Is there a compelling reason to upgrade 8i clients accessing 9i db?

My question seems realitively simple yet I have been unable to find much documentation on the topic. I am not a database expert by trade and find myself doing more and more application support. I have several hundred clients running 8i databases that, over the course of the last year, have budgeted for new server equipment. Most of these clients will be upgrading to Oracle 9i because of the performance benefits and because it monitors resources better than 8i.

My question is this, sure there are plenty of reasons to run 9i over 8i database... but what reasons are there to upgrade all the thousands of workstations from 8i to 9i client other than the obvious of keeping everything on the same platform? What are the pros and cons? Any documentation on this topic would be quite helpful... particullarly from seasoned DBA's. Thank you in advance for your time and thoughts.

This is a bit speculative, but 10G has a lightweight client that requires little config etc.. You might investigate that also.

Exept for a little bit of performance gain,there is no reason (that I know of) to upgrade to 9i client (yet).

Last year I went through the same exercise and my clients are still happy using 8i client on 9i database.

Would you happen to know what specifically (performance wise) was changed in the 9i client that would cause it to perform better than the 8i client. Perhaps there is a white paper on the subject?

We have yet to expiriement with any of the v10 Oracle products.

Basically my dillema is this. My clients want to know why they running different versions of the Oracle software on the client and the server, and after paying several thousand dollars to do a data-move from 8i to 9i there are a few of them that feel we as a company are not being honest about the time that was spent moving the data. These statements are more out of ignorance than anything else... I know that from my expirience there seems to be no difference with the clients... therefore I did not feel it prudent to authorize my tech manager to spend hundreds of additional hours upgrading clients at essentially our own cost. But since several of our clients are concerned with the difference I have had to revisit the question in more seriousness and I found that I cannot locate any information on the subject. And "I don't know" is never a good answer...

This info is not related to this thread.. but, may be of some use..

We can not connect to databases relases prior to 8.1.7.4 using the client software of 10.1. It is fixed in 2nd release.

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Originally posted by sirhaggus
And "I don't know" is never a good answer...

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"I don't know" is always a great answer as long as it is followed up with ", but I'll check".

[ASSUME]
You're in a client/server environment where you have to update hundreds of client PCs.
[/ASSUME]

There is no compelling reason to upgrade. Sure there are some bugs in the 8.1.6 and below client code that does funky things to the v$session view which I don't like. Heck, Oracle Apps still uses the 8.0.6 client for a lot of their stuff.

I would rather spend the time figuring out how to go 3-tier so I only have to update the middle tier once (or N times) instead of having to send a PC Monkey to everybody's desktop.

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Originally posted by nagarjuna
We can not connect to databases relases prior to 8.1.7.4 using the client software of 10.1. It is fixed in 2nd release.

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WTF?

I like the 3 tier option personally... Which is actually what this is all about... so thanks for bringing it up... the client that is putting up the biggest fuss is utilizing a citrix solution... at this particular client's site they want to know what the big deal is with upgrading the oracle client on two citrix servers... In all honesty I don't like to "FIX" things that aren't broken and I have a sneaky feeling that if I upgrade the clients on these two servers that I will be up to my neck in calls about things not working correctly... this particular user doesn't have permission to access this new DLL... you know the drill... you are correct about the monkey thing though... it is such a big expense for me and my techs always manage to screw something up... if it isn't forgetting to remove the registry key before reinstalling the new client it is getting caught falling asleep... it is rediculous... anyhow... we have clients running personal oracle 8.05 with our software that haven't called in years... But in all honesty, if there is a difference in how these two clients handle sessions it may be helpful... currently we have a tough time with users powering off their machines... consequently suspending their oracle sessions... Oracle 9i is better at cleaning these up, but in some cases we are having to reboot servers once every few weeks... (although a bounce of the database is sufficient, we like to use this as an excuse to clear the server memmory)

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Originally posted by marist89
WTF?

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http://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/...&p_id=263077.1

I have a meeting this afternoon at 4 EST and would like to have some additional information to take with me. I have not been able to locate anything else on the Internet and I am not looking forward to calling Oracle directly. Any additional assitance would be greatly appreciated.

Here's an answer prompted by my years of consultancy ... propose that you migrate a very small client base, just a handful of users, to 9i, and see if it makes a difference to them. My guess is that it won't, but it would benefit you through ...

• Getting a firm time on how long the upgrade would take per real-user machine
• Exposing any issues with 9i or 8i
• Covering your ass so you can say you tried it but didn't waste money doing so.

You could even include 10g in your test.

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My question is this, sure there are plenty of reasons to run 9i over 8i database... but what reasons are there to upgrade all the thousands of workstations from 8i to 9i client other than the obvious of keeping everything on the same platform?

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You can plan upgrading the clients now, while you have time. Or you can wait for future Oracle releases to be implemented on your environment, when the actual clients won't be supported anymore. The migration will have to be done eventually, why not start it now and gradually?

Unless you plan to stick on 9i forever or to use only web-based systems (by the way, not a bad approach)

I have all the data on how much time it takes and for most sites it adds between 2-3 hours to the job... For larger jobs this could increase up to 8-10 hours... Someone mentioned earlier that there was a slight change in the 9i client in reference to how it managed sessions... does anyone have more information on this?

I guess you've looked here ... http://download-west.oracle.com/docs...new.htm#967650

You are the man... This is precisely what I was looking for. Thank you for your time and for your post.

Any real world cituations that people may have encountered where upgrading an 8i client to 9i resolved a problem would also be helpful if anyone might have expirience in this area.