Upgrade Sitecore 8.2 XP Database to Sitecore 10.2 XM Database

Question

This question is related to the upgrade approach of the Sitecore Database. There are plenty of documents available on Sitecore and other blog posts and articles about How to upgrade the Sitecore database, but this is different.

I have an application in Sitecore 8.2 XP and it needs to be migrated on Sitecore 10.2 XM, please focus on instance XM instead of XP.

Sitecore 8.2 XP instance launchpad as below:

Sitecore 10.2 XM instance launchpad as below:

I have upgraded the Database using the SQL scripts provided by Sitecore here and now my Sitecore 10.2 XM instance launchpad as below:

Can anyone please guide how can I get rid of these icons and options under the Marketing Application section?

Note:

1. I have not published code yet on the Sitecore 10.2 XM instance, I have attached only the upgraded Database. So there are no config and other changes.
2. I have also run the Sitecore UpdateApp Tool, after upgrading the database.

Answer 1

To get rid of the Marketing Applications buttons on the Sitecore launchpad, we can switch to the core database through the Sitecore desktop, then go to the item path

/sitecore/client/Applications/Launchpad/PageSettings/Buttons/Marketing

From here, we can delete the entire Marketing subtree. After doing this, the instance will automatically restore a child item Forms, which is expected because XM still allows users to use this feature. To understand more about this, Sitecore recommends this article:
https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/sitecore-xp-feature-compatibility-in-xm-scaled-packages.html.

Unfortunately, Sitecore does not have any simple steps to recommend to completely get rid of all analytics and marketing items from our databases. The above-suggested step only helps to hide the buttons, which should be enough to prevent our instance from running into any error related to Marketing and Analytics.

Some other ways we can try:

1. If we did not add any custom item to your core database, then we can simply consider discarding the old core database and using the new core database which came with your fresh XM installation.
2. If we have custom items in the core database, we can try to add them into an item package using package designer (accessible from the desktop), which allows for creating item packages from core database items. Then, install the item package on your new XM core DB.

I have used the Sitecore Razl: Tool for Compare and Merge the database and find out the customization into the core DB.

For more details about the Sitecore Razl refer to the documentation: https://hedgehogdevelopment.github.io/razl/comparing.html

Note: I raised the support ticket to Sitecore and there is no documented and tested upgrade path from XP to XM, unfortunately, Sitecore doesn't have such SQL scripts.

Answer 2

Please try adding a patch file to disable xDB.

Change the Xdb.Enabled and Xdb.Tracking.Enabled settings to false.

https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/93/platform-administration-and-architecture/enable-disable-the-xdb-and-the-tracker.html

Please see example patch file to switch off xDB here:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <settings>
        <setting name="Xdb.Enabled" value="false" />
        <setting name="Xdb.Tracking.Enabled" value="false" />
    </settings>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

EDIT 21/09/22

Apologies but I didnt have time to respond previously. I can see you have accepted answer, so may not need this anymore. But here it is anyway!

In your question, you ask how to remove those buttons from the dashboard. Please see screenshots below, which show an XP installation before and after the patch file I suggested above be applied.

As you can see with the screen shot below, applying the patch removes exactly the buttons that you mention in your question.

Answer 3

You will need to clean up the content databases: Because all the default items have been moved into resource files, you must remove them from your databases. Database clean-up is a one-time operation.

The Sitecore.UpdateApp tool removes these items, if they have not been modified, from the Core, Master, and Web databases. If you have modified these items, they are not removed and the tool adds a list of them to its log file.

To clean up the content databases:

1. On the Sitecore Launchpad, open the Control Panel, in the Database section, click Clean up databases, select all the databases, and then click Clean.
2. Locate the Sitecore.UpdateApp 1.2.0 for Sitecore X.X.X rev XXXXXX.zip file and extract its contents to a folder, for example, C:\Sitecore.UpdateApp
3. Copy the license file to the Data folder of the tool, for example, C:\Sitecore.UpdateApp\Data\license.xml.
4. In the C:\Sitecore.UpdateApp\App_Config\ConnectionStrings.config file, update the connections to your databases. If you do not have a security database, use the connection to the core database.
5. Open a Command Prompt in the tool folder and run:

Sitecore.UpdateApp.exe clean

The number of items that are removed from each database is listed in the Command Prompt window.

6. To clear the caches, open the <instance_url>\sitecore\admin\cache.aspx page, click Refresh and then click Clear.

All the above steps are mentioned in this guide: (Step 3.1.3)