We have a client who is using Oracle 9i on their old server, and they want to switch to Oracle 11 on the new server.
They want to backup the old database and restore it on the new server. Is this possible to do directly, or do they need to upgrade the old server to 11 first?
Both servers are Windows, so there won't be any OS translation to deal with.
Best Answer
One solution would be to use export/import. Depending on the size of the database, this could be quite slow.
Doing database upgrades from 9i to 11g could be painful too.
EDIT: With that much data, it might be faster to upgrade. I don't know what the path is from 9i to 11g, but you may have to upgrade twice (9i->10g, then 10g->11g). It still could be faster because it typically doesn't need to do much with your data. However you do it, it's not going to be a one-hour job ;-) Can the customer afford much downtime?