What are the advantages of migrating appliations from Oracle 8i tothe 10g platform?

What are the advantages of migrating appliations from Oracle 8i to the
10g platform

On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:38:11 -0700 (PDT), EliasFigueroa
wrote:

>What are the advantages of migrating appliations from Oracle 8i to the
>10g platform

10g is more stable, it requires less maintenance, and less down-time
(more can be changed dynamically, some parameters are auto-tuned).
You have more options to diagnose problems, and/or to be advised by
Oracle to take certain measures.

Apart from that, there is that one key feature: Support.
Oracle 8i is in sustained support, which means you will still get
patches for known problems, and in all other cases Oracle will dump
the phone on you.

--
Sybrand Bakker
Senior Oracle DBA

On Aug 21, 10:47*am, sybra...@hccnet.nl wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:38:11 -0700 (PDT), EliasFigueroa
>
> wrote:
> >What are the advantages of migrating appliations from Oracle 8i to the
> >10g platform
>
> 10g is more stable, it requires less maintenance, and less down-time
> (more can be changed dynamically, some parameters are auto-tuned).
> You have more options to diagnose problems, and/or to be advised by
> Oracle to take certain measures.
>
> Apart from that, there is that one key feature: Support.
> Oracle 8i is in sustained support, which means you will still get
> patches for known problems, and in all other cases Oracle will dump
> the phone on you.
>
> --
> Sybrand Bakker
> Senior Oracle DBA

Support as Sybrand said it the main benefit of upgrading. Upgrading
will also make all the new 10g features including those added in 9i
available to your development and DBA teams. Bulk loading in PL/SQL
and regular expression searches in 10g are just two of the new/
imporved features that might be of interest.

The New Features Guides for 9i and 10g might be work a quick review.

HTH -- Mark D Powell --

On Aug 21, 6:38*pm, EliasFigueroa wrote:
> What are the advantages of migrating appliations from Oracle 8i to the
> 10g platform

If your applications don't evolve and "just work", probably none. You
may get some performance improvements from migrating, but you may well
get all sorts of problems, slowdowns and incompatibilities if your PL/
SQL code is quirky and your SQL is not CBO-friendly and you didn't
account for the new features in it, or if your application was built
using some old framework or platform. Sybrand's and Mark's points do
apply, but to a degree.

For example, we have an application that was written using Forms6i.
The app was certified against 8i and later 9iR2, but that's it. No 10g
or 11g, it simply won't work with these releases. Forms client can't
even use 9i client, it has to use its own v8 client. The app can't be
changed, nor can it be replaced, so there's no reason for us to
migrate in this case (unless we want to break it and train ourselves
in overnight DR. )

Support is important, but if your application is working fine and you
didn't have any new issues with Oracle8i for the last 4 years that
required support calls then what difference will another 4 years
without support make? Besides, you can still get support, just not the
bug fixes - but most probably none will be needed anyway.

"Better is the enemy of good."
Voltaire

Regards,
Vladimir M. Zakharychev
N-Networks, makers of Dynamic PSP(tm)
http://www.dynamicpsp.com

EliasFigueroa wrote:
> What are the advantages of migrating appliations from Oracle 8i to the
> 10g platform

Others have taken a shot at answering your question looking at it from
the standpoint of your organization. Let me give you a different
perspective.

Oracle DBAs and developers whose experience is with 8i, at least in
my geographical area, are unemployable. You need to keep you skill set
current. And part of that is learning to migrate from 8i to 9i or 10g
or above. If you are in 8i you have no experience with locally managed
tablespaces, no experience with undo segments, no experience with
any of the many serious security and auditing improvements. The list
of what you don't have production experience with goes to hundreds of
pages.

My recommendation would be to put together a test server and migrate
your application to 10gR2. Then compare the two different platforms
and determine the cost-benefit for the organization. Personally I
wouldn't touch 8i again for any purpose other than to move it to a
currently supported environment.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
Oracle Ace Director & Instructor
University of Washington
damorgan-at-x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org

On Aug 22, 2:09*am, "Vladimir M. Zakharychev"
wrote:
> On Aug 21, 6:38*pm, EliasFigueroa wrote:
>
> > What are the advantages of migrating appliations from Oracle 8i to the
> > 10g platform
>
> If your applications don't evolve and "just work", probably none. You
> may get some performance improvements from migrating, but you may well
> get all sorts of problems, slowdowns and incompatibilities if your PL/
> SQL code is quirky and your SQL is not CBO-friendly and you didn't
> account for the new features in it, or if your application was built
> using some old framework or platform. Sybrand's and Mark's points do
> apply, but to a degree.
>
> For example, we have an application that was written using Forms6i.
> The app was certified against 8i and later 9iR2, but that's it. No 10g
> or 11g, it simply won't work with these releases. Forms client can't
> even use 9i client, it has to use its own v8 client. The app can't be
> changed, nor can it be replaced, so there's no reason for us to
> migrate in this case (unless we want to break it and train ourselves
> in overnight DR. )
>
> Support is important, but if your application is working fine and you
> didn't have any new issues with Oracle8i for the last 4 years that
> required support calls then what difference will another 4 years
> without support make? Besides, you can still get support, just not the
> bug fixes - but most probably none will be needed anyway.
>
> "Better is the enemy of good."
> * * * * * * * * * * Voltaire
>
> Regards,
> * *Vladimir M. Zakharychev
> * *N-Networks, makers of Dynamic PSP(tm)
> * *http://www.dynamicpsp.com

Just a note: Oracle Forms 6i works with and is certified against 10gR1
providing you have a certain patch level (16 I think).

