Installing patches has been made easier in IBM UrbanCode Build 6.1.2.3

A cumulative patch for IBM UrbanCode Build is typically a ZIP file, for example: ibm-ucb-6.1.2.0-cumulative-825828_2016-09-15.zip. The patch name includes the release the fix applies to and the date of the fix. The example patch is for version 6.1.2.0 and created on September 9, 2016. It can be applied to any IBM UrbanCode Build 6.1.2.x server, such as 6.1.2.0, 6.1.2.1 or 6.1.2.2. However, it can’t be applied to 6.1.1.x or 6.1.3.x.
Included in the ZIP file are the following files:

  • README
  • patch-6.1.2.0.log
  • ibm-ucb-6.1.2.0-cumulative-825828_2016-09-15-web-patch.zip
  • ibm-ucb-6.1.2.0-cumulative-825828_2016-09-15-patch.jar


Notice that inside the cumulative patch ZIP file there is another ZIP file and a JAR file. These two files are the patch contents that need to be deployed to the server.

  • ibm-ucb-6.1.2.0-cumulative-825828_2016-09-15-web-patch.zip
  • ibm-ucb-6.1.2.0-cumulative-825828_2016-09-15-patch.jar


For both the new and old patch application processes, you must decompress the cumulative patch ZIP file to have access to the ZIP and JAR file that contain the patch.
Let’s compare the two processes. We will assume that the cumulative patch ZIP file has been downloaded and decompressed into a directory which is C:\ucb-server.

Old New
  1. Stop the server.
  2. Put the JAR file in the C:\ucb-server\patches directory.
  3. Create a backup of the C:\ucb-server\opt\tomcat\webapps\ROOT directory.
  4. Extract the contents of the ZIP file into the C:\ucb-server\opt\tomcat\webapps\ROOT directory. Click Yes when prompted to overwrite existing files.
  5. Delete the C:\ucb-server\opt\tomcat\work directory.
  6. Start the server again.
  1. Stop the server.
  2. Put the JAR file in the C:\ucb-server\patches directory.
  3. Put the ZIP in the C:\ucb-server\patches\web directory.
  4. Start the server again.


You probably noticed that the main difference is having to make a backup of the ROOT directory and extracting the ZIP file into the ROOT directory. This is a major improvement, in that you no longer should be concerned with manually backing up and restoring the ROOT directory when applying a patch. Preserving previous data is handled by the server when starting the server.
Should something go wrong, backing out of a patch is as simple as applying a patch:

  1. Stop the server.
  2. Remove the JAR file from server/patches directory.
  3. Remove the ZIP file from server/patches/web directory.
  4. Start the server again.


Important: Ensure that only one set of patch files is applied to a server at any given time, having multiple active patches might cause CLASSPATH conflicts.

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