Re: Need clarification between "upgrade" and "migration"

Excellent question. In the world of Oracle Applications I frequently hear people say they are "migrating" from say 11.5.5 to 11.5.7, which is nonsense. It is a straightforward (??!?!?!?!?!?) upgrade within the same product line. Your data remains in situ, the software receives some changes (right up to complete replacement) and some scripts are run to modify the schema where necessary. Of course the upgrade should be well tested by the customer before performing in production.

A migration implies that there is a fresh (or existing) installation of Oracle software which will receive an influx of data from some other system(s) e.g migrating from Peoplesoft + inhouse to Oracle. This will involve much more time and expense, mapping of data attributes, utilizing open interfaces etc.

I once heard about a customer in Australia who wanted to go from Oracle Apps version 9 (heavily customized) to version 10.7. Because of the large gap between versions and the customizations, the project was to be treated as a migration rather than an upgrade.

Owen Grubbs wrote:

> How does Oracle define "upgrade" and "migration"?
> How is an upgrade different than a migration?