when we upgrade geodatabse 9.3.1 to 10.1, under the hood what is it really doing?

[RakeshRay]

To better understand if I should do upgrade geodatabase from 9.3.1 to 10.1 or just inistall new geodatbase for 10.1 version.

[VinceAngelo · Accepted solution]

ArcGIS 10.0 introduced a paradigm shift on the GDB_* table organization, so a
9.3.1 -> 10.1 upgrade will need to rewrite the GDB tables.

I prefer to reload data when I upgrade databases (major release change), but
rarely copy over the data in lieu of an ArcSDE upgrade.

There's a number of variables that come into play, but it's mostly a "golden rule"
issue (he who has the gold makes the rules).  Generally the cost of migration
far exceeds that of in situ upgrade.

- V

[RakeshRay]

Hi, vince.
Can you pleae elaborate on your GDB_* statement.
Our team member seeing erros like follows while upgrading from 9.3.1 to 10.1. Does it expect us to remove GDB_* tables before we upgrade?

[Fri Sep 14 10:44:18 2012] Error creating  GDB_Items table...
[Fri Sep 14 10:44:20 2012] ERROR Creating Geodatabase tables
, Error = -511
,EXT_Error = 0
,EXT_ERROR1 = Error executing stored procedure <schema>.layers_util.insert_layer
,EXT_ERROR2 = ORA-20019: Layer 763 already exists.
,

[CraigGillgrass]

You seem to be running into an issue with Upgrade, I have not seen those errors before.

The best way to track this down is to work with Technical Support, I suggest you contact them so you can get this issue looked at.  If they determine it is a bug, it will be sent to the Development team to evaluate and fix.

[VinceAngelo]

No, you would destroy your geodatabase integrity if you dropped any of the GDB_*
tables owned by SDE.

The 9.3.1/10.0/10.1 documentation describes the tables owned by the SDE user,
and I believe the What's New in 10.0 describes the changes as well.

A "Layer nnn already exists" message indicates that there's problems with
geodatabase integrity -- you probably want to start a Tech Support incident.

- Vince