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My Company is Running Oracle 7.3.1 with Oracle Financials on it. We are running another instance on Oracle 9i. We have just had problems with 9i. Oracle 7 has been running for years with almost zero problems.
We have to upgrade our system from 7, to 8i or 9i. Seeing that we are running oracle 9i with problems we are seriously thinking about downgrading our 9i DB to 8i. Should or shouldn't we and why?
Thanx for your input
Maybe you should wait some time - if you could - for Oracle to patch "all" the problems in 9i.
What kind of problems do you encountered with 9i?
For some reason or another Oracle 9i listener just stops. All you have to do to fix it is restart the listener or bounce the box. But this is strange, cause it will just stop when it feels like it. Where have the same problem with our production box also running 9i. We logged a tar, but no reply.
Another problem is when i did the Dev box (for testing) Importing schemas. You have to log onto OMS, why. I used command prompt for Import.
Another problem when i moved the scemas and tried to recompile, it gave me errors, to find out that Timestamp was causing the problem. Timestamp is a reserved word in Oracle 9i. So i had to maually change the coding to use the timestamp our developers created.
I think Oracle 9i is really not mature enough for a production environment.
Initially I had a very good oppinion on oracle 9i when I attended the courses and I test it in testing environment.
Then I heard about a lot of problems, including serious security issues, that make me feel - in a production environment, is better to wait a bit (maybe half a year) and then implement/upgrade...
But don't give up easily - I mean don't make a long-term decision - because oracle 9i have some serious technological improvements. Oracle finally have a trend to move on to a modern technology. (Let's face it, besides the fine-looking paint in the front-end, oracle architecture isn't so modern...).
I think moving back to 8i is like a RAM upgrade: when you add some RAM, you don't seem to feel a large improvement. "Yeah!, maybe is working better...", you know. And then after a month, you pull out the new memory module, and return to the old configuration, and... "WTF!!!! Was it really moving like this sh*t before???!!! It's impossible!"... :D
Then, again, I don't know how big and mission-critical is your shop. If there is a banking business or smt. like this, rollback and sail to 8i, is known, is patched, is a walked way...
This is my oppinion. Good luck!
That doesn't tell anything about who is to blame for that. It doesn't tell anything about 9i's "immaturity". I'll give you oposite examples:Quote:
Originally posted by charlton
For some reason or another Oracle 9i listener just stops. All you have to do to fix it is restart the listener or bounce the box. But this is strange, cause it will just stop when it feels like it. Where have the same problem with our production box also running 9i. We logged a tar, but no reply.
a) I have 9i instance in a production environment for about 3 months now, without any single failure or problem. How about that?
b) You'll find many posting saying something like "For some reason or another Oracle 8i listener just stops" just if you browse through postings in this forums. And I don't think Ovidius will give you an answer about how immature 8i is, and that you should wait couple of years before you upgrade to 8i from your Oracle6 instance that has been running smoothly for 10 years now. ;)
That's nonsence. No OMS is needed at all. You can do imp, exp, SQL*Loader or any other utility from command line, like you have been able to for more than a decade.Quote:
Another problem is when i did the Dev box (for testing) Importing schemas. You have to log onto OMS, why. I used command prompt for Import.
That's entirely your problem, not Oracle's. You can't blame Oracle for choosing the same word for some new database element. And AFAIK, TIMESTAMP is part of ANSI standard. Besides, TIMESTAMP was a reserved word in PL/SQL allready in 8i, so you should be wise enough not to use it anywhere.Quote:
Another problem when i moved the scemas and tried to recompile, it gave me errors, to find out that Timestamp was causing the problem. Timestamp is a reserved word in Oracle 9i. So i had to maually change the coding to use the timestamp our developers created.
My bottom line: 9i is perfectly mature product. It had some isues, like the lately discovered security hole, but heck, which product haven't had them? The security hole was patched in less that two days! (Unless you are using Win2000 ;)) And who guarantees that similar holes are not still present in 8i or any other release. They are, but they simply weren't discovered yet.
Go for 9i. Don't listen to any advices against it, if they are based only on "I've heard about lots of problems, it's not mature enough...". There will allways be lot of such advices, but most of them are not based on facts or first hand experiences - they mostly originate from people who newer realy used or thoroghly tested the product.
Althought I have had my differences with Jurij about 9i, I agree now with him completely. I might also sound a bit harsh Charlton but do you have someone at your firm who really knows 9i? See, upgrading from 7 do 9i is not like upgrading from Word Perfect 5.1 to Word Perfect 6. Roughly said, 9i has 4 times more features than 7. I have also had a 9i development intsance that has given me no problems for half a year.
Oracle 9i looks good but by some reasons it has a very bad bug: Oracle 9i works slower that Oracle 8i.
kgb,
Are you sure you can blame 9i for this or bad tuning ?
This is a very disputable/subjective issue. You know very well is hard to say two different systems are same-tuned and similar, for the testing to be relevant...
