Oracle 9i VMS Installation

[Robert Atkinson]

We currently run Oracle 8, but our main software supplier has said that we need to upgrade to 9i to remain supported.

The problem is they say it can only be installed using DECWindows and it has to sit on an ODS-5 disk!

If there's anyone out there with experience of Oracle 9i and would be willing to discuss this, please email me at ratkinson@tbs-ltd.co.uk.

Thanks, Robert.

[Ian Miller.]

Just to clarify - its your application provider that has said you have to go to Oracle 9i and not Oracle?

Which version of VMS are you running?

[Hein van den Heuvel]

>> We currently run Oracle 8, but our main software supplier has said that we need to upgrade to 9i to remain supported.


Sounds reasonable. Too much trouble keeping the nuance differences straight (connect internal -vs- / as sysdba, demise of svrmgrl, statspack -vs- utlXstat, RAC, pga_aggregate tuning,...).

>> The problem is they say it can only be installed using DECWindows

Not so much DECwindows as an X display.
As long as you can define DECW$DISPLAY to some willing host (linux/unix/vms host or a Windoze box with excurstion or sygwin or such) then you should be in good shape.
Remember to always test the display with a simple DECW$CLOCK or Xeyes before tryin an install.

>> it has to sit on an ODS-5 disk!

Anything stopping you from going there?
What VMS version are you currently on?

>> If there's anyone out there with experience of Oracle 9i

It's out there. It is mature. It is required to be properly supported. It is where the momentum is. You want to go there. :-)

fwiw,
Hein.

[Lawrence Czlapinski]

Robert, we recently went to Oracle 9i on one of our Oracle servers. We built the non-systems disks as ODS-5 for Oracle.
Lawrence

[Daniel Fernandez Illan]

Hi.

This table list the operating system software requirements for Oracle9i products.

Table 1-3 Operating System Software Requirements
Software Requirements

Operating System


HP OpenVMS version 7.3

Oracle Net Requirements


Oracle Net on HP OpenVMS is developed and certified using Hewlett-Packard TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS (UCX). If you wish to use the TCP/IP protocol adapter for Oracle Net, then you should have Version 5.1 ECO 4 or higher of TCP/IP Services for HP OpenVMS Alpha installed. TCP/IP protocol stacks from other vendors may work with Oracle, but customers use these products at their own risk. Any TCP/IP problems that cannot be reproduced using TCP/IP Services for HP OpenVMS Alpha will simply be referred to the TCP/IP vendor.

Vendor-provided protocol services are usually upward compatible, so that existing applications will continue to work without modification. Thus, later releases of TCP/IP are upward compatible with Oracle Net, provided that the vendor-specified Application Programming Interface (API) does not change with new releases.

Window Manager


X-Windows must be installed on the system from which the Oracle Universal Installer is run. Use any Hewlett-Packard-supported X-Windows server (for example, Excursion, dtwm, twm, mwm) that supports Motif.


Also, the disks on which the Oracle code tree resides must be formatted in Files-11 On-Disk Structure Level 5 (ODS-5) format. This is the disk to which the VMS logicals ora_root, ora_rootdir, and oracle_home will point. The directory that is referenced by these logicals is the parent directory for all Oracle RDBMS software, such as APACHE, CTX, INSTALL, NETCONFIG, RDBMS, UTIL, and so forth. The disks on which Oracle database files reside can be formatted as either ODS-2 or ODS-5.

This information is in:

http://download-uk.oracle.com/docs/html/B10508_01/planning.htm#1104554

but you need a ORACLE user to access them.

best regards.

[Jack Trachtman]

We also are testing a migration from Oracle 8i to 9i.

Just a note that only the "code tree" for Oracle code must be ODS-5 - the tablespaces themselves can be left on ODS-2 disks.

We have initialized a disk to ODS-5 for this testing and have no plans to change the ODS-2 structure on any of our other disks.

