Attempting to enable geodatabase archiving for a feature class in Oracle stored as st_geometry encounters a -51 underlying DBMS error

Description

When attempting to enable geodatabase archiving for a feature class in Oracle stored as st_geometry, a -51 underlying DBMS error can be encountered.

This error is only encountered if the feature class being archive-enabled was previously migrated from SDEBINARY or Oracle Spatial and the feature class contains mixed low and high precision geometries.

Newly created feature classes in Oracle stored as st_geometry do not encounter this error because all the data is stored in high precision.

Cause

Executing the Geoprocessing Migrate Storage tool or the sdelayer -o migrate command to migrate an SDEBINARY or Oracle spatial feature class that has a mixed precision, results in the migrated feature class with mixed precision.

To detect if a feature class has mixed precision, execute the sdelayer -o describe command. This example demonstrates describing a feature class named 'parcels', stored as SDEBINARY with the SDELOB type prior and after being migrated to st_geometry.

Code:
C:\>sdelayer -o describe -u forrest -p forrest -i 5151 -l parcels,shape -s server

ArcSDE 9.3.1  for Oracle10g Build 315 Thu Feb 12 12:00:43  2009
Layer Administration Utility
-----------------------------------------------------
Table Owner        : FORREST
Table Name         : PARCELS
Spatial Column     : SHAPE
Layer id           : 874
Entities           : a+
Layer Type         : SDE-LOB
I/O Mode           : NORMAL
Autolocking        : Enabled
Precision          : High (Mixed)
User Privileges    : SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
Layer Configuration: SDELOB

Code:
C:\>sdelayer -o describe -u forrest -p forrest -i 5151 -l parcels,shape -s server

ArcSDE 9.3.1  for Oracle10g Build 315 Thu Feb 12 12:00:43  2009
Layer Administration Utility
-----------------------------------------------------
Table Owner        : FORREST
Table Name         : TEST4
Spatial Column     : SHAPE
Layer id           : 874
Entities           : a+
Layer Type         : Extended SQL Type
I/O Mode           : NORMAL
Autolocking        : Enabled
Precision          : High (Mixed)  
User Privileges    : SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
Layer Configuration: ST_GEOMETRY

Workaround