Version upgrade of Cognos Express

[ram3sh]

Could anyone please help in this regard...

We have a plan to upgrade Cognos Express 9.0 to 9.5 or later @ my work place. I have no hands on how to maintain the environment and all. I am purely developing and consulting guy.

I have read from IBM docs that one have to back up the data of older version the steps involved are as follows:
Steps:
1. Insert the IBM Cognos Express 9.5 DVD or go to the location where the IBM Cognos Express 9.5 installation files were downloaded.
2. Copy the folder backup90-jar-exe to Express_9.0_installation_location\bin.
3. Open a command window and go to the Cognos Express\bin\backup90-jar-exe folder.
4. Type the following command:
ce_backup.bat
A new folder is created, for example, C:\Program Files\IBM\Cognos Express\data\express_backups\cx20101024_143754
5. Copy the backup folder to a location outside of Express_9.0_installation_location.
6. Close the command window.

My questions are:
1) Just in case if our newer version is not working properly, is there any approach to revert back to older version (since IBM says to uninstall, can any one provide me exact details how I can revert back or restore back the older version)
2) What if the back file doesnt opens or works properly in new version.
3) Since no one is there to help in installing the new version, I am one to go with; is it that simple as mentioned in the installation document(keeping in mind all the environment/system requirements for installation)

[BigG]

we installed 9.5 CX but did so on a new server so started with a clean environment (did not uninstall and reinstall over the top of the 9.0 server).

the restore from backup is part of the Express Manager set up (you do not and cannot use the command line you descibe in 9.5). The restore was successful for us from 9.0 to 9.5 so we did not have to revert back to 9.5, but I assume if your setup in 9.5 fails you would have to reinstall 9.0 and restore in 9.0.

but being in the new environment we had to move our Data directory CXMD and backup folders back to the standard location on 9.0 server (as per IBM best practice recomendation they were on an alternate drive than the C drive). This is because 9.5 does not have the command line reference for moving data directory or backup folder so we have to have 9.5 on C drive as per standard install (yes this is an oversite by IBM and they are aware of it but no fix yet). Since you are probably installing over the top, I believe it will keep the configuration you have... but just be aware of our dilema.

When we set up our new dev environment we did not use the Express Manager backup and Restore buttons in 9.5 as you have no contol over any of the CX components including security, so since we only needed CXMD Xcelerator data and the security/C8reports etc can be set up manually (was not a large exercise). We copied the CXMD manually to the dev location and updated the tm1s.cfg file for dev location.

[BigG]

also if you only use TM1/xcelerator in CX then take a manual copy of the CXMD folder as a precuationary measure to revert back to this in9.0 or put in place in 9.5.

Note also 9.5 has a couple new objects in the CXMD so do not delete the whole folder if you are doing the paste as per above in 9.5 upgraded CX