SE/EE ... Query...

Greetings,

I've been working at a new site recently, and was told they were running 'Standard Edition'. Even when I noticed that the SQLPlus banner and v$version were stating 'Enterprise Edition' for some server DBs, I was still told that it was a 'quirk' on that OS, and it WAS still actually running SE.

I wasn't convinced, and I've finally gotten around to doing a bit more digging. E.g. Trying out various things that should/shouldn't be possible across SE and EE.

So, I've tried out index coalescing and building bitmap indexes on the DBs that state they are EE, and that all works. Done the similar activities on the ones that don't say they are EE and "Surprise, surprise!", ORA-439, feature not enabled!!!

I've only worked on EE DBs before, so this is all new to me, but I'm presuming that there is no way to actually 'enable' these functions within SE editions... (?)

What's also worrying me now is the DR failover for the main database.

Select from V$VERSION at the primary suggests that it is running EE, but the same at the standby site suggests it is SE.

How can the primary be propagating redo to a site that looks like it is running a lesser version of Oracle. Or am I not seeing something properly here....

If the primary has bitmap indexes, but the server version at the standby site shouldn't have that enabled... how is it managing to apply redo to the bitmap indexes?

If it IS somehow managing to apply this kind of redo... what exactly will happen when someone tries to ACTIVATE the standby database, when it has bitmap indexes and probably shouldn't??

Anyone got any easy enlightenment on any of this for me?

Best regards,

- Tony.

You can certainly build a "manual failover" standby database on top of SE but EE features would not work therefore to the best of my knowledge an EE-SE failover architecture is not viable.

Failover 101 says: primary and standby must be same version.

Hi,

I've isolated that they're definately running different versions of the server engine, but I can't understand why the standby wouldn't have raised an issue - if it was being asked to maintain BITMAP indexes which are not enabled under SE, but are in-situ in the EE primary that the standby was supposedly built from...

I understand that the database is opened read-only everyday too, so clearly it doesn't have a problem opening with the bitmap indexes within it too.

I'm just curious what would happen if it was actually 'activated' and was thereafter requested to function and maintain these objects as a live primary.

Have to admit, I wouldn't want to be trying to use it as a DR standby right now!

Anyone know what the prospective migration path from an EE Database to SE database might be? I'm assuming that it might have to be export/import...

I can't believe that there would be much call for migration scripts to support this. SE to EE possibly... as it would be in Oracle's interest to get the revenue from the higher price-tag product, but not for a downgrade.

Any comments, thoughts, anyone?

Please do this in both Production and Standby...

select banner from v$version;

Look at the first line of the banner, if it says "Enterprise" it is EE, if it says nothing then it is SE.

Having said that... previous post suggest you are entertaining the idea of downgrading from EE to SE, is that correct? in that case, how about the EE features the database is currently relying on?