Issues about datafile and controlfile portability

  Hello,

  I've recently started to learn Oracle RDBMS and I've got long   time skills in unix system administration.

  I believe my question is probably in a FAQ or some document...   But I must confess I _did_ not find it anywhere. Here it goes:

  My main goal is to "migrate" a 32 bit Oracle 8.0.5 database   running under HP-UX/PA-RISC to Linux/i386 and vice-versa;   Eventually being able to describe a process between any two   different Operating Systems and/or CPU architectures (say:   AIX/RS6000 -> Solaris/SPARC, VMS/Alpha -> SCO/i386, whatever)   among the same Oracle release - 8.0.5.

  MAIN QUESION: Is the internal format of the datafiles,

                controlfiles, logfiles binary portable
                among such different architectures ?
                Or it bit/little-endian dependant ? Or
                something else ?

  Assuming such portability issues were ok, I'd be able to   do an offline transfer of the bunch of files, readjust   the init<sid>, config<sid>, etc and be done with it.

  Unfortunatelly, my first test for such method was unsuccessfull   in mounting the database -> my controlfiles are not ok... *sigh*

  Before going into details, I'd just like to hear the answer to   my FAQ (it is a FAQ isn't it ?) and eventually readjust my   strategy.

  Thanks in advance for any input.

  Regards,

  Tiago Montes                             (tmontes_at_mail.telepac.pt)