RE: 10gR2 for solaris (64bit), AIX and HP released

Interesting discussion. We have been running 10.1.0.4 for a while and it's proven to be at least as stable as 9.2.0.4 which was when we got off the 9i upgrade bandwagon. Opinions certainly seem to vary. Mine is that Oracle has done a pretty good job. Yes, we've had our share of bugs, one-off patches and TARs just like everyone else. However when you measure it against other transitions---e.g. Windows 2000 Server to 2003 Server, Solaris 7 to 8---it's not nearly as bad as this list sometimes makes it out to be. In fact, given the complexity involved, Oracle's QA is remarkably thorough.

Here, I think we've staffed enough on the DBA side to be able to take a few risks and I personally would rather grapple with new issues in new releases of the software than deal with workarounds for known issues in older releases. It's a DBA style, neither right nor wrong, and others play the game very differently. I believe that Oracle has continued to stay quite solid on the RDBMS products.

Now iAS, that's another story.....

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 9:07 AM To: Oracle Discussion List
Subject: RE: 10gR2 for solaris (64bit), AIX and HP released

>> Special mention of my black list:
9.2.0.6 with RAC (first time I had to roleback a patchset!).<< [rollback]

Interesting we have found 9.2.0.6 RAC on AIX to be much more stable than 9.2.0.4 or 9.2.0.5. So far (couple months) we have not ran into the system hang and crash problems that we suffered from on the lower versions. However, two one-off patches were required prior to going production. The first fixed a slow long on and very slow first run of any query problem. I cannot remember what problem the second patch fixed but both patches were AIX specific with the second being required only for RAC environments.

HTH -- Mark D Powell --

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Magni Fabrizio Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 2:39 AM To: Paul Drake
Cc: MGogala_at_allegientsystems.com; rjamya_at_gmail.com; Oracle Discussion List Subject: Re: 10gR2 for solaris (64bit), AIX and HP released

> Plan on identifying issues in your test upgrades in your test
> environment, opening iTARs as necessary and waiting for fixes. We've
> hit 4 different errors upgrading from 9.2. to
> 10.1 - some had workarounds, some didn't. Your schedule should be
> appropriately unaggressive.
>
> I'm not saying that 10.1.0.4 is buggy.
> I'm saying that upgrading from 9.2.0.5.x or 9.2.0.6 to
> 10.1.0.4 is less than perfect.
> (lets just say that its not a state function - its path dependent and
> there be dragons along that path).
>
> exp/imp into a clean db if you can.
>

Hi Paul,
as you mentioned 10g is not bugfree. I met some issues too:

ORA-600 when importing from 8.1.7.0 (during index creation), crash of the migration assistant from 9.2.0.4 to 10.1.0.4 (minor issue since I was able to use the sql scripts), listener in 10.1.0.4 sometimes freezes due to a problem in ONS registration (this is critical but a workaround does exist).

Plus some minor issues.

My new tests on 10gR2 are not so good. Several issues with datapump. ORA-600 for unknow reasons (TARs still open) and problem with buffer locks.

So far my personal list of most stable release (I never worked with anything older than 8.1.7.0):

10.1.0.4 (and 10.1.0.3), particularly on linux. 8.1.7.4 on almost every platform
9.2.0.4 (ok, I added this one only because I needed a third entry and I'll avoid this version on solaris).

Most hated one:
9.0.x (I still have one as a metadata repository of a IAS).

Special mention of my black list:
9.2.0.6 with RAC (first time I had to roleback a patchset!).

My reason for 10g migration is not due to new features but only to stability (or better: instability of previous releases).

Fabrizio

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