Upgrade server AND db - table selection/exclusion

[former_SQLA_member1694892]

Upgrading to a 64-bit server from 32-bit. In the process, we're upgrading from SQL Anywhere v12 to v16. This is a critical database (student db) for the university. We would like to take advantage of all improvements, therefore do an unload/reload. There are 3 tables in particular that we know take hours upon hours to reload. To mitigate the downtime, I'm wondering what would be the end effect if we reloaded all but those 3 tables. Once done, we could proxy over to the old database and for those 3 tables, do an Insert into 'new' (select * from 'old'). I've found that to be extremely fast, relatively speaking. Thoughts?

[VolkerBarth]

I can't give advice but just want to understand: So you are saying it takes waaaaayyyy longer to unload and reload these three tables than to fill them via insert select from proxy tables?

When using proxy tables, do both databases run on the same box (with both a v12 and v12 database engine)?

Have you tried using dbunload -an or -ac which will unload without making an interim copy of the data on disk? I could hardly imagine that this is slower than a proxy insert (which will fill the transaction log in contrast to a reload via LOAD TABLE).

[former_SQLA_member1694892]

A bit red-faced here. I found our dba was using sybase central, making the unload/load extremely slow. Going to try your switches suggestion, thank-you.