Re: Upgrade Experiences from Oracle 7.3.X and Oracle 8.0.X to Oracle 8i

On Fri, 23 Feb 2001 18:17:53 GMT, "Douglas Kearney" <test_at_hotmail.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>
> I have scanned the Oracle groups and haven't found much talk about
>experiences with upgrading production environments from 7.3.X or 8.0.X to
>8i.
>I have tried to get on to metalink without much luck because of it being so
>slooooow. So, this is the next step. I also noticed that upgrading is
>basically taking dumps and re-importing into 8i after server has been
>upgraded. Are their any automated steps that I have missed or am I just
>crazy?? Wait, I just crazy, this is Oracle we are speaking about. The
>platforms that I am interested in are NT,2000, and HP Unix.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>Doug K.
>
>

The doc set for Oracle 8 contains a full migration manual. All docs are online at http://technet.oracle.com (this is a different site from metalink), so you could prepare for upgrade by scanning through the migration manual.
The main concern in migration is how your applications deal with the rowid, as the format of the rowid changes in Oracle 8 (so not in Oracle 8i). If you use the rowid explicitly (other than Oracle's own internal rowid mechanisms) you need to take special precautions. In this scenario you can't use the migration tool (which converts an existing database in situ, so it upgrades the database), as the migration tool will not convert the rowids. If you use the export import route all your rowids are converted automatically. Another concern with the migration tool you will temporarily have two dictionaries located in the system tablespace. In the past space estimates of the migration tool could be wrong, this seems to have improved. Also, keep in mind using export import reorganizes your database, which may be benificial in your situation, as you can address two issues in one go.
The only thing that will strike you probably when you go from 7.3 to 8.0 (so not directly to 8i) is the lack of difference. Some Oracle instructors call 8.0 '7.4'

Hth

Sybrand Bakker, Oracle DBA Received on Fri Feb 23 2001 - 13:39:37 CST