Can Sybase 11.5 be directly upgraded to 11.9

[Changchun Teng]

As title.

A old system whose os is 10.20, running sybase 11.5 on it. After I upgraded the os to 11i v1, a new problem appeared. I got the information from http://www.sybase.com, which said that only 11.9 or higher support hp-ux 11.x. So I have to upgrade the sybase server from 11.5 to 11.9. What I concern is whether it could be work, and where can get the patch set.

[Mobeen_1]

Teng,
I have done these upgrade from Sybase ASE 11.5 to Sybase ASE 11.9.1 for several of my production data servers without any issues.

I would suggest that you do some testing before venturing into this.

Infact if you h/w and OS support (check this on www.sybase.com, then go in for Sybase ASE 12.x version)

regards
Mobeen

[Changchun Teng]

Hi Mobeen

Thanks for your reply.

I hear that there may be some difference between 11.5 and 11.9 for the introduction of row-level lock. So if I upgraded the Sybase RDBMS binary via installing patches, are there any special operations or remarkable steps?

Will you please give some hands-on material?

B.R.

[ALPER ONEY]

Hi Changchun,
First of all, I'd like to indicate that your migration process consists of two different migrations which the first one is on the OS and the second one is on the RDBMS system. I beleive that the first one probably iwill be the easiest one respectively. But for the db side, you might face more problems due to poor-written queries, changes in the way optimizer handles queries, new features of the new version etc. So you need to have a robust migration check-list at least for Sybase side. I suggest you that you should choose a Sybase version whose version is not so close to it is end of date. So it is better tha have the versions such as sybase 12.0.8, 12.5.2 etc. To do so, you will have some enhanced features like Java in Adapter Server. In addition to the information written above, if your server includes small-size databases, instead of upgrading binaries, install a new version of sybase to a directory and then use it to build a new server. After a new server is set up, use reengineering tools to move all scripts from the old db to the new one on the new server. If your dbs on the 11.5 server are large databases or you do not want to build a new server(12 or 12.5) you can use database dumps which are backed up by 11.5 server in order to load into the new one. Please do not for get to run sp_recompile and update statistics commands on the new server and do have a look on ".cfg" file in order to tune server parameters.
HTH
Regards,
ALPER ONEY
I.S.E TAKASBANK INC
TEL:+902123152109

[Mobeen_1]

Teng,
As your rightly pointed out, 11.9.2 introduces row-level locking but if your apps are not ready for it, you have the option of disabling the same.

regards
Mobeen

[Mobeen_1]

Teng,
Let me know what sort of document you are looking for? I will try tp provide the same.

regards
Mobeen

[Changchun Teng]

Hi Mobeen

I'd like to get the detailed docs about upgrading or updating the S/W from 11.5 to 11.9. Such as you said that the row-level lock could be disabled by a switch, how to do so?

[Mobeen_1]

Teng,
Please assign point to people who respond to you as per the help you recieve.

Coming to your questions.

Please review the powerpoint presentation below to get details on the upgrade planning
http://www.sybase.com/content/1011345/9

As for row-level locking, this feature will not be turned on by default. So you don't have to worry about it.

If one wants to enable row-level locking and
If it is an existing database, the DBA will need to issue "ALTER TABLE" commands to the specific tables to enable row-level locking. A new utility called sp_object_stats" has been provided to provide details on lock contention

Let me know if you have any additional questions

regards
Mobeen

[Mobeen_1]

Teng,
I just ran into this link of some FAQ for Sybase ASE and thought i should pass on this to you. Although the versions mentioned in this link are different, the upgrade procedure works the same with very little changes.

Caution : Please test your upgrade procedure on a test machine before hopping onto production :)

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/databases/sybase-faq/part4/

All the best

regards
Mobeen