Big Move Planned: What You Need To Know

This coming Wednesday (May 27, 2020) at 5 pm through Friday (May 29th) at 5pm Pacific Daylight Time, Arctos will be unavailable for our much anticipated move to the new Arctos PostgreSQL.

What is Arctos PostgreSQL?

So glad you asked! Arctos is moving from Oracle to an all-new open-source software stack (Lucee and PostgreSQL). PostGreSQL is “a powerful, open source object-relational database system with over 30 years of active development that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, feature robustness, and performance.” (PostGreSQL, 2020). Moving to PostGreSQL fits with the expertise of our hosting provider and partner TACC, and still allows for a virtual private database as well as a host of other advancements. The migration will allow for an enhanced API (web service), access to TACC’s parallel processors to speed query response and delivery, enriched spatial functionality, and a new test environment, and will provide an upgrade to many core user features such as reporting, bulkloading, and the frontend user interface.

During the migration Arctos will bring the Oracle server to a quiescent state (e.g. no activity) by disabling all access, exporting all data, importing the data into a prepared PostgreSQL instance, and bringing the new database online as production. You will notice a few changes, but the overall experience for Arctos users should be very similar. If there is any problem with this current  migration, plans are to go back to an Oracle version while we work out the kinks and try again.

Here are the big things you need to know:

  • We recommend postponing any major changes and bulkloads as of Monday to ensure that all current data has finished processing in Oracle. Make sure you keep backup files of all recent work.

  • Arctos will be taken offline at 5 pm on Wednesday, 27th of May.  We anticipate if all goes well that the system will be up by 5pm on Friday, 29th of May.

  • You will find Arctos at the same web address after the migration.

  • You will need to create a new password the first time you log in. Use the Lost Password function to create a new password the first time you log in after the move.

  • If you experience any issues after the migration, post an issue to the Arctos GitHub Repository. We’ve extensively tested functionality in the new platform but there are always ways for Arctos to improve.

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