[Ian Miller.]

note that you do not have to initialise the disk to change to ODS5. Just use the SET VOLUME/STRUCTURE=5. You dont lose the contents of the disk. NB You can not go back to ODS2 once you have done that so backup first.

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hi,

one comment on the requirements quoted earlier in the thread. If support is an issue, you do <> want to be on VMS 7.3. 7.3-2 is pretty mature, well tested in the field and will be a "landing zone" release with extended support by hp. If you upgrade, go there.

As far as ODS-5 is concerned, you will need it in more and more places and e.g. having the system disk on ODS-5 is no problem at all.

Greetings, Martin

[Robert Atkinson]

Thanks for all your responses.

The VMS version will eventually be 7.3-2, so not problems there.

The annoying thing about this is that we only require the client, no databases, so that we can talk to Oracle on a Windows box.

I know what your thinking; why not just use Attunity or something similar, but this is a black-box solution and we have no control over it.

Reading your responses, I'm not so apprehensive about converting to ODS-5 as I was. We have a DS10 test bed that I can try this all out on anyway, so !hopefully! we'll get any problems sorted before doing this on the production system.

Robert.

[Denver Technology]

Robert,

One thing to watch when you carry out your upgrades is the order you do them as it affects the Oracle code tree re-link with regard to Java RTE - even if you don't intend to use the Oracle Java tools.

OpenVMS V7.3 & V7.3-1 is supplied with Java RTE V1.1.8 (which is now ancient and has limited support). The OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-2 upgrade strips out this default version of Java RTE leaving you to install the later version of your choice - 1.3.1 or 1.4.2. Unfortunately Oracle V8i, when it runs the code tree rebuild, required RTE V1.1.8 or 1.2.n and the whole code tree rebuild will fail if neither RTE are present. Oracle 9i will work with either 1.1.8 or 1.3.1.

We have both Oracle 8i and 9i based applications so are running both versions. When we first ran the 7.3-2 upgrade we had to locate a copy of the Java RTE 1.1.8 kit and re-install it along side 1.3.1 & 1.4.2 (it is available on the HP web site - if you look hard enough :o). Oracle 8i is now happy but unfortunatley if 9i find the earlier RTE it uses that rather than the later one. Ho hum :o)

BTW. You can purchase extended support for 8i if you really really want to keep it. We are pressing hard to get our 8i apps upgraded to 9i but the management inertia is crippling :o(

If you have any other issues just post another message. There seems to be a lot of really good advise on this forum.

hth

Robin Smith, ML (London)

[Robert Atkinson]

Robin, thanks for the heads-up.

Hopefully this won't effect us, as we don't have any applications - we just use the SQL client interface.

Robert.

[Himanshu_3 · Accepted solution]

Hi Robert,

Adding to the quotes from Robin below are my findings:

- For Oracle to run ODS-5 volume is required although database files could stay in ODS-2 volumes. The installation files (ORA_BASE) and the oracle software (ORA_ROOT) must reside on ODS-5 volume.

-the directory names are mixed case and contain "." in the directory names,necessitating the "^" to tell VMS that the dot is part of the directory name and not a delimiter.

-For the installation latest java is required along with several VMS patches.Once the java or the x-windows install has started oracle then uses its own java from CD.

- The SVRMGRL program is no longer used. Instead, SQLPlus is used for
startup and shutdown as well.

For installation we copied the contents of the CD-ROM to hard disk and then proceeded with the installation as explained in the below procedure:

"Installation Option, Installing Oracle9i from the Hard Drive

You can avoid the need to mount and unmount CD-ROMs during
installation by
copying the contents of each CD-ROM to your system hard drive. You
must have a
file system that is not in use by other applications. You must also
have at least 2.5 GB of disk space available.
1. Copy the CD-ROMs to your system hard drive. Copy the contents of
each
CD-ROM to a directory on a disk. For example:
$ copy disk$disk1:[cdrom]
$ copy disk$disk1:[cdrom]
2. Start the Oracle Universal Installer from the hard disk. The Oracle
Universal
Installer automatically finds the contents of each CD-ROM and does not
prompt
for the location of any CD-ROM during the course of the installation."

