JCC LogMiner Loader Product Compatibility

The JCC LogMiner Loader has been tested, over time, with many combinations of software and many versions of its companion paroducts. Given the role that the Loader plays as middleware, it is impossible to test all combinations of products and targets that the Loader supports. When issues are raised about combinations that we have not tested, we have added to our testing suite and, if necessary, added enhancements to allow those combinations to work.  Please see Loader Regression Testing about our regression testing methodology to see how we respond to these complex testing requirements.

JCC always recommends upgrading to the latest version possible of both the Loader and the companion products.

This note outlines the versions of various software components we have used for the regression testing of the 3.5 release of the Loader.  We will continue to run our regression cycles after the release.  In fact, we will be upgrading many of the systems in our environment to validate the latest versions and patches of OpenVMS, Rdb and Oracle.

OpenVMS

Version V03.05.01 of the Loader has been tested with the following versions of VMS:

  • V7.1          (Alpha)
  • V 7.2-2      (Alpha)
  • V 7.3-2      (Alpha)
  • V 8.4         (Alpha and Integrity)
  • V8.4-1H1   (Integrity)
  • V8.4-2L1   (Integrity)
  • V8.4-2L2   (Alpha)

It is our general tendency to apply patches as they are released by HP and VSI.

JCC is not aware of any restrictions that would cause the Loader to fail when using earlier versions of OpenVMS.

  • Note: There is a restriction regarding version 7.1 (and earlier versions) of OpenVMS that is due to an incompatibility with the thread libraries used in later versions. The Loader kit provides a number of different images optimized for different environments. The standard version is linked with the threads library.  For early versions of OpenVMS the "ST" variant (sans threads) option should be used as it is not linked with the threads library and, if you do not require threads, it has the lowest CPU impact on your VMS system.  Most targets (JDBC, Oracle, Tuxedo) require the standard Loader.

Rdb

The JCC LogMiner Loader Version 1.0 and later have been extensively tested with almost all variants of Rdb that support the LogMiner. Testing has included Rdb V7.4-120 and previous versions back to V7.0.6.3, for both source and target on Alpha architectures.  Over time, as new versions of Rdb and new architectures for OpenVMS have been released, Loader testing has been done on the new versions, in many cases replacing the older version we were  testing.  We have, however, preserved our testing context on the oldest platform.

The Rdb LogMiner was first released in version 7.0.6.4 of Rdb, but was available in 7.0.6.3 with a patch.  This was what we now call the "static" LogMiner.    The Continuous LogMiner was released in Rdb 7.0.6.5.  The Loader has been used with the earliest versions of Rdb; but be aware that the oldest versions do not support the Continuous LogMiner and a number of issues have been fixed since the initial releases.  The newer releases of the Loader will support environments that were built for Loader version 1.0 which we now call static mode.

With version 3.5.1 and later of the Loader, the following Rdb versions have been tested as the source database:

  • V7.0-9
  • V7.2.401
  • V7.2-501
  • V7.2-510
  • V7.2-541
  • V7.2-560
  • V7.3-130
  • V7.3-131
  • V7.3-210
  • V7.3-300
  • V7.4-120

Oracle

There are two ways to send data to an Oracle target.  The native way is via standard OCI calls.  There is also a JDBC interface.  Both of these are supported.

To support Oracle as a target via the OCI interface, the JCC LogMiner Loader requires standard Oracle SQL*net on the system on which the Loader is running and a client version of Oracle that runs on OpenVMS. Version 3.5 of the Loader has been tested with the following client versions of Oracle:

  • 11.2.0.4.0
  • 10.2.0.4.0
  • 10.1.0.3.0
  •   9.2.0.8.0
  •   9.0.1.0.0

The kit includes shareable images that are linked with the appropriate Oracle libraries.  Note that some of these Oracle versions are no longer supported by Oracle  JCC recognizes that some customers have frozen their software environments and are restricted from upgrading to more supported Oracle versions.  These customers may upgrade their Loader installations confidently.

Loader version 3.5 has been tested with the following Oracle server versions:

  • 12.2.0.2.0
  • 12.1.0.2.0
  • 11.2.0.4.0
  • 10.2.0.4.0
  • 10.1.0.3.0

The following notes are appropriate:

  • Earlier versions of the Oracle 9.2 kit on OpenVMS included local installation timestamps in the Oracle shareable images GS match field. Because of this, Oracle images linked on one system (JCC, for example) would not run on another system (yours, for example). Since the problem was corrected with Oracle version 9.2.0.4.0, all images of the Loader using Oracle 9.2 have been linked with 9.2.0.4.0.

  • Oracle is sensitive to mismatches in the client and server versions. Please refer to Oracle MetaLink note number 207303.1 for a complete Oracle compatibility matrix between OCI client versions and Oracle server versions.

  • To use the OCI interface, you must set the Oracle version installed on your system using the JCC_LML_ORACLE_USER procedure.

  • To use the Oracle JDBC interface, copy the appropriate JDBC driver JAR file from the Oracle installation and set its file attributes as described in the documentation.  You must copy the JAR version that is built with the same JAVA version as you have installed on your OpenVMS server.

Tuxedo

The Tuxedo interface has been tested extensively with Tuxedo versions:

  • V6.5-524 on OpenVMS Alpha
  • V11.10-33 on OpenVMS Itanium. 

Note that if you are running on OpenVMS Integrity with older patches to the C run time library applied, you must at least have patch qxcm1001201953 installed on that system. This is a patch to the C RTL that addresses a hang model and was released in August of 2012.  The system on which we do our regression testing is currently running VMS84A_ACRTL V3.0 and that provides corrected libraries dated in February 2014.

Java and JDBC

Previous versions of the JCC LogMiner Loader have been certified by JCC using version 1.4.2 and later of the Java SDK and Java RTE on Alpha and with 1.5.0-2 ('Java2') on Itanium. They are also supported with JAVA 6 V1.6-5 with patch QXCM1001322821 and V1.6.0-6.  Important details about Java version interaction with OpenVMS and JDBC driver versions can be found in the article JCC LogMiner Loader Replication to JDBC Targets. 

Version 3.5.1 and later of the Loader was tested using the following versions of JAVA:

  • 1.4.2-4.p5 (Alpha)
  • 1.5.0-5 (Alpha)
  • 1.5.0-5 (Integrity)
  • 1.6.0-5 (Integrity)
  • 1.5.0.24 (Integrity)
  • 1.6.0-6 (Integrity)
  • 1.8.0.03 (Integrity)
  • 1.8.0.11 (Integrity)
  • OpenJDK 1.8.0.222 (Integrity)

JAVA version 8 is a full 64-bit version.  The 3.5.1 kit includes a full 64-bit interface.

SQL Server

Testing has used the following SQL Server versions, with a variety of JDBC versions:

  • SQL Server 2005 SP1
  • SQL Server 2012
  • SQL Server 2016
  • SQL Server 2019
  • SQL Server 2022

Please see the article Targets Reachable by JDBC for more information on JDBC drivers.

Other Databases

The Loader has been extensively tested against some other popular databases.  Please see Targets Reachable by JDBC. 

It our intention to test against more databases with the JDBC interface.  We will update articles, as we satisfy ourselves that those targets are satisfactory. 

Should you have a favorite that is not on our list, please contact us using our contact form or using your support email address.