Using the DBUA
makes life easier
especially if you have multiple databases to upgrade or you also need
to upgrade an ASM instance or you're using Oracle RAC. It takes you
through the upgrade process step by step, enabling you to take a
backup, configure a flash recovery area and move datafiles
between ASM and the file system.
The DBUA writes to a number of log files (the location of which is
displayed on the progress screen) :
- UpgradeResults.html - summary of what will be
upgraded
- Trace.log - detailed trace of the entire
process including any errors
- Oracle_server.log - details of entire migration
product including further details of any errors
- Post_Upgrade.log - details of post upgrade
operations. This will tell you if the upgrade succeeded or not.
If you wish to rollback the upgrade for any reason you can use the
DBUA for this. If you used the DBUA to backup the database before you
started then the database will be restored and the configuration
parameters reset automatically. If you didn't use the DBUA for the
backup only the configuration parameters will be reset and you will
have to manually restore the database files.
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Upgrading Your Database Manually
Performing the upgrade manually might be tedious but it does
give you more control over the process. This method involves running a
series of SQL scripts from the command line.
Before upgrading you need to ensure your redo logs are greater than 4MB in size by querying
V$LOGFILE. You
also need to run the 11g Pre-Upgrade Information Tool
(utlu111i.sql) to highlight any upgrade issues and
required initialisation parameter changes.
Once you've done this, shutdown the database cleanly, take a
backup and prepare the new Oracle home, copying the configuration
files from the existing directories and create a listener for the new database. You may need to change some
database parameters depending on the results of the pre-upgrade script.
Before
you start the upgrade process, on Windows you need to stop
and remove the existing Oracle database service before creating
and starting a new one for the Oracle 11g database. On Unix and
Linux you just need to ensure the environment variables are pointing to
the Oracle 11g directories.
To perform the upgrade, start the database in upgrade mode (
startup upgrade) ensuring that you're using the 11g version of SQL*Plus then run
catupgrd.sql and spool the output to a log file.
Once the script has finished, it will shut down the database.
Next, re-start the database, run
utlu111s.sql (to ensure all components have been successfully upgraded), followed by
catuppst.sql (for further upgrade-related steps) and
utlrp.sql, both from
$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/.
Once
these have finished, perform a clean shutdown again, remove any
obsolete parameters from the parameter file, add/change any 11g
specific ones. Re-start the database to ensure the parameter changes
are OK then shutdown and take a backup again.
There are a few final steps that you may need to take depending on your setup including upgrading the
RMAN recovery catalog as well as any statistics tables created by
DBMS_STATS. Review the Oracle 11g upgrade guide for the full list.