-- Mark D Powell --

On Aug 26, 7:59*am, Mark D Powell wrote:
> On Aug 22, 2:09*am, "Vladimir M. Zakharychev"
>
>
>
>
>
> wrote:
> > On Aug 21, 6:38*pm, EliasFigueroa wrote:
>
> > > What are the advantages of migrating appliations from Oracle 8i to the
> > > 10g platform
>
> > If your applications don't evolve and "just work", probably none. You
> > may get some performance improvements from migrating, but you may well
> > get all sorts of problems, slowdowns and incompatibilities if your PL/
> > SQL code is quirky and your SQL is not CBO-friendly and you didn't
> > account for the new features in it, or if your application was built
> > using some old framework or platform. Sybrand's and Mark's points do
> > apply, but to a degree.
>
> > For example, we have an application that was written using Forms6i.
> > The app was certified against 8i and later 9iR2, but that's it. No 10g
> > or 11g, it simply won't work with these releases. Forms client can't
> > even use 9i client, it has to use its own v8 client. The app can't be
> > changed, nor can it be replaced, so there's no reason for us to
> > migrate in this case (unless we want to break it and train ourselves
> > in overnight DR. )
>
> > Support is important, but if your application is working fine and you
> > didn't have any new issues with Oracle8i for the last 4 years that
> > required support calls then what difference will another 4 years
> > without support make? Besides, you can still get support, just not the
> > bug fixes - but most probably none will be needed anyway.
>
> > "Better is the enemy of good."
> > * * * * * * * * * * Voltaire
>
> > Regards,
> > * *Vladimir M. Zakharychev
> > * *N-Networks, makers of Dynamic PSP(tm)
> > * *http://www.dynamicpsp.com
>
> Just a note: Oracle Forms 6i works with and is certified against 10gR1
> providing you have a certain patch level (16 I think).
>
> -- Mark D Powell --

I disagree that 4 years of no support necessary in the past predicts
the future. In particular, I've seen places break after some employee
turnover.

One additional benefit of coming into this century is having web
access part of the product. Oracle makes the conversion not too
difficult, see metalink Note:342500.1 section 3. Compatibility with
older versions.

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniont...23merrill.html

On Aug 22, 2:09*am, "Vladimir M. Zakharychev"
wrote:
> On Aug 21, 6:38*pm, EliasFigueroa wrote:
>
> > What are the advantages of migrating appliations from Oracle 8i to the
> > 10g platform
>
> If your applications don't evolve and "just work", probably none. You
> may get some performance improvements from migrating, but you may well
> get all sorts of problems, slowdowns and incompatibilities if your PL/
> SQL code is quirky and your SQL is not CBO-friendly and you didn't
> account for the new features in it, or if your application was built
> using some old framework or platform. Sybrand's and Mark's points do
> apply, but to a degree.
>
> For example, we have an application that was written using Forms6i.
> The app was certified against 8i and later 9iR2, but that's it. No 10g
> or 11g, it simply won't work with these releases. Forms client can't
> even use 9i client, it has to use its own v8 client. The app can't be
> changed, nor can it be replaced, so there's no reason for us to
> migrate in this case (unless we want to break it and train ourselves
> in overnight DR. )
>
> Support is important, but if your application is working fine and you
> didn't have any new issues with Oracle8i for the last 4 years that
> required support calls then what difference will another 4 years
> without support make? Besides, you can still get support, just not the
> bug fixes - but most probably none will be needed anyway.
>
> "Better is the enemy of good."
> * * * * * * * * * * Voltaire
>
> Regards,
> * *Vladimir M. Zakharychev
> * *N-Networks, makers of Dynamic PSP(tm)
> * *http://www.dynamicpsp.com

Some very good points made by Vladimir nicely organized and
summarized.

So many companies are driven by buying applications from others and
running them against "certified" vendor releases. So you "cannot" get
support from your application vendor unless you are running against
specific oracle releases. That does change, over time, gradually ...
depending on the app vendor and as Vladimir noted the dependencies in
pieces of the applications and tools/technologies they were developed
with.

If your applications are custom aka "roll your own" and supported in
house then well there's nothing much from stopping you from evaluating
getting current with oracle technologies. As long as you are paying
for support ( not all places are ) then the upgrades in database
versions are no additional charge.

We are rolling along with some 10.2.0.4 and some 11.1 probably will be
11.2 on some systems soon.