in Studio Pro, as well as in the Mendix Runtime using your console and browser console.
- Review your app in combination with the sections below and assess if further action is needed before upgrading to Studio Pro 10.
- Before upgrading to Mendix 10, ensure your app’s Team Server is migrated to Git (as explained above).
- Back up or commit your 9.24 app so you can return to it if necessary.
Your app is now ready to be upgraded to Mendix 10. You can now close the app in Studio Pro 9.
Upgrading to Studio Pro 10
Open your app in Studio Pro 10 and allow Studio Pro to update and convert your app to version 10. Mendix will update your app automatically.
Review all error messages and messages about deprecated items and make changes where necessary.
Upgrading Widgets, Modules, and Marketplace Components
To minimize the chance of problems, update all the widgets, modules, and other Marketplace components your app uses to the latest version.
Check if there is a newer version of your component available in the Marketplace. Read the version release notes in the Marketplace to see if you need to perform specific actions when upgrading.
Be sure to update these key widgets, resources, and actions:
In general, you should not remove and re-import modules unless this is recommended in the component’s release notes. If you do remove and re-import a component, you may lose data or configuration related to the component.
Reviewing and Testing Your App
Review the sections below and ensure you have made all the changes necessary. Test the app for any unexpected results.
Notable and Breaking Changes
Legacy Scheduled Events
Legacy scheduled events (namely, those that are non-repeating or have a start time) are no longer supported. These were already visible as a deprecation warning in Studio Pro 9 and has now changed to an error. The error describes the issue and how to fix it. The Mendix Runtime will fail to start if legacy scheduled events exist.
Mendix Runtime API Changes
Most of the Mendix Runtime Java API calls that were deprecated in Mendix 9 have been removed. If you were still using such methods in your Java actions, you must replace or delete them. To check which calls were deprecated, see the Mendix 9 Runtime API.
Refer to the Studio Pro 10 release notes for more Mendix Runtime API change details.
XPath Query Engine Updates
With Studio Pro 9, we introduced a new query engine. During that introduction, some behavior changed (as described in the XPath Query Engine 9 section of Moving from Mendix Studio Pro 8 to 9).
In Studio Pro 10, there are some improvements to consistency and behavior:
- Ranges that are collections of ranges are handled correctly. Prior to Studio Pro 10, the processing stopped at a
NULLvalue in a collection (and did not process any range after that). - In Studio Pro 9 and below, long paths in the conditions of outer joins did not work correctly and yielded an incorrect result. This was because the predicate was moved from the
ONclause to theWHEREclause. As of Studio Pro 10, it is prohibited to use associations in theONclause of an outerJOIN(meaning,LEFT JOIN,RIGHT JOIN, orFULL JOIN). - Prior to Studio Pro 10, the operator in a binary expression with a collection or range as (right-hand) operand was ignored. Regardless of the operator, it was interpreted as
IN. As of Studio Pro 10, this is no longer the case, and an exception is thrown for all operators other thanINor=. Note this includes!=, which is not supported.
Range Expressions
The following function invocations are always True or False:
- Comparisons to
RANGEBEGINwith a range having aNULLlower bound - Comparisons to
RANGEENDwith a range having aNULLupper bound INwith an infinite range (meaning,NULLfor both lower and upper bound)
Prior to Studio Pro 10, these functions were removed from a predicate, which was not always correct. For example, predicate OR attribute > RANGEBEGIN((NULL, 42)) is equivalent to predicate OR True, which is not the same as just predicate (with the range function removed).
As of Studio Pro 10, the tautology range functions are no longer removed, but are substituted by True or False. Subsequently, the expressions are optimized where possible (for example, x OR True becomes True, x AND False becomes False, and NOT(True) becomes False).
Workflow Domain Model Changes
In Studio Pro 10, we added a new feature called multi-user tasks. This feature makes it possible for a user task to have multiple assignees. For that to be possible, we renamed the WorkflowUserTask_Assignee association to WorkflowUserTask_Assignees to suggest that there can be multiple assignees now. This association will now be a reference set.
If you use the Workflow Commons module in your project, you will have to upgrade the module to v3.0.0 or later due to this change. In addition, you need to execute the migration microflow ACT_Assignee_Migration (available from the WorkflowAdminCenter page) or add the ASu_Assignee_Migrate microflow to the after startup microflow of your project.
User task pages that were generated in an earlier version of Studio Pro also need to be updated. The conditional visibility based on whether the current user is assigned is no longer supported. You will see a consistency error for any outcome button that is using the visibility expression. For each button, set the visibility to Always.
DOM Structure Changes
Studio Pro 10 introduces DOM structure changes to the web client to ensure compatibility with future versions of React.
A div[data-widget-wrapper] element is placed around a React widget if its container is rendered as a Dojo widget, while the extra script element for such widgets has been removed. This added div element should not affect the page layout directly (as it uses display: contents), but it may affect the CSS styling that relies on direct child (>), sibling (+), or nth-child selectors.
These changes may impact your current styling.
If your application is currently using the Atlas theme, this is easily solved by upgrading Atlas Core to version 3.11 or above. Otherwise, adjust your css selectors accordingly.
Moving Away from Glyphicon
In Studio Pro 10, the glyphicon is slowly being phased out. Although a currently selected glyphicon will still work, some of the widgets that Studio Pro 10 uses are no longer using a glyphicon class name.
If your application is currently using the Atlas theme, this is easily solved by upgrading Atlas Core to version 3.11 or above. Otherwise, a possible workaround for this is to manually add the Atlas icons module to your app.