[Info-vax] Final Orace release on VMS.

[Shael Richmond]

On Friday, November 13, 2020 at 12:32:11 PM UTC-6, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 11/13/2020 12:09 PM, Marc Van Dyck wrote: 
> > Jan-Erik Söderholm formulated the question : 
> >> Den 2020-11-13 kl. 17:01, skrev Phillip Helbig (undress to reply): 
> >>> My guess is that the number who would like Oracle Classic on VMS is much 
> >>> smaller. Can you point to even one person? 
> >>> 
> >> 
> >> I'v got a private message (and I think it was mentioned in the event 
> >> yesterday from France) that at least two custerers in France have said 
> >> that they will leave VMS due to Oracle "Classic" leaving VMS. 
> > 
> > I'm one of them. Without the Oracle Client, OpenVMS where I work 
> > is dead. Fortunately I'll be retired before that. But VSI can write 
> > off 25 systems that will never be migrated to X86.
> How is Oracle policy regarding client version vs server version? 
> Does server version N require client version N or do they support 
> client N-1 to N or N-2 to N or? 
> 
> Do you need supported client library? 
> 
> Arne

Normally the client can talk to n+2.

We have tested both 10.2.0.4 and 11.2.0.4 VMS clients with Oracle 19c and it connects fine.  10g is not officially supported but will work for us until those servers get refreshed with 11g clients.   The response I got from Oracle is that we are stuck on the server side at 19c, but that it is a long term version.  

We are planning on moving away from OpenVMS but had the x86 version as a fallback in case the replacement application took even longer than expected.   Now that is not an option.  Hardware support becomes the issue for us.

Shael Richmond
International Paper