EBS 12.2 DB Migration Using 12cR1 Transportable Tablespaces Now Certified

Database migration across platforms of different "endian" (byte ordering) formats using the Transportable Tablespaces (TTS) process is now certified for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 (12.2.3 or higher) with Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1.0).

This certification requires that the source database be 11gR2 (11.2.0.4) or 12cR1 (12.1.0.2) and the target database be 12cR1 (12.1.0.2). This 12.2/12cR1 database migration process utilizes the 'full transportable export/import' feature of 12c to greatly speed up the migration while also offering the optional use of incremental backup.

This migration process requires a patch delivered by the EBS Platform Engineering team which is now generally available on MOS for use by EBS customers.

The "endian-ness" of platforms can be checked by querying the view 

 V$TRANSPORTABLE_PLATFORM using sqlplus (connected as sysdba):

SQL> select platform_name, endian_format from v$transportable_platform;

Here's a list of relevant platforms certified for the EBS R12 with 12cR1 on the database tier:

Big Endian	Little Endian
Oracle Solaris on SPARC	Linux x86-64
HP-UX Itanium	Windows x64
IBM AIX on Power Systems	Oracle Solaris on x86-64
IBM: Linux on System z

The use of Transportable Tablespaces may greatly speed up the migration of the data portion of the database - it does not affect metadata which must still be migrated using export/import. Smaller databases (less than 1TB) may see little gain from the use of Transportable Tablespaces, and other techniques like export/import will be simpler and likely faster.

For smaller databases, we highly recommend that users initially perform a test migration with export/import on their database with the 'metrics=y' parameter to find out the relative size of data vs metadata in their database and to have a basis to compare any gains in timing. Generally speaking, the larger the relative size of data (as compared to metadata), the more likely it would be that TTS is suitable as a migration process to reduce downtime.

Database migration between platforms of the same endian format should use the 'Transportable Database' process or Rapid Clone if migrating between the same platform.

References

• Using Transportable Tablespaces to Migrate Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 Using Oracle Database 12c Release 1 Enterprise Edition (My Oracle Support Document 2157661.1)
• Oracle Database Administrator's Guide 12c Release 1 (12.1)

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