This also happens in Jira. IMO it is nuts that the database and other MS SQL options are not Flagged during the setup. This give a poor customer experience as they need to uninstall everything and recreate the database. For that matter, why can't the setup create the database with all the right setting?

Hey g.beraudo,

If you check in 5.5.3 release notes you will see that the BUG CONF-33003 was fixed and hence customers who try to upgrade to 5.5.3 will get their upgrade blocked in case of database inconsistencies:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Confluence+5.5.3+Release+Notes

Regarding this point:

Does that mean that - for legacy customers - it is safe to upgrade and be blocked at 5.5.2 until an official release includes the 'collation changer tool' as part of the upgrade process. This is the situation at my company: after facing troubles with latest released, we upgrade to the latest version which did not complain with our (not good anylonger) collation.

If it safe to upgrade to version 5.5.2, if you did not changed the collation at the server level before doing the upgrade, if you did that have have columns with mixed collations (CI and CS) then your upgrade will break due to a different issue .

manish.tiwari, ads12042 and g.beraudo

Honestly speaking I don't believe we will be able to deliver a built in fix for this issue (not so soon at least), confluence does have a set of primary tables that are the same for all installations however we also use AO tables (which might be different from instance to instance) and due that is more complicated that it looks .

We made some research around and we came up with below KB:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/How+to+fix+the+collation+and+character+set+of+a+Microsoft+SQL+Server+database

It contains a built in way on MSSQL to fix the collation without depending on third party tools, the only cons of the above method is that you will need enough space to clone your entire database, excluding that the steps are quite easy and is more efficient than then regular collation changer tool?

Thanks and Regards,
David|Confluence Support Engineer

Hi All,

We need the upgrade to fix some other issues with 5.4.4 but due to collation issue can't, comments from DBA that it is not easy/ preferable to change the collation due to dependencies, I am expecting some solutions from Atlassian on this. Looking at the size of database we have it's always a risk to use a 3rd party collation update tool or any other method( like , create db backup> drop database> create new database with updated collation> restore database.

Thanks,
Manish

Still no changes in this issue for the last 2 months, why is that ? When I tried to upgrade from 5.1.4 to 5.7 in my test environmment, imagine my not so welcome surprise with this problem. Arrg, the DBA tells me it is not so simple to fix this because it is not standard to change the collation. Any intention on your part to include a "fix" with the next version ??

Hey @dluvision,
Regarding "The change on the collation is from Confluence 3.5 and we added a note regarding the upgrade blocker being fixed on 5.5.3".
I (we) do not share your point of view. We upgraded to 5.5.2 with the wrong collation, without any Confluence complaints.
The blocking change - from a migration point of view - is starting at 5.5.3.
I have rechecked the 5.5.3 release note nor upgrade note; I do not find any clear mention of this blocking upgrade change in the collation checker.

Does that mean that - for legacy customers - it is safe to upgrade and be blocked at 5.5.2 until an official release includes the 'collation changer tool' as part of the upgrade process. This is the situation at my company: after facing troubles with latest released, we upgrade to the latest version which did not complain with our (not good anylonger) collation.
Regards,
Gilles

Hey david.grierson1

As I replied in our other page I don't believe that will happen (99% sure), it's a fact that version 4.3 will go EOL but the collation conflict usually screw up during upgrades and functions on Confluence 4 series (or when creating pages on Confluence 3.5 series). In case you have problems regarding upgrading Confluence we will give you all the support to upgrade to a supported version (even if in staging) and then troubleshoot any functions that are not working properly.

Thanks and Regards,
David|Confluence Support Engineer

In light of this issue and the resulting issues which large numbers of customers are having with fixing their collation issues it would be appropriate to adjust the Atlassian Support End of Life Policy for Confluence 4.3 beyond it imminent expiry at the end of January 2015.

Could someone from Atlassian please comment on whether this will be happening or not?

dbrossart,

The change on the collation is from Confluence 3.5 and we added a note regarding the upgrade blocker being fixed on 5.5.3:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Confluence+5.5.3+Release+Notes

Although I do agree we could send a better warning regarding that. The error you mentioned might be some template or customization problem, which is not related to the database collation change, please raise a support ticket at support.atlassian.com so that can be better analysed.

Thanks and Regards,
David|Confluence Support Engineer

I ran that collation changer tool and it appeared to work successfully, however when starting Confluence it said that I needed to set the database to READ_COMMITTED. I did that, but now it's asking for a license. I tried applying the license by clicking the link in the error page, but it won't take it. $soyTemplateRendererHelper.getRenderedTemplateHtml("com.atlassian.auiplugin:aui-experimental-soy-templates", "aui.message.error.soy", {"content" : $error, "id" : "${fieldname}-error"})

I guess I'll waste more time getting this going. It's a little ridiculous that users are having to go through these steps to upgrade and there isn't even a mention of the change to collation on the Confluence upgrade page.

Hey sperdomo I'm afraid that is not possible, the previous versions worked because the checker were broken, the case sensitive of the collation is necessary to confluence architecture we know that it wasnt in there before however new core features were added which depends on that sensitivity in 5 series like the user mapping table.

The comments in here are the ones our dev's will see and as always please continue to add your thoughts in this ticket, the relevance of those comments are really important to continue to improve confluence.

We are also studying a way to generate some standard scripts to do a procedure similar to the collation changer tool, the conversion will takes time depending on the database size (in this aspect there is no other way around) once we are able to develop and fully test that I will update it our customers trough that page right away (you have my word on that).

Thanks and Regards,
David|Confluence Support Engineer| The SQL Server Guy