More often than you think, I get mails about migration options from ancient Oracle Database releases. Typically, it is from Oracle 8i or 9i. My high score is an inquiry about Oracle 7.2.

My good colleague, Rodrigo, calls it migrations from Jurassic Park data centers.

At one point, our team got so many questions about it that we decided to create a presentation. It premiered at Oracle DatabaseWorld at CloudWorld 2023. We named it:

Help! My Database Is Still On 8i

Migration Options From Oracle v5 and Newer

In Oracle Database 10g, Oracle introduced Data Pump – replacing the original export and import utilities. If possible, use Data Pump.

In older versions, you must use original export, exp. In recent versions of Oracle Database, Oracle desupported original export, but they still support original import utility, imp, for migrations from really old Oracle Database releases.

Oracle released original export back in Oracle v5. You can export data in Oracle v5 (or newer) and import it directly into an Oracle Database 23c PDB. This is 40 years of backward compatibility. This is rather impressive!

From Oracle 8i Database, you can use same-platform transportable tablespaces. From Oracle Database 10g, you can even do cross-platform transportable tablespaces.

To Which Version Should You Migrate?

If you have such old databases in your environment, I strongly recommend migrating to Oracle Autonomous Database. In Autonomous Database, Oracle will take care of the database for you. Oracle will patch it, maintain it, and upgrade it. You will never end up with a legacy database again. Note that the original import utility does not meet the security standards of Autonomous Database, so it is impossible to import directly into Autonomous Database. In such a situation, you first import into a staging database that supports Data Pump, and then into Autonomous Database.

Otherwise, I recommend going to the latest long-term support release. Also, you should migrate to the multitenant architecture and import directly into a PDB.

Client/Server Interoperability

Before you migrate the database, you must come up with a plan for your clients and applications. Older database clients can’t connect to modern databases.

With each Oracle Database release, the authentication mechanism changes to become more secure and support newer features. This means that clients must be of a certain version to communicate with the database.

If you migrate to Oracle Database 23c, your clients must be on 19c or newer. Check Client / Server Interoperability Support Matrix for Different Oracle Versions (Doc ID 207303.1) for details.

How to Migrate From 8i to Autonomous Database

Here’s a video showing you such a migration step-by-step.

The biggest pitfall in such migration is the loss of characters due to incorrect character set conversion. You must set the NLS_LANG environment variable to the character set of the database. Otherwise, you’ll use the default language setting of your operating system and that might lead to character loss.

Only in specific situations do you set the NLS_LANG to something else.

Appendix

Fun Fact

Here’s a list of Oracle Database releases, including their year of release, marque features, and a mobile phone of the same year.

Further Reading

• Help! My Database Is Still On 8i
• Client / Server Interoperability Support Matrix for Different Oracle Versions (Doc ID 207303.1)