In the other thread you said:
"Sorry....the clones are created using VMWare. Does this help with some of the confusion?"
Not really.
Without knowing the OPS Mgr's objection to Serena's advice, it's difficult to address the problem.
I still don't see the difference between cloning both the app and BDB or cloning the app and exporting the BDB to it. You still end up with what is essentially two instances of the app and each contains the BDB. At the end of the road, wouldn't the clones or the clone and copy be erased.
According to your post, the Serena folks said to export the BDB into a new instance of Oracle. Was this new instance supposed to be Oracle 11g? If so, I can see one problem. If something goes wrong, how do you know whether its the upgraded app or the 11g conversion that caused the problem?
If the purpose is to test the app upgrade (to make sure you don't lose anything), then the reason for creating the new BDB in a clean instance of (old) Oracle might be to ensure that either of the apps (original or clone) doesn't get confused and try to access the wrong BDB. If you don't use a new instance of Oracle, then as far as Oracle is concerned, you might have two databases in the same instance, both with the same name and same characteristics. Also, and I'm guessing here, if you're testing the app upgrade, then obviously you would want to get the app and BDB cloned or exported before doing the app upgrade. (I suspect the reason for the testing is to ensure that nothing is lost because of the upgrade).
But again, without knowing what the objection is to exporting (vice cloning) the BDB, it's near impossible to address the issue.
