transfer of large datafile Oracle7.3.4.4 databases to 8.1.7.1.3

Has anyone successfully transferred large datafile Oracle databases from Oracle7.3. to 8.1.7? By large datafile database I mean a database that has files over 2G in size. This may not apply to all, it may apply only to those who extended the files beyond 2G. Just curious, since many of you appear to have made thet move from Oracle 7.3.4. to 8.1.6. or 8.1.7..

Here we did a full export of the db (Tru64 UNIX), ftp'ed it to another server (NT 4), then ran the 8.1.7 import to re-create the users and other global information. I aborted the import when the import started to create tables. Then I deleted user accounts I didn't need on the development database, and did a user import for the schemas that I needed. Using SQL I then re-created all the public synonyms, since the import utility did not re-create those.

However the Change Manager tells me that the SYSTEM tablespace doesn't exist in the new database. Meanwhile the new database is open, and we can query from it. All the accounts appear to be accessible. Some objects (packages, procedures, views) are invalid, but not many. The developers are now going through twelve packages and one procedure that did not compile successfully, probably due to tightening of the code standards.

Anyway when I run the import utility in show=y mode, I see in the import SQL code something that I saw last year: create tablespace statements with datafile sizes that are 1.7 billion Gigabytes. <grin> We don't have enough disk to hold that much data, and besides I don't think that NT can support files that size. I know that UNIX can't.

e.g. "CREATE TABLESPACE "USERS" DATAFILE '/oracle2/oradata/xxxxxx/users01.dbf' SI"
"ZE 18446744073608888320 DEFAULT STORAGE (INITIAL 40960 NEXT 40960
MIN"
"EXTENTS 1 MAXEXTENTS 505 PCTINCREASE 0) ONLINE PERMANENT"
Last year Oracle Support told me to pre-create the tablespaces, do the full import, and ignore the error reports during the import. They said that because the tablespaces do exist, import will produce an error but it will move on and do its thing. Given that I am creating new databases and we wish to migrate our major production databases, I would much prefer it if there were no errors anywhere. Another issue with this bug is that when the import utility goes berserk, it also imports SYS objects during full imports. Maybe that wasn't a big problem when the data dictionary was of the same version and we imported a full database into an empty one, but in this case the Oracle version is different. What a mess this could become.

Change Manager does report differences between SYS objects in the older Oracle 7.3. database and the new 8.1.7 database, but I haven't gone through them all one by one to compare the columns, etc.. Neither have I gone through the list of data dictionary views to ensure that those that are different from Oracle7 DO show up as different in Change Manager.

We did find some Designer structures in the new database's SYS schema however. This tells me that import may have tried to overwrite other SYS schema structures (? Not sure).

I wonder if the error is caused by the Oracle7.3. export utility, by the rdbms engine on that old version, or if it is still a bug in 8.1.7..

I logged a TAR with Oracle, but haven't heard back from them yet. They asked me to do a database-to-database comparison in Change Manager, instead of doing a database-to-baseline or baseline-to-baseline comparison (which I have done, both report "missing" objects and tablespaces).

We are considering what our options are at this point. Pre-creating all the objects and then importing user by user doesn't sound good to me. Likewise with the migrate utility, if the problem is with the rdbms engine, it won't work either.

I could do a full import in rows=n mode I suppose, to see what would happen then. The error appears to be in the import code, however.

Oracle no longer fixes bugs in Oracle 7.3.4., they will not fix this problem in the older version.

Regards,
Patrice Boivin
Systems Analyst (Oracle Certified DBA)

Systems Admin & Operations | Admin. et Exploit. des systèmes
Technology Services        | Services technologiques
Informatics Branch         | Direction de l'informatique 
Maritimes Region, DFO      | Région des Maritimes, MPO

E-Mail: boivinp_at_mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca <mailto:boivinp_at_mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca>

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Author: Boivin, Patrice J
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