Re: Data Synchronization between 9iEE and 8iEE

From: Mark Bole <makbo_at_pacbell.net>
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 00:00:14 GMT
Message-ID: <isJ4d.1704$nj.1375@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com>

sybrandb_at_yahoo.com wrote:

> krislioe_at_gmail.com (xtanto) wrote in message news:<e1c9bd55.0409222308.221eceb7_at_posting.google.com>...
> 

>>Hi Gurus,
>>
>>We have two Oracle server : 9i EE on AIX and 8i EE on Linux. And we
>>plan to utilize the 8i box as Backup Server / Standby server.
>>The backup server must be (automatically or 'almost' automatically UP
>>and the primary goes down)
>>
>>Is it possible without buying additional option/features of the Oracle
>>RDBMS ?
>>How can we do that ?
>>
>>Thank you for any help,
>>tanto

> 
> 
> You can't use it as a standby server. The standby mechanism requires
> identical sw,and also identical platforms (or you must set up logical
> standby)
> 
> Sybrand Bakker
> Senior Oracle DBA

Even Dataguard logical standby requires identical Oracle versions and the same OS/platform, just like physical standby. See chapter "Data Guard Operational Prerequisites" in the on-line documentaiton. Logical Standby doesn't exist in 8i anyway.

I'm surprised Sybrand wasn't more blunt ;-) -- this is a Really Bad Idea. Whatever works in your 9i database is likely to blow up in your 8i database due to old bugs, feature incompatibility, whatever.

Sounds like you're trying to save money on licensing... good luck. You could try some kind of export/import strategy (thus guaranteeing data loss and long delays in the event of a failover) or maybe Advanced Replication. But if your data is worth anything, you need a better disaster recovery plan than this. A two-node HA cluster, such as Veritas Cluster Server, does not incur additional licensing cost as long as you don't switch to the second node more than ten days a year, as I recall. But this still has failure points (such as your datafiles).

--Mark Bole Received on Thu Sep 23 2004 - 19:00:14 CDT