Here is a tip from db2 expert Ajay Jain on how to restore a db2 v8 database into a db2 v9 instance.
If you are also working for a client like me, where migrating production system(s) to latest version(V9) takes months even after you migrated the QA/DEV/other boxes, then I assume, you may face a situation when there is a need to restore v8 prod copy into one of the v9 migrated QA/DEV/other DB2 instance/db.
Here are two ways in which you can achieve this:
1. Take your Prod system down, take an offline database backup and then restore this offline database v8 copy into v9 database. DB2 will migrate the data automatically.
2. If you can't afford to take production down for an offline backup, which is true in most of the cases, then you can go with the approach given below to restore from an online db backup and then rollforward.
a) Save the current QA/DEV dbm config and registry variable settings in a file.
b) Drop the QA/DEV v9 database and instance.
c) Create V8 QA/DEV instance and apply the saved dbm config and registry variable values.
d) Create an empty V8 QA db(optional) and restore(redirect) the production V8 copy into the QA/DEV V8 db.
e) Now, migrate V8 QA db to V9 using your standard V9 migration procedure.
You can also try another option - restore V8 Prod into a standby/sandbox V8 db, migrate that to V9 and then take a backup and restore it into V9 QA db. But this requires you to have an extra storage/hardware at your disposal.
Happy Migrating.
