Optional: Perform a Full Import

It is important here to distinguish two separate cases, each of which uses the term "full":

A full compliance calculation, which is typically associated with inventory updates from all inventory sources, and by default happens daily. After a product upgrade, full compliance calculations resume on their normal schedule.
Tip: If you are using high-frequency inventory checks for IBM PVU licenses, with FlexNet Manager Suite as the source of truth for IBM PVU sub-capacity licensing, you must complete at least one full compliance calculation after the upgrade before consumption figures and license compliance status are once again valid for IBM PVU licenses.
A full (or non-differential) import of FlexNet inventory, discussed in this topic.

In most product upgrades, a full import of the FlexNet inventory held in your staging inventory database (suggested name: FNMSInventory) to your compliance database is unnecessary. This background helps you decide whether you wish to run the full import.

Tip: If you are upgrading from any release of FlexNet Manager Suite between 2014 and 2018R1 inclusive, a full import of FlexNet inventory and a full compliance calculation are required to correctly show relationships between your installation(s) of Oracle Enterprise Manager and the database instances (and related Oracle options) that they manage.

Different parts of the inventory import processes behave in different ways appropriate to their context:

All uploads from inventory beacons to the central application server are "full" inventory uploads, since the inventory beacon does not have access to your central databases nor the ability to distinguish changed from unchanged records. Every record received by the inventory beacon is uploaded. (In the case of FlexNet inventory, collected by the FlexNet Inventory Agent in any of its forms, this full upload is staged in the FlexNet inventory database.)
Next, imports from the FlexNet inventory database to the operational compliance database are, by default, differential updates, which means that only records that were updated in the inventory database after the previous import into the compliance database are imported: for efficiency, unchanged records are not imported again. (The test is a simple comparison between the inventory date for the individual record and the date of the last import into the compliance database.)

This rhythm is highly efficient and works well, but in rare instances may cause a slight data delay after a product upgrade. It occurs only in the following uncommon set of circumstances:

Imagine that data previously staged in the FlexNet inventory database included a column (let's call it columnX) that was not included in imports to the compliance database, as it had been considered legacy data surplus to compliance requirements.
Now, in our imaginary product upgrade, to meet changing requirements columnX has been also added to the compliance database. (This is rare, in reality.)
At the next import of each inventory record from the staging inventory database to the compliance database, the last-saved value in columnX in the inventory database is automatically imported into the compliance database, just as you expect. This is the normal case and needs no intervention.
However, using the default differential update from the inventory database to the compliance database, any old and unchanged inventory record is not imported at this time, and therefore this unchanged compliance record does not receive a value in columnX. When you look at listings of inventory devices, the more recent imports do have a value in this column, and older imports do not.

You have options for dealing with this rare possibility:

You can do nothing until you observe the symptoms described in 4 above, and then run a full import of FlexNet inventory. (In most upgrades, this corner case never occurs, so doing nothing is not an impractical option.)
You can simply wait until, eventually, every inventory record is updated. As each one is imported into the compliance database, its value for columnXis automatically added, so that eventually (depending on the frequency with which you collect data from your inventory devices) the data gap self-corrects.
You can force a full import of FlexNet inventory from the staging data into the compliance database, just in case. Of course, the full import may take longer than the differential import; but you may consider this a worthwhile investment.

If you wish to force a full import of FlexNet inventory data from the staging inventory database into the compliance database, please take careful note of the following:

Identify the connection name for your FlexNet inventory database. The default connection name is FlexNet Manager Suite, and the Source Type is ManageSoft.
The full import is triggered from your batch server (or, in smaller implementations, the server hosting that functionality).
You must be logged in as a user with administrator privileges on that server.
The following command must be entered at the Windows Command Prompt (and specifically, this is not for use within a PowerShell window).
Take careful note of the format of the command line shown below. The three dashes and the tripled double-quotation marks are not typographical errors, and are required. However, the command line has been broken over multiple lines for publication, and you should enter it all on one line.
When all conditions are met, use the following command line (all on one line), replacing the placeholder connectionName with the name you gave the connection to your FlexNet inventory database:
```
BatchProcessTaskConsole.exe 
     run InventoryImportReaders ---f 
     -it Readers 
     -s """connectionName"""
```

The full import is run (and may take some time, depending on the number of additional aged inventory records that are imported). Thereafter the additional data from the inventory database is present for all records in the compliance database, and is visible in the web interface of FlexNet Manager Suite.