Taking and 8.1.6 hot backup and recovering to 9.2

[sjwales]

I have customer who is on HPUX 11.0, Oracle 8.1.6 who wants me to try to do the following:

Take their hot database backup DB files and try to create the database from those control files under Oracle 9.2 on HPUX 11.11

I'm wondering, will this work? I'm wondering whether the information in the file headers will cause Oracle to have a fit when you try to issue CREATE CONTROLFILE....

Then, after that, if that was to work, they want me to take the archived log files from 8.1.6 and apply them to the 9.2 database cia RECOVER DATABASE UNTIL TIME....

Is this even possible? I'd try to test it, but getting the data is cumbersome, so I don't want to waste the time trying to do it if it's not even possible.

Anyone?

Thanks
Steve

stephen.wales@riotinto.com

 

[SantaMufasa]

Steve,

Having not ever tried what your customer wants, I cannot offer discrediting testimony. But I would certainly discourage building a conversion strategy on it. Oracle technical support will not over you any assistance with a database created under those conditions.

Every Oracle upgrade with which I have been involved has made structural changes to Oracle tables (not necessarily application tables, but none-the-less table-structure changes at least to the data dictionary). This is why we re-run Oracle scripts such as "catalog.sql", "catproc.sql", "catexp.sql", and others following an upgrade.

If you want to try it to at least offer results feedback to your customer, just create a simple 8.1.6 test database and instance, and try what they propose. I'd be willing to bet a few bucks that it will fail anyway.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA @ 16:54 (21Sep04) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"), 09:54 (21Sep04) Mountain Time)

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
As usual I agree totally with Mufasa..The method posted will almost certainly fail since significant architecture changes exist between 8.x and 9.x - Not to mention your concern about the header info..
All you really need to do is Export the 8.1.6 database ( using the 8.1.6 EXP utility) and then IMPort in to your 9.2 instance ( Using the 9.2 Utility)..Have the client shut down first and reopen in restricted mode, if at all possible, if all the most recent changes are needed to be in the EXP dump)

Why would your client want you to try such an unsupported method?

 

[sjwales]

Because they run in their datacenter HPUX 11.0, Ora 8.1.6. We run in ours HPUX 11.11, Ora 9.2. We're taking them on board from a Disaster Recovery standpoint to setup an emergency site for them in the case of total loss.

They want to try to leverage our existing setup I suppose

Personally I like the original plan, which is to set up a server that looks like theirs. I'll do some testing to invalidate (or, if there's some form of miracle, validate) that particular proposal and get back to them.

Thanks for the input.

stephen.wales@riotinto.com

 

[SantaMufasa]

Steve,

If this is a fail-over strategy, then absolutely, positively the best plan is for you to be running an identical version to theirs. The "price" difference between a same-version strategy (i.e., your running 8.1.6 in addition to your 9.2 instance) versus a 9.2 instance only is going to be the amoung of memory it takes to run 8.1.6. Your disk consumption will be virtually the same since their file sizes will be identical either way.

We run as many as four different versions of Oracle on the same CPU. That is my suggestion to protect your customer's data integrity with the least hit on resources.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA @ 18:55 (21Sep04) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"), 11:55 (21Sep04) Mountain Time)

 

[sjwales]

Just FYI for those who may be curious.

I took a cold backup of an old 8.1.7 database / HP 11.0
Restored it on my test server 9.2.0.5 / HP 11.11

CREATE CONTROLFILE SET "<db>" RESETLOGS NOARCHIVELOGS completed OK.

On ALTER DATABASE OPEN RESETLOGS I got:
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01092: ORACLE instance terminated. Disconnection forced

There's a trace file in user_dump_dest that states (among other things):
ORA-10827: database must be opened with MIGRATE option

And in the alert log:

Error 10827 happened during db open, shutting down database
USER: terminating instance due to error 10827
Instance terminated by USER, pid = 25118
ORA-1092 signalled during: alter database open resetlogs...

So, I think we can safely say that you can't do that
Oracle is clever enough to realize that there's a database version conflict and that you need to go through the MIGRATE code in order to open v8 files in a v9 DB.

Steve

stephen.wales@riotinto.com

 

[lhugh]

I totally agree with Dave that it's best to use the same version. I do not think that a backup from 9i will work with 9i

Here is my question, if we are to re-create a database on 9i, re-use the controlfile and datafiles from the 8i database, what will happen? We can change the compatibility in the pfile to the 8i version or use the 8i pfile. Will this work or at least the database creation work?? I would not do it for a production environment anyhow

 

[SantaMufasa]

LHugh,

My favourite "Programmatical Platitude" is: "One test is worth ten expert opinions."

Although I have not tried it myself, I propose you be the test pilot, try it out, and let us know. If I didn't have my standard Saturday "Honey-do List" that was a mile long plus dirty dishes to do right now, I'd try it myself.

Looking forward to your findings,

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA @ 17:30 (25Sep04) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"), 10:30 (25Sep04) Mountain Time)