EXPERT RESPONSE
There are a number of ways to migrate, or upgrade, a database depending on your circumstances and requirements. Assuming your database is release 8.1.7.4, you can upgrade in place to Oracle9i release 2. Alternatively, you can use export and import to accomplish this task. Finally, you can use the SQL 'copy' command to copy your data from the 8i database to a newly created 9i database. Because you are not only upgrading your database, but also moving to another operating system, you cannot physically copy the database to the AIX server and upgrade it there. You can either export/import or copy your data across. You are dealing with a fairly large database (2 TB), so both options will be very time-consuming. I would encourage you to test the upgrade process using whichever method you choose to determine whether the outage window is sufficient.
If you are planning to upgrade from Oracle8i to 10g, there is another solution and that is to install Oracle 10g (if your platform allows it -- be sure to review the Oracle certification matrix), upgrade the 8i database to 10g in place and then use transportable tablespaces to transfer the database to the AIX server. Note that you would also need to install Oracle 10g on the AIX server. To learn more about how to use transportable tablespaces in Oracle 10g, review the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 Administrator's Guide.
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