I've been through several upgrades but either I haven't been paying attention, or I'm beginning to forget some of those one-time details. We're getting ready to do our first 8.0.3 - 8.1 application upgrade on an 8.0.3 environment. I've already created a new environment and a source productline as a copy of production. Now I need to do the initial 8.1 application install into a new target productline on the new environment. My problem is this: how far does our DBA have to go when creating the new target Oracle instance before I begin the 8.1 install??

The Application Installation Guide pretty much glosses over that subject. The Data Access Using Orale guide, while informative, doesn't really make it clear to me what has to be there first: the database or the productline? The Oracle guide references things that won't be there until I complete the 8.1 install, yet I don't see how I can do the install without the instance being ready. I won't have a 'lawson' user or tablespaces until the instance has been created, yet I can't create the $LAWDIR/productline/ORACLE file until the productline has been created via the 8.1 install... Am I missing something? Maybe I just need to create the ORACLE file myself after the instance has been created (with all required users and tablespaces) so the 8.1 install has something to connect to? But I can't set the database spaces in dbdef until the productline is there...

Somebody please set me straight.