1. Application Developer's Guide
  2. Migrating Oracle Text Applications

14 Migrating Oracle Text Applications

When you upgrade to a new release of Oracle Database, there may be issues relating to migrating your applications from earlier releases of Oracle Text. Where applicable, Oracle provides information about any needed migration steps to move Oracle Text applications into the new release.

This chapter contains the following sections:

See Also:

Oracle Database Upgrade Guide for information on upgrading Oracle Database and topics about migrating applications

14.1 Oracle Text and Rolling Upgrade with Logical Standby

You can use a logical standby database to perform a rolling upgrade of Oracle Database. During a rolling upgrade, you can run different releases of Oracle Database on the primary and logical standby databases while you upgrade your databases, one at a time, incurring minimal downtime on the primary database. Oracle Text takes full advantage of upgrading Text indexes during a rolling upgrade.

All CTX PL/SQL procedures are fully replicated to the standby database and, therefore, are upgraded, except with certain limitations, as described, for these procedures:

See Also:

Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration for information on creating a logical standby database to perform rolling upgrades

14.1.1 CTX_DDL PL/SQL Procedures

Oracle Database uses rowids internally for the construction of indexes. The following CTX_DDL procedures are not fully replicated to the standby:

  • ADD_MDATA

  • REMOVE_MDATA

14.1.2 CTX_OUTPUT PL/SQL Procedures

Only CTX_OUTPUT.ENABLE_QUERY_STATS and CTX_OUTPUT.DISABLE_QUERY_STATS are replicated. This means that if Oracle Text logging is enabled on the primary database before running an operation that causes logging, then the operation will run with logging on the primary database, but will run without logging on the secondary database.

14.1.3 CTX_DOC PL/SQL Procedures

When the following CTX_DOC procedures are used with Oracle Text Result Tables, the data stored in the tables is replicated. When these procedures are used without Result Tables, they are not replicated.

  • CTX_DOC.SET_KEY_TYPE

  • CTX_DOC.FILTER

  • CTX_DOC.GIST

  • CTX_DOC.MARKUP

  • CTX_DOC.TOKENS

  • CTX_DOC.THEMES

  • CTX_DOC.HIGHLIGHT

  • CTX_DOC.FILTER_CLOB_QUERY

  • CTX_DOC.MARKUP_CLOB_QUERY

  • CTX_DOC.HIGHLIGHT_CLOB_QUERY

See Also:

Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration for information on performing a rolling upgrade for minimal downtime on the primary database

14.2 Identifying and Copying Oracle Text Files To a New Oracle Home

To upgrade Oracle Text, use this procedure to identify and copy required files from your existing Oracle home to the new release Oracle home. Complete this task after you upgrade Oracle Database.

Certain Oracle Text features rely on files under the Oracle home that you have configured. After a manual upgrade to a new release, or after any other process that changes the Oracle home, you must identify and move these files manually. These files include any user filters, any mail filter configuration files, and all the knowledge base extension files. After you identify the files, copy the files from your existing Oracle home to the new Oracle home.

To identify the list of files that you must copy from the existing Oracle home, Oracle recommends that you run the SQL script /ctx/admin/ctx_oh_files.sql.
  1. Log in with the SYS, SYSTEM, or CTXSYS system privileges for the earlier release database.
  2. Run $ORACLE_HOME/ctx/admin/ctx_oh.sql under the Oracle home of the earlier release database.

    For example:

    sqlplus / as sysdba
connected
SQL> @?/ctx/admin/ctx_oh_files
  3. Review the output from the ctx_oh_files.sql command, and copy those files to the new Oracle home.