Re: 10 GB from 5.02 to 7.20 in "real time" ??

Michal Hajek wrote: > > Hi, > > we use OnLine 5.02 on HP-UX 10.20 (K260) and planning upgrade > to 7.xx (DSA, which version ?). > Our database has now 10 GB (and will have cca 12 GB next year, > when we will do the upgrade). > We are a hospital, so we really can not stop work for a long > time. I guess 24 hours is longest time we can stop the server > for. (We stop it for 4 hours every month - basic service.) > We could have another 12 GB disk space, if it would be needed. > > I need ideas and experiences with such "real time" upgrading. One of the major tasks of upgrading from 5.xx to 7.xx is rebuilding all indexes in the new 7.xx format. This is done during conversion in a single thread. If you drop all indexes (except on system tables of course) you can rebuild many of them in parallel and use the PSORT facility to build each index more quickly after the conversion. Version 7.xx builds indexes MUCH more quickly than 5.xx did so do not be daunted by the number of indexes that need building. This is my only suggestion. Another option: If you can build the new 7.xx database on separate disks or another machine and unload the data from 5.xx and reload into the new 7.xx server while saving transactions to reapply against the copied database you can convert without any appreciable downtime. Another trick to ease the pain of conversion is to convert all of your application code to 7.xx and run it against the 5.xx database (run with INFORMIXDIR=<7.xx directory> and INFORMIXSERVER=<5.xx servername>) thusyou can get your applications ported and working and tested even before you convert the server. They will run at least as fast as native 5.xx applications and after the conversion just change INFORMIXSERVER to the new server's name (or bring 7.xx up with the same name as 5.xx used) and restart your apps confident that they will work fine. Art S. Kagel