I recently tested the upgrade of an Oracle 11.2.0.3 database to 12c Release 1 and here are the screen shots as well as some new things in found in the 12c Database Upgrade Assistant.
- The DBUA GUI interface has now changed as compared to previous releases. It is like the OUI with split screen layout with tasks listed on the left of the screen and steps, details and progress on the right.
- The
utlu121s.sqlscript has been replaced with thepreupgrd.sql script. The new Pre-Upgrade Information Tool provides fix-up scripts with the ability to fix and address any issues identified by the pre-upgrade check script
- The previous upgrade script
catupgrd.sqlhas been replaced with the newcatctl.plParallel Upgrade Utility script which provides the ability to run upgrade scripts in parallel taking advantage of spare CPU capacity which can potentially reduce upgrade times
- If Flashback database is enabled, DBUA creates a guaranteed restore point which can be used in case we have a failure in the upgrade process. We can also restart DBUA to recover from any failures during the upgrade.
- We can now use an existing RMAN backup which DBUA is aware of in case we need to restore the database to the pre-12c upgrade state
- Oracle XML DB is now a mandatory component of the Oracle 12c database and is automatically installed as part of the upgrade process if not found
- If Database Control from earlier release exists, we need to drop the same before upgrading the database. We can do this via DBUA or reduce the upgrade downtime by performing this task in advance by copying a new script emremove.sql from the 12c Oracle Hone and running it against the 11g database.
