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Upgrade Guide to ReportServer 5.0.0
In this guide we describe how to upgrade ReportServer installations to the latest ReportServer 5.0.0 version. This upgrade guide is valid for ReportServer installations 4.0.0 and higher. This tutorial is valid both for Enterprise and Community versions, as well as for manual and installer package installations.
If you want to perform a new installation check here: Linux or Windows.
Backup all your data before upgrading.
In order to use ReportServer 5.0 with Oracle, the following jars (or newer versions) are needed: ojdbc6.jar, orai18n.jar, xdb6.jar and xmlparserv2.jar. These are needed because of the new XML/JSON support. Please download and copy them to the WEB-INF/lib directory. Note: we recommend to use ojdbc7.jar or newer because of this jdbc driver incompatibility with null parameters in BIRT reports.
Default configuration files are created on first run of ReportServer. Later, when upgrading ReportServer to a newer version, it is probable that newly added configuration files will be missing (i.e. all configuration files added between the version originally installed and the version upgraded to). You can use the "diffconfigfiles" command for finding out these configuration files, check the Administration Guide for details. Note that default values are used for configuration files that are not found.
The Upgrade in a Nutshell
The upgrade basically consists of replacing the webapp files of ReportServer, that is, the files under TOMCAT/webapps/reportserver (or TOMCAT/webapps/ROOT, depending on your installation) are removed and the freshly downloaded files are copied there instead.
In ReportServer 5 we also use Java 21 or higher. That means we also have to configure a higher java configuration too.
In the following we explain the upgrade in detail
Preconditions
In this upgrade guide we assume that you are working with an externalized configuration directory as described in Chapter 5 of the configuration guide. We are also assuming that you use Tomcat as application server. If you are not yet using an external configuration directory, this is a good point to change your setup. As for this upgrade, the main difference is that you do not need to worry about your configuration changes, but can simply do a one-step copy and paste upgrade.
For Bitnami users: We here describe how to upgrade ReportServer without upgrading the entire Bitnami stack.
The Upgrade
To upgrade ReportServer, follow these steps.
- Download the newest version of ReportServer 5.0.0
- Stop your ReportServer instance.
- Go to the webapps directory of Tomcat and there to the directory in which ReportServer is installed. If you used the Bitnami installer this is
INSTALLATION DIRECTORY/apache-tomcat/webapps/reportserver
If you followed the installation tutorial this would be
TOMCAT DIRECTORY/webapps/ROOT
To check that you have the right folder confirm that this folder contains amongst others a file called ReportServer.html and a folder called ddl.
- Clear out the above folder, that is, remove the entire contents. If you do not use external configuration, all your drivers will be deleted, since the whole directory is being replaced by the downloaded one. Backup them to easily add them later. These are found on the WEB-INF/lib directory of your reportserver installation.
- Unzip ReportServer and copy everything to the now empty folder. The structure should be identical to before, that is, you should once more find a file called ReportServer.html and a folder called ddl.
- Completely delete your browser's cache (including all temporary internet files!!!) to ensure you will get the newest files. If you get any error of this type: "Type 'net.datenwerke.rs.base.client.dbhelper.dto.DatabaseHelperDto' was not assignable to 'com.google.gwt.user.client.rpc.IsSerializable' and did not have a custom field serializer.For security purposes, this type will not be serialized.: instance = net.datenwerke.rs.base.client.dbhelper.dto.DatabaseHelperDto@62cbf40f at com.google.gwt.user.server.rpc.impl.ServerSerializationStreamWriter.serialize(ServerSerializationStreamWriter.java:667)" you have to delete all browser's cache including all temporary internet files.
- now install the new Java Version 21 and use it for ReportServer. On Linux:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt install openjdk-21-jdk
$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.21.0-openjdk-amd64 /usr/lib/jvm/default-java
- Check the tomcat configuration
With Java 21 our old trahshandler dosnt work anymore. Thats why we have to delete it in our tomcat configuration
Replace --> JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx4g -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -Dfile.encoding=UTF8"
With --> JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx4g -Dfile.encoding=UTF8"
- Start up Tomcat
This completes the Upgrade to the latest ReportServer 5.0 version. To ensure that installation was successful have a look at your Tomcat log files. Startup should look similar to the following
_____ _ _____ ______ _ _
| __ \ | | / ____| | ____| | | (_)
| |__) |___ _ __ ___ _ __| |_| (___ ___ _ ____ _____ _ __ | |__ _ __ | |_ ___ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ ___ ___
| _ // _ \ '_ \ / _ \| '__| __|\___ \ / _ \ '__\ \ / / _ \ '__| | __| | '_ \| __/ _ \ '__| '_ \| '__| / __|/ _ \
| | \ \ __/ |_) | (_) | | | |_ ____) | __/ | \ V / __/ | | |____| | | | || __/ | | |_) | | | \__ \ __/
|_| \_\___| .__/ \___/|_| \__|_____/ \___|_| \_/ \___|_| |______|_| |_|\__\___|_| | .__/|_| |_|___/\___|
| | | |
|_| |_|
Version: RS5.0.VERSION
Code Version: 2025-06-18-09-20-45 Java Version: Ubuntu OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM 21.0.8+9-Ubuntu-0ubuntu122.04.1 (21)
VM Args: --add-opens=java.base/java.net=ALL-UNNAMED --add-opens=java.base/jdk.internal.ref=ALL-UNNAMED --add-opens=java.base/jdk.internal.reflect=ALL-UNNAMED --add-opens=java.base/java.lang.invoke=ALL-UNNAMED --add-opens=java.base/java.util=ALL-UNNAMED --add-opens=java>Max memory: 4 GB
Groovy Version: 4.0.26
JVM Locale: de_DE
JVM user language: de
JVM user country: DE
JVM user timezone: Etc/UTC
JVM file encoding: UTF8
JVM server time: 2025-08-18T06:41:57.775070717Z[Etc/UTC]
Operation system: Linux 5.15.0-151-generic (amd64)
rs.configdir: /opt/reportserver (OK)
### DB Config ###
hibernate.dialect: net.datenwerke.rs.utils.hibernate.MySQL5Dialect (OK)
hibernate.connection.driver_class: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver (OK)
hibernate.connection.url: jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1:3309/bitnami_reportserver (OK)
hibernate.connection.username: bn_reportserver
hibernate.connection.password: **********
hibernate.default_schema:
Connection Test: OK
Schema Version: RS3.0-29
The schema version is:
Schema Version: RS3.0-29
Adapt Internal Configuration
An optional step is to adapt the internal configuration files located in ReportSever's file server (folder etc). For an overview of the changes see here.
Upgrade/Install Demo Data
A final optional step is to install or upgrade your existing demo data. For this, check this link. This step will delete all your existing data in the system.
Happy Reporting