Monday, July 28, 2014

Always run the pre-upgrade script before a database upgrade!

I was in a hurry to upgrade a database from 11.1.0.7 to 11.2.0.4 and encountered the following error message: ORA-1722 when running the catupgrd.sql script. The script exited with the error message I just listed.

The root cause of the problem is that you must always run the utlu112i from the $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms directory before you upgrade your database. This script is not optional, it is actually mandatory since it makes changes to the database dictionary for the upgrade preparation.

I also suggest to please create a flashback guaranteed restore point just before kicking off the upgrade just in case you need to flash your database back. This can save valuable hours to flashback a database rather than restoring it from a backup. You can simply flashback the database to the GRP - guaranteed restore point if required rather than doing a full database restore which may take several hours or more from a disk based backup.




Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Speaking at Dallas Oracle Users Group(DOUG) on July 24, 2014

I will be speaking at the Dallas Oracle Users Group - DOUG on July 24, 2014. Please come and learn about Exadata and ZFS upgrades!

http://tinyurl.com/naa46l8

Here is the information about the presentation below.

Exadata is one of Oracle's flagship engineered systemsand the ZFS Storage appliance is a premier storage system and keeping them both healthy and up to date can be easily achieved by upgrading and patching. Ultimately you can save on thousands of dollars on overall support costs, avoid unplanned downtime, software bugs and also take advantage of new features by ensuring you have a regular schedule to patch your Exadata and ZFS systems. It is a common impression that patching the Exadata and ZFS platform is complicated and thorough however you can learn about the process and we can help you to understand it and upgrade with minimal downtime with quick efficient methods. We will discuss strategies to upgrading the Exadata full stack and ZFS to mitigate risk and reduce downtime, we will show you how to avoid mistakes and best practices to implement and plan your upgrades. We will also share a detailed case study of one customer for a large fortune 500 healthcare supply chain company who did not upgrade their Exadata and ZFS for almost 3 years and how we upgraded it flawlessly with zero issues post-upgrade