Blog

Upgrade, Data Guard, and Restore Points

When you upgrade your Oracle Database, Flashback Database is an excellent fallback mechanism. It works fine in a Data Guard configuration as longs as you follow the right procedure.

How To Upgrade Data Guard – MAA Method

It is not that complicated to upgrade your database, even if it is part of a Data Guard setup. Using AutoUpgrade is fully supported and highly recommended. A little extra legwork is needed to take care of the standby database. But the good thing is that your Data Guard setup is maintained throughout the process.

Downgrade and Data Guard

If you experience problems with a new release of Oracle Database after go-live – downgrade might be the answer.
Data Guard and downgrade works fine together if you follow the right procedure. Here’s how to do it.

Flashback and Data Guard

If you need to fallback a failed upgrade, you can use Flashback Database. You can even do it without compromising your Data Guard if you follow the procedure.

Upgrade and Data Guard

You can upgrade your Oracle Database to a new release and keep the Data Guard setup intact. There is no need to rebuild the standby database after the upgrade.

Why Does It Take so Long to Import Check Constraints?

When Data Pump creates constraints during import, they will be created in the same way as they were exported. Validated constraints must be validated again which can take quite some time.

XTTS: Prerequisites

The easiest way to migrate with XTTS is to use version 4 of the Perl script and Full Transportable Export Import. Can you meet the requirements?

XTTS: Pro Tips

A collection of nuggets that I gathered while writing the blog post series on XTTS.

XTTS: Make It Fast

To make your migration with transportable tablespace faster, there are a few knobs you can turn.

XTTS: Bigfile Tablespaces

Bigfile tablespaces are often used in very large databases. Do they have an impact on your migration with transportable tablespaces and incremental backups?

XTTS: Backup on Standby Database

Offload the backups from the primary database when doing cross platform migrations with transportable tablespaces and incremental backups.

Get Started with Autoupgrade

Get started with AutoUpgrade and learn how to use our Hands-On Lab to sharpen your skills.

Oracle Database 21c Is Here

Oracle Database 21c is now available on more platforms. Here’s my take on it.

Upgrade with Less Downtime

If your database is sensitive to downtime, you can use the fast deploy mode to run some tasks while the database is still online.

DataPump Export from Data Guard

To save resources on your primary database when doing Data Pump exports and to avoid ORA-01555, you can use a snapshot standby database.

Future-proof Your Encrypted Database During Upgrade

When you upgrade an encrypted database to Oracle Database 19c you configure AutoUpgrade to change the keystore definition from sqlnet.ora to the new recommended parameter – WALLET_ROOT.

AutoUpgrade One-liner

You can specify all input to AutoUpgrade in a single command – without using a config file. Ideal for scripting and automation.

How to Upgrade a Single PDB

You can use AutoUpgrade to perform unplug-plug upgrade of your PDB. It is faster, but there are some things you must be aware of.

New Version of AutoUpgrade

A new of AutoUpgrade is out and it contains several cool features like unplug/plug upgrade and better handling of data guard.

Is AutoUpgrade resumable?

Yes, it is. You can resume a terminated or lost session. AutoUpgrade will automatically pick up from where it left.

Move to the Cloud – Webinar

Get the slides from the webinar “Move to the Cloud – not only for techies”. Also, you can find the missing part on transportable tablespaces, and information about a recording.

Migration Strategies

We did a webinar today on Migration Strategies – Tips and Tricks and Insights and Secrets. Here is a wrap-up and link to the slides.

Debut on the Big Stage

In mid-October you can join our two webinars on database migration. One of them is exclusively about cloud migration – for techies only.

TDE from a Non-Security Guy

TDE Tablespace Encryption is a must-have in the cloud and something that most of us have to learn. I recently gave a presentation on the basics and what you will need to learn to survive in the cloud.

Upgrade and profile scripts

The scripts glogin.sql and login.sql might kill your upgrade. Learn why and how to avoid.

Zero Downtime Migration

Zero Downtime Migration is a cool and free tool that you can use to migrate into OCI. This blog post introduces the tool and gives you a good overview of the process and all the details.

Why Aren’t You Using SQLcl?

SQLcl is the modern CLI for Oracle Database and it offers a ton of cool features and productivity boosts. Yet, still a lot of users are stuck in the last millennium aka SQL*Plus.

Upgrading in the cloud – VM DB Systems – 12.2.0.1 PDB to 19c

In this blog post I will show you how to upgrade a 12.2.0.1 PDB to 19c when it is running in a VM DB System. I have a PDB called SALES and it is running Standard Edition 2 (yes, this procedure works for Standard Edition 2 as well). In a previous blog post I went over the restrictions that apply to VM DB System and having those in mind I can create a high-level plan for the upgrade

Upgrading in the cloud – VM DB Systems

This is the first post in a series on the entry-level database system in OCI – being Virtual Machine DB System (VM DB System). You don’t get the same specs as with Exadata DB Systems and Bare Metal DB Systems, but it is much more affordable and still a very good platform. There is good tooling that allows most operations to be fully automated. But there are some limitations that you must be aware of that makes upgrading slightly different.