Omicron Llama

Coding all day, every day.

SharePoint 2013 “Cumulative” Updates Confusion

The August 2014 Cumulative Update for Microsoft SharePoint is apparently not that cumulative, as it doesn’t contain every change of every component since SP1. But apparently Stefan Gossner claims it is (the official word on this is here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/archive/2014/08/19/sharepoint-patching-demystified.aspx). I had to read this article three times to fully understand why it’s cumulative. And it kinda makes sense but I had to twist my mind a little bit for it to make sense.

This is the article that attempted to explain it, but had to re-read three times:

http://redmondmag.com/articles/2014/08/19/sharepoint-patch-process.aspx

Let’s use SP1 as a starting point, from when it was re-released in April 2014, and let’s imagine a timeline of updates.

These examples reference Excel and PerformancePoint, purely for illustrative purposes, and are not truly representative of what was updated in these updates, or what will be updated in future.

Now in July, let us assume that something was fixed in Excel Services and PerformancePoint Services in June

Let’s assume that in August, there was an update for PerformancePoint but NOT Excel Services. If you installed SP1 then the August update, you won’t get the Excel Services update!

But, let’s say in September 2014’s update, Excel WAS updated again, along with PerformancePoint, then you WILL get the update that was included in June 2014. And in that respect, the update is cumulative.

Hope that makes sense to anyone else that was confused! As always, RTFM whenever an update is released, and let us hope this doesn’t mean that environments will need to be patched every single month when a CU comes out (yep, they’re now monthly), as that means almost continuous testing and rollout of updates!

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