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Re: Multiple Homes & Oracle Patch Testing

From: Karsten Farrell <kfarrell_at_medimpact.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 20:42:53 GMT
Message-ID: <hRDt9.28$WV1.4688911@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com>


Glen Moffitt wrote:
> I am fairly new to Oracle DB's (have done much more MS SQL stuff).
> The client currently has an Oracle 8.0.5 db on a production server.
> We're building an 8i system on a new server. Client wants four
> instances of db running on one server:
>
> - Production instance
> - Mirror Production instance (to be used for diagnosing user problems)
> - Copy of Production instance for testing vendor patches, upgrades,
> etc
> - Historical instance
>
> This would all be under a single Oracle Home installation. However we
> also need to test Oracle patches. My reading of the oracle patch docs
> state they are installed to specific Oracle Homes.
>
> Since we won't test Oracle patches directly on the production Home
> installation, should we install a second "home" installation on the
> same server or test the Oracle patches on a completely different
> server (with a copy of the above production instance installed)? We
> do have some older surplus servers that could accomodate this.
>
> Any opinions on having multiple oracle home installations on one
> server and any difficulties in maintaining them?
>
> TIA
>
> Glen Moffitt DBA, MCSE

You need to remember that there are two parts to an Oracle installation. There's the database software and there are the database data files. The software is what you put in %ORACLE_HOME%. Usually, it's not a good idea to put your data files under %ORACLE_HOME% (for the very reason you state ... maintenance when you patch or upgrade your software).

So if you have some Oracle8 software, it will be in one directory path (oracle home) - eg, c:\oracle\ora806. If you later install Oracle8i software, it will be in a different directory path (oracle home) - eg, c:\oracle\ora81. It goes on like this as you install each new version (or in some cases, the Oracle installer will create multiple directory trees because they haven't upgraded all the software to the current version - eg, Oracle 9iAS installs some 8.0 software in a separate home).

Now the second part is your database data files. You might have them all stored under the same directory path - eg, c:\oradata\PROD and c:\oradata\MIRROR and c:\oradata\TEST and c:\oradata\HIST. If you have multiple disks on your Win2k server, you would spread some of the data files out for performance reasons.

You choose (with some very real limitations) which oracle home you want to use to access any of your databases. You do this by refining your PATH environment variable to choose from which 'bin' directory to execute Oracle software. Part of the Oracle install adds a menu item to your Start menu to change oracle homes.

There's a lot more to this picture, but I hope this gets you started. Received on Wed Oct 23 2002 - 15:42:53 CDT

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