Some of you may have noted that Oracle/Primavera has not released one single update or upgrade for P6 client/server users for the entire year of 2012. Of course, that does not mean that there haven't been lots of bugs reported or even a few of them fixed - it just means that the company hasn't bother to release them.
The bad news is that we have a whole slew of P6 upgrades released in January 2013! I only found out because I was preparing for a P6 History presentation for the Construction CPM Conference and wanted to be sure that my last status was correct.
P6 client/server Version 7 now has Service Pack 5 out. It fixes a whole page of stuff.
P6 client/server Version 8.2 now has Service Pack 1 out. If fixes a different page full of stuff.
Now here why this is bad news: the entire upgrade is manual. You download a zip folder full of folders and several dozens of files. You get to use Windows Explorer to find the corresponding folders on your computer (around 6 different ones scattered up and down the tree) and then one-by-one replace the old file with the new file.
But wait! It gets better. Then you get to run a script against the Oracle or MS SQL database server. There is a warning in the instructions that you should not attempt this unless you know exactly what you are doing. But wait! There is more. The instructions also state that the script is too large to run using the supplied Oracle Express web-base program. You will have to use some other DOS-based program - AND THEN THEY DON'T TELL YOU HOW TO DO THAT! I had to research how to do this independently of the installation instructions.
Sadly, there's more. After only 30 days, someone noticed that the script for Version 7, SP 5 generates a bunch of errors when run. Let's all welcome P6 client/server Version 7, Service Pack 5, Fix Package 1! [big applause] It's another manual update. This time it is only 4 files to be hunted-down and replaced. And then you run a batch file.
Cheers!