I have a dialect 1 database that started out in IB5, which has been
running on FB1.5 for some time now.



I know that there was a migration guide for upgrading a dialect 1 db
to dialect 3 back when dialect 3 came out. After reviewing the
changes, it was deemed too costly to upgrade the database, so we have
kept just upgrading the engine but leaving the dialect as is.



I think it's high time that we updated the dialect, and moving to v2.1
is probably the appropriate time to make the change. The database is
70GB, mostly ETL-type data entry, mostly OLAP-type use, although the
amount of OLTP has been increasing.



From my recollection, there were a number of metadata changes that
need to be made to a DDL extract to accomdate the new datatypes (I can
remember the difference between the old DATE and new
DATE/TIME/TIMESTAMP being a significant one). A new database would
then be created from the modified DDL, and the data 'pumped' from the
old database to the new one. Have these procedures changed since way
back then? Here's the real important question – is there a faster way
to do this? (Currently, a full backup-restore cycle on this database
takes about 17 hours. Until I can get my customers to sign off on an
archiving strategy I have to live with it) I presume that a 'new
database' conversion is going to take somewhere in the same
neighborhood, if not longer.



thanks,



Bob M..



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