I am an Oracle newbie and have been reading a lot but am stuck. We are moving a production database to a different Oracle server (currently hosting other 11.2 databases). My manage asked me to do a test move ahead of the actual implementation. We are running in a Windows 2003 environment. I created a duplicate folder structure, copied over the backup files and was able to restore the spfile, control file and database files successfully. However, at the last step, I executed ALTER DATABASE OPEN RESETLOGS; it blew up. The production server was running 11.1 and my error stated I needed to run this command with upgrade.
I tried running that statement but no joy. Now, I can't even connect to the target database in rman. I am getting errors about the character set but have been unable to get past them. So, I cannot connect to the restored database.
Is it safe to use the DBCA to attempt to delete the database? I am extremely concerned as I saw that the listener and tsnames.ora file had somehow picked up the info for the source server. I modified them to point to the target but am worried it might try to delete the source database (I am worried something may be hidden in the registry or somewhere I don't know that is pointing to the source server). Would you recommend manually deleting the database files and starting over, but not sure how elegant that would be. Also, how do I get around the upgrade problem. I know that it would be ideal to upgrade before I move the database, but that won't be approved. Plus, I want to be sure I can perform this prior to the actual migration day.
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Sydney