Merged two update sets and now I'm in real trouble

[ewilks]

I have two update sets in my DEV system (Let's call them "Update A" and "Update B").   They were created by two different developers but are part of the same release.   I decided that I would try to migrate "Update A" first and then "Update B".   When I got "Update A" to my test environment, there were some errors (14 of them).   I figured that the problem could be that some development happened in "Update B" while "Update A" was being created, so I decided to merge them.   This despite being told that I should NEVER merge update sets.

Well, I went ahead and merged them into update set, "Update AB" and retrieved that update set to my TEST environment.   Then I previewed this update set and got 12 of the 14 errors that I got when migrating "Update A".   But this time, I got another 54 warnings.   Many of them refer to tables that aren't available, but that I could find them in "Update A".   Again, I used "Update A" to create "Update AB", so why wouldn't this be a part of the new update set?  

Moreover, I went back to my Dev environment and saw that "Update A" has been cleared of all but 4 of its 250 updates.   Why wouldn't all of those updates be moved into "Update AB".  

Back to the TEST environment and Ran Preview on "Update AB" and went through each of the errors, accepting the updates.   But I still have all of these warnings.   I open each and try to figure out what they are, but few of them make any sense to me and most of them refers to "Update A" as the source of the problem.  

Case in point, "Could not find a record in sys_security_acl referenced in this update, but did find it in another uncommitted update set".   This other update set is "Update A".   And when I look at the code in "Update A" it refers to table "sys_security_acl" while the code in "Update AB" it refers to "sys_security_acl_role".   Obviously not the same update.

So, basically, I have a month+ of work gone.  

Anyone advice on what I should do?

1. Can I unmerge the update sets?

2. I'm considering recovering the backup for my DEV and TEST environments from last night.   Then after that's complete, I'll migrate "Update A", accept that update set's updates that have errors and then migrate "Update B".  

Either case, I'm done with merging updates.  

[Pradeep Sharma]

Hi Eric,

I don't think you can unmerge update set once it is merged.

Re: what are prerequisites steps to takecare before migrating update set one instance to another ins...

[Chuck Tomasi]

I don't have a complete answer for you Eric, but I can answer the question "Why wouldn't all the updates from A be moved in to AB? It's likely that those four remaining ones had more recent changes to the same objects in B. When it merged it said "A has changes from Monday on this object, and B has changes to the same object on Tuesday..." guess who wins?

[ewilks]

Thanks Chuck.   Every bit helps