And AFAIK, TIMESTAMP is part of ANSI standard...
Yes is right, and even if was not when the developer did their work, is not pardonable, because any word that has a "english-technical" flavour have to be "protected". Really, for this issue there are the developers to blame.
And I don't think Ovidius will give you an answer about how immature 8i is...
I think Jmodic understant very well what I want to say, as long as he did not comment my observation regarding oracle moving to a modern technology...
Yes, Jmodic, there could be very many issues in 8i, but for 8i were many years to dig them down, for 9i is hardly one and you saw what big holes they find out. This is a general rule, Jmodic, and I think you know it VERY WELL: if there is a mission-critical shop, nobody change dramatically the system, nobody step over two version at once, nobody take any hazardous risks like puttung in place a new system. It has to be burn-in by other not so mission critical business first.
This is how we do, and we learn this from the americans themselves. :D
No, Jmodic, this was not "let's say something" advice. Really, I could not state here more than my own oppinion, of course - who could do more? - but for a banking environment the advice was pretty clear: think twice, and then think again.
Well, .... oh boy!!, hm... see, ... I suggest you open an iTar with Metalink!Quote:
Originally posted by kgb
Oracle 9i looks good but by some reasons it has a very bad bug: Oracle 9i works slower that Oracle 8i.
O, yes guys ... Bug number. 1890146 is the reason of bad tuning ... may be ...
[Edited by kgb on 04-26-2002 at 07:51 AM]
So, I do not hear any other wisdom thoughts form our moderatos ???
Nothing to say to my address any more or nothing to say at all ?
Ok, I'll explaine you what bug 1890146 means:
Problem statement: SELECT COMMAND SLOWER IN 9I THAN 8I
PROBLEM:
1. Severe performance degradation in many select commands using CBO
2. No MTS / No OPS / No distributed / No replication
That means the same as buying a care without one wheel !!!
Solution: you know what to do.
Thanks for attention.
In some ways 7.3 is faster than 8i. You only have to bounce a database to find out that oracle 8i seems to take forever to shutdown compared to 7.3.4. Performance is lost between versions, probably due to additional logic being coded in the Kernal.
Well, dear senior member, you should be more patient, don't loose your temper after waiting for an answer for a little more than an hour. Or do you think that anybody have enough time to ansver questions every minute? We all have our jobs that we are paid for, we are participating in this forums in our own free time.Quote:
Originally posted by kgb
So, I do not hear any other wisdom thoughts form our moderatos ???
Nothing to say to my address any more or nothing to say at all ?
You should also explain what was the sollution for that bug, that turns out not to be bug at all! And you should also explain that this "bug" manifested itself only for some very specific type of queries - in most cases 9i is faster than 8i, that is a prooven fact.Quote:
Ok, I'll explaine you what bug 1890146 means:
Problem statement: SELECT COMMAND SLOWER IN 9I THAN 8I
PROBLEM:
1. Severe performance degradation in many select commands using CBO
2. No MTS / No OPS / No distributed / No replication
So about your "bug". It is not a bug realy, it is only a result of changed default setting of one of the hidden init parameters (_UNNEST_SUBQUERY). It defaults to TRUE in 9i, but it was FALSE in 8i. Set this parameter to TRUE in 9i and you'll see exactly the same execution plan as in 8i.
Strange comparison. This three wheel 9i car was almost twice as fast as the fastest 8i four wheel car according to tpmC benchmarks (And please don't give me lecture about how meaningless those benchmarks are - I know that. And despite that, my remark has much more relevance than yours.)Quote:
That means the same as buying a care without one wheel !!!
You are welcome.Quote:
Thanks for attention.
It's only my opinion but I've found Oracle9i to be much faster, more stable and easier to manage than Oracle8i.
As Julian said earlier, I think people should take some time to investigate the product before making knee-jerk claims about Oracle9i.
Baseline the performance on your current system. Once you've got some real data upgrade and get your new baseline. Only then can you have a true measure of performance between the systems. When I've done this Oracle9i has beaten Oracle8i and Oracle7, but as I said, it's just my experience.
Remember, to get the most out of any engine you should follow the best practises associated with that version. There's no point in using Oracle9i that way you used Oracle6.
Good luck.
I already mentioned this somehwere but im going to repeat it here. there are some companies already using oracle 9i in mission critical db's like axciom. check out
http://www.oracle.com/oramag/oracle/...o22acxiom.html
"We have about 300 UNIX servers on our site, and that represents just over 200 terabytes of storage connected to all the servers. The 200 terabytes break down into Oracle servers that range in size from 1 terabyte to 6 terabytes of raw data. Our customer with 6 terabytes of raw data has about 24 terabytes of storage on his Compaq Alpha servers."
Also, although we're still using 8i I have spoken to a few DBAs who are "happily" managing production 9i dbs for several months now. If you want to upgrade, upgrade to 9i.