The current upgrade process from RealWorld version 8.0, 8.6, or 9.X, to Passport version 11.7, REQUIRES a multi-step process. This means that you need to go to Passport version 11.6 first, before going on to version 11.7. There are specific steps that need to be followed along the way, and the data needs to be checked before moving to the next stage.
Normally, because of the complexity of such upgrades, CCS recommends that you have us do the upgrade work for you. Even if you choose to do the work yourself, we always recommend that you create a test directory, and do a test upgrade first, checking the data at each stage, also making a backup of the entire installation directory at each stage…
While working with one recent customer’s MIS department, they ignored this advice and hurriedly ran through the upgrade steps, skipping certain processes without checking the data at each step. This resulted in corrupted and unusable files at the completion of the process. Luckily, this was only was "test" upgrade and not the “live” one, and they had made backups at each step. This meant that the were able to just rerun the upgrade steps from Passport 11.6 to 11.7, rather than going all the way back to RealWorld version 8.6.
Starting with Passport version 11.7.9, Passport plans to have a new upgrade utility that will allow you to go directly from specific versions of RealWorld and older versions of Passport. This should make future upgrades more seamless. This utility is now in Beta testing and should be available for public distribution sometime within the next couple of months. We’ll keep up posted on this, so please check back here later for an update!