Imagine your company is running Oracle JDE 8.12 with DB2 for i running on an IBM i (AS/400) server and you want to migrate to Oracle Linux 7.3 Oracle Database 12.1 with Oracle Weblogic Pro JDE 12.1 running on the Oracle Cloud…
Sounds like the kind of project that keeps IT professionals up nights, weekends, and holidays.
Application Architect Humza Quareshi faced exactly that problem when his company David C. Cook, a publishing company based in Colorado, needed to upgrade its IT infrastructure. Humza found two paths forward…
Option 1: The Oracle Support Method
Humza started with Oracle support and was advised that there are no shortcuts. According to Oracle, if you upgrade directly from DB2 to Oracle Linux 7 and the migration has any errors, they would not be able to tell where the migration had failed. Instead, the only way to upgrade with fidelity is to work your way up the stack with robust QA at each step.
For David C. Cook, that would have meant four migrations at a minimum of two months per migration.
Estimated project time: 8-12 months.
Option 2: The StarQuest Way
Then Humza contacted StarQuest about StarQuest Data Replicator (SQDR). SQDR’s seamless data modeling ensured data could be replicated directly from DB2 to Oracle 12 accurately and in real-time.
Estimated project time: 2 months.
Decision Time
As you might expect, Humza chose the StarQuest way.
Using SQDR, Humza was able to move all of his source data (400-500 GB on the IBM DB2 side, 700GB on the Oracle side) straight into an Oracle 12 database on cold storage. Using that connection, data was easily upgraded into Oracle JDE 9.2 on the Oracle Cloud. The transfer rate was limited by network parameters to 5-10MB per second on the WAN, but Humza reported that speeds could have been 100MB per second on the LAN. According to Humza, David C. Cook saved at least six months of work by utilizing SQDR rather than the upgrade path recommended by Oracle.
In his words, “Anyone looking to upgrade their instance of J.D. Edwards from DB2 to Oracle should look at StarQuest. I was able to augment my upgrade path significantly and I love the software to the point that I want to keep it in my own personal software toolbox. I will be recommending it for all JDE upgrades moving forward.”
If you would like to explore using SQDR for your Oracle JDE upgrading needs or other replication scenarios, please email onlinesales@starquest.com.