Oracle 7
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I just want to pose a question to everyone out there. The company that I work at just upgraded an Oracle 7 DB to an Oracle 11 DB. They are now going out to have a big celebration for this accomplishment. To me it doesn't really seem like a big deal you are just migrating from one version of oracle to another. And I don't know why they are celebrating the fact they were able to move it over. And they are not celebrating because they no longer have to deal with Oracle 7 any more because they will. I don't have a lot of Oracle experience and was just wondering is this such a big deal?
GateKeeper22 wrote:
I don't have a lot of Oracle experience and was just wondering is this such a big deal?
Not really: would have been better had they migrated to a real RDBMS. :-) (That was a joke - no flaming!!!)
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me
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GateKeeper22 wrote:
I don't have a lot of Oracle experience and was just wondering is this such a big deal?
Not really: would have been better had they migrated to a real RDBMS. :-) (That was a joke - no flaming!!!)
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair. nils illegitimus carborundum me, me, me
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Believe me, everything you accomplish with Oracle is one big deal.
Software Kinetics Wear a hard hat it's under construction
Metro RSSNorm .net wrote:
is one big deal
ONE BILLION DOLLARS of it :)
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Was the migration direct, which would have to be manual and hence a lot of work, or did they migrate the 7 -> 8 -> 9 -> 10 -> 11 in which case Oracle utilities to assist migration could be used and ease some of the work. Actually I'd say they better prepare for a dealing with a whole bunch of performance issues. Back in O7, there was no such thing as a query optimizer. Everything was rule based. With O11, there is no such thing as rule based optimization (I could be wrong maybe). Everything uses statistics and the optimizer. What that means is that every single query is now going to execute completely differently. Good luck with that one. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
You are correct about the statistics. We used to run database statistics once a week, now we do it daily. The statistics analyses your data based on keys and contents and optimizes your queries for you based on the stats - it really is quite brilliant in my opinion. Basically if something is running very slow we will stop it and run the statistics which will usually speed things up considerably - especially when you are talking about millions to hundreds of millions of rows of data.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I can't believe it take a fully paid DB Admin administrate it when SQL Server can be administrated blindfolded and arms tied behind the back.
Software Kinetics Wear a hard hat it's under construction
Metro RSSHaving been a SQL Server DBA myself and worked with Oracle DBAs there is quite a difference. SQL Server DBAs tend to be better educated in that they have a more rounded understanding of SQL and database technology whereas Oracle DBAs tend to be much more narrow in their scope - my experience of Oracle DBAs is that they struggle more with the basics of writing a SQL query than SQL Server DBAs.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I just want to pose a question to everyone out there. The company that I work at just upgraded an Oracle 7 DB to an Oracle 11 DB. They are now going out to have a big celebration for this accomplishment. To me it doesn't really seem like a big deal you are just migrating from one version of oracle to another. And I don't know why they are celebrating the fact they were able to move it over. And they are not celebrating because they no longer have to deal with Oracle 7 any more because they will. I don't have a lot of Oracle experience and was just wondering is this such a big deal?
GateKeeper22 wrote:
is this such a big deal?
A version upgrade, no, but you have to remember that Oracle 7 is quite old (from 1994) if I recall correctly, so the migration path may not be so straightforward. And of course why not have a little celebration, if a project has been pulled through successfully :)
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I just want to pose a question to everyone out there. The company that I work at just upgraded an Oracle 7 DB to an Oracle 11 DB. They are now going out to have a big celebration for this accomplishment. To me it doesn't really seem like a big deal you are just migrating from one version of oracle to another. And I don't know why they are celebrating the fact they were able to move it over. And they are not celebrating because they no longer have to deal with Oracle 7 any more because they will. I don't have a lot of Oracle experience and was just wondering is this such a big deal?
GateKeeper22 wrote:
I don't have a lot of Oracle experience and was just wondering is this such a big deal?
Any non-trivial company that thinks such a change isn't a source of concern probably doesn't have enough experience in the topic. There are a many ways in which a migration can fail and often attempting to revert isn't simply a matter of throwing a switch. And if they just finished then if it was me I would still be apprehensive a month from now and wouldn't be getting comfortable until about 6 months from now.
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So do you go out and celebrate every time you build a program? That is basically what they are doing. Hey look we did our job today lets go out and celebrate. Seems a little over the top to me.
GateKeeper22 wrote:
So do you go out and celebrate every time you build a program?
That depends on how big the program is and how much revenue it generates. I've been on a huge project where it's gotten us a large contract and we celebrated. I've been on a huge project where we failed to get the contract and people were laid off. Enjoy the celebrations. They don't come often enough.
m.bergman
For Bruce Schneier, quanta only have one state : afraid.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. -- Voltaire
In most cases the only difference between disappointment and depression is your level of commitment. -- Marc Maron
I am not a chatbot
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Was the migration direct, which would have to be manual and hence a lot of work, or did they migrate the 7 -> 8 -> 9 -> 10 -> 11 in which case Oracle utilities to assist migration could be used and ease some of the work. Actually I'd say they better prepare for a dealing with a whole bunch of performance issues. Back in O7, there was no such thing as a query optimizer. Everything was rule based. With O11, there is no such thing as rule based optimization (I could be wrong maybe). Everything uses statistics and the optimizer. What that means is that every single query is now going to execute completely differently. Good luck with that one. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
Chris Meech wrote:
there is no such thing as rule based optimization (I could be wrong maybe
It's actually still around if you want it. It's totally pointless IMO, but you can do it.
Light moves faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright, until you hear them speak. List of common misconceptions
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So do you go out and celebrate every time you build a program? That is basically what they are doing. Hey look we did our job today lets go out and celebrate. Seems a little over the top to me.
GateKeeper22 wrote:
So do you go out and celebrate every time you build a program?
If the program is successful, yes.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I can't believe it take a fully paid DB Admin administrate it when SQL Server can be administrated blindfolded and arms tied behind the back.
Software Kinetics Wear a hard hat it's under construction
Metro RSSEven better is DB/400 on the AS/400 (or, i5, as it is called now). No DBA needed ever. No real need to RECLAIM storage. No need to UNLOAD/RELOAD the database if you choose to add new fields to a record. Try that on any other RDBMS.
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I just want to pose a question to everyone out there. The company that I work at just upgraded an Oracle 7 DB to an Oracle 11 DB. They are now going out to have a big celebration for this accomplishment. To me it doesn't really seem like a big deal you are just migrating from one version of oracle to another. And I don't know why they are celebrating the fact they were able to move it over. And they are not celebrating because they no longer have to deal with Oracle 7 any more because they will. I don't have a lot of Oracle experience and was just wondering is this such a big deal?
I have limited Oracle experience, but did do some work with high speed data import/export with Oracle 7 and 8. Let's just say that "baby sitting" was a massive understatement with both. To put it another way, more times than not, after rebooting our Oracle servers, Oracle wouldn't restart by itself. On more than one occasion it took hours to get the server running again. Properly tweaked, Oracle can be very fast, but even our excellent dba didn't think it was worth the headaches.