Hope you find it useful.

Thanx & Regards,
HP

[Jan van den Ende]

HP,


You
must have a
file system that is not in use by other applications.


Can you explain that in VMS terminology to someone pretty unfamiliar with N*X?
I have a vahue idea as to what might be intended, but either it is irrelevant in VMS, or I misunderstand completely :-(

Cheers.

Have one on me.

Jan

[高宝妹_1]

ALPHA/OpenVMS (Refer to [NOTE:170199.1] for recommended OpenVMS ECO levels) ------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | 7.0 | 7.1 | 7.2 | 7.3 | | | |** see note J | ------------------------------------------------------------ 7.3.2.2.0 | | | | 7.3.2.3.0 | 7.3.2.3.0 | | | | 7.3.2.3.2 | | | | 7.3.3.4 | | | | 7.3.3.6 | 7.3.3.6 | | | 7.3.4.3 | 7.3.4.3 | | | 7.3.4.4 | 7.3.4.4 | | ------------------------------------------------------------ | 8.0.3.2.0 | | | | 8.0.5.0.0 | 8.0.5.0.0 | | | 8.0.5.0.1 | 8.0.5.0.1 | | | 8.0.5.1.0 | 8.0.5.1.0 | | | | 8.1.6.0.0 | | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | 9.0.1.0.0 | | | |** see note C | | | | 9.0.1.3.0 | 9.0.1.3.0 | | | 9.0.1.4.0 | 9.0.1.4.0 | | | ** see note B | ============================================================ | | 8.1.7.0.0 | 8.1.7.0.0 | | | ** see note E | | | 8.1.7.1b | 8.1.7.1b | | | 8.1.7.3.0 | 8.1.7.3.0 | | | 8.1.7.4.0 | 8.1.7.4.0 | | | ** see note D | | | | 9.2.0.2.0 | | | | 9.2.0.3.0 | | | |** see Note A | | | | 9.2.0.4.0 | | | |** see Note A | | | | 9.2.0.5.0 | | | |** see Note A | ============================================================ (For hp VAX OpenVMS Certification matrix - see [NOTE:52574.1]) Full support is currently offered against Oracle Releases 8.1.7 and 9.2.0. For advanced information relating to Oracle 10G on OpenVMS Alpha and Itanium, please refer to the following URL: http://h71000.www7.hp.com/solutions/oracle/VMSSOD.HTML A. Patch set 9.2.0.5 is now available from the Metalink patches download area.

[高宝妹_1]

Support Matrix for hp ALPHA OpenVMS versions and Oracle Server releases
7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3
7.3.2.2.0
7.3.2.3.0 7.3.2.3.0
7.3.2.3.2
7.3.3.4
7.3.3.6 7.3.3.6
7.3.4.3 7.3.4.3
7.3.4.4 7.3.4.4
8.0.3.2.0
8.0.5.0.0 8.0.5.0.0
8.0.5.0.1 8.0.5.0.1
8.0.5.1.0 8.0.5.1.0
8.1.6.0.0
9.0.1.0.0
9.0.1.3.0 9.0.1.3.0
9.0.1.4.0 9.0.1.4.0
8.1.7.0.0 8.1.7.0.0
8.1.7.1b 8.1.7.1b
8.1.7.3.0 8.1.7.3.0
8.1.7.4.0 8.1.7.4.0
9.2.0.2.0
9.2.0.3.0
9.2.0.4.0
9.2.0.5.0

[Robert Atkinson]

Thanks again to everyone who responded.

I feel I have enough information now to make a decision on where we go from here.

Robert.

[Robert Atkinson]

Closed