Re: Upgrade 9.2 to 11.2 with minimal downtime

Standby doesn't require spending any money. You copy your prod DB to the new site, open it as a standby, copy archived redo from prod and apply it. When the standby has caught up with prod and you're ready to cut over, you shut down prod and open the standby. The outage for the cutover can be extremely short; how short depends on how fast you can copy archived redo and apply it. You'll need to spend some time with the manuals to work out how to do it, though there are step-by-step tutorials on the web that will get you started.

GoldenGate does much the same thing, and I believe that it requires far less effort to get working. The downside is that (a) you need to pay for it, and (b) it doesn't copy certain things, which means that your copy DB might not be exactly the same as your prod. For that reason, you'll need to figure out whether you can use it. Again, time must be spent with the manuals.

• Phil