Are you coming to Oracle AI World 2026 in Las Vegas? Then this is for you. And no worries, we will not do a repeat session in Las Vegas only but also share the news and facts with you at the user group conferences such as DOAG and UKOUG but also on the EMEA Community Tour. Still, when you are coming to AI World 2026: Don’t miss the PATCHING talks on Oct 26 and Oct 27. Why? We are going to change your life as a DBA.
You read it above in the picture already:…
Continue reading...Thanks to Rich for this one. I am not a fan of ORACLE_PDB_SID as it is highly error-prone. If you never heard about this environment variable, then stop reading here. You won’t need to learn about it. But in case you are aware of it, then please see what happens when you bring together ORACLE_PDB_SID and AutoUpgrade.
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A long while ago, I wrote two blog posts about Can you connext as SYSDBA without the password into a PDB directly? and Pitfalls: Connect to a PDB directly with ORACLE_PDB_SID. I tried to …
Continue reading...Another customer finding (thanks again, Dennis!). After patching from 23.26.1 or 23.26.2 to Oracle AI Database 23.26.3 Release Update, the database with minimal SGA sizing did not start up anymore. It resulted in ORA-821. After analysing the situation and checking with the developers, it became clear that Oracle 23.26.3 may require a larger SGA than previous releases. Of course, only if you have a very small SGA defined.
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This is a behavior change in Oracle AI Database 26ai, Release Update 23.26.3.0.0, and it is going to be documented soon …
Continue reading...Let us start the week with something I wanted to put on the blog for a long time since I have seen some customers being trapped by this in their 26ai upgrade attempts. If you are not upgrading now, you may ignore this blog post safely. But if you are in the process, please check out what you can do to prevent the ORA-2380 profile ORA_STIG_PROFILE does not exist during upgrade to 26ai.
When you attempt an upgrade to Oracle AI Database 26ai, you may get this error sequence in case the ORA_STIG_PROFILE is missing:
06:22:43… Continue reading...
Now it is your task. Mark your sessions for AI World 2026. Currently, the session schedule has been published. But the rooms aren’t finalised yet. Why? Because we are counting favorite markers to be able to move sessions with high demand to larger rooms. Below, you find our list of AI World 2026: Upgrade, Migration and Patching Sessions. And it’s time to mark your preferences. We clearly look forward to meet you soon in person. It’s the best time of the year when we all get together and see our customers in person!
As you may have read, we launched the new AutoUpgrade 26.6 a week ago which has so many amazing enhancements such as the EM Patches download. But there may be two other hurdles to jump over, and one of them may prevent you from downloading patches. Let me share a quick fix for download issues with AutoUpgrade 26.6
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I have been trapped by this as well.
A change was required by the platforms we are downloading from. With AutoUpgrade 26.6 we had to enable a new keystore …
Continue reading...Transportable Tablespaces or Full Transportable Export/Import are the common techniques you typically use when you are going to migrate larger databases from one operating system to a different one. Usually, a Endianness-change is involved. And very often you will use our M5 scripts to benefit of incremental backups to reduce the downtime. In the past weeks I learned from two customers that you need to take special care on Oracle Text when you migrate with TTS. Hence, again I need to thank you for sharing your findings with me.
For those you are approaching …
Continue reading...Some of you have read this already. And others may not be happy about the news. You can read it in MOS Note PNEWS1360:Â Oracle AI Database 26ai isn’t planned for SPARC Solaris and Linux ARM. Other platforms such as IBM AIX, zLinux and MS Windows are expected to be released in calendar year 2027 (CY2027) according to an update to the note.
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You need to scroll down to the “Oracle Database Release Schedule“. Then look at the sub-table “On-premises server releases” in (PNEWS1360) Release …
Continue reading...Yes, the long-awaited new AutoUpgrade version 26.6 is available for download. Again, a fantastic job by our development team. And I know that many of you were waiting for it already since it has some really cool new features, enhancements – and of course, fixes, too.
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As I described already in AutoUpgrade Patching – From Zero to Hero – Part 1: Download AutoUpgrade, you have several ways to fetch the newest version of AutoUpgrade – and when you use it to download patches, it will automatically trigger an update with the …
Continue reading...Several of you mailed me already, and I tried to sort this out internally at first. We ask you to patch monthly, and it is amazing to see that some of you are ready to do this. It just gets a bit frustrating when you run into an issue such as this one where the CSPU on MS Windows conflicts with OJVM for 19.32.
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This blog post is meant more to avoid frustration than to solve the issue. As of now, I am not sure if there is a MOS …
Continue reading...Many of you did wait for this – and since (I think) two weeks it is official. Oracle Database 19c is supported on OL/RHEL 10. Furthermore, I am going to show you how to find the certifications for Oracle AI Database 26ai since your search attempts may lead to different results depending on the filters you use.
You need to go to support.oracle.com, and then choose Resources and Product Certification Matrix as the picture below demonstrates.
Resources page on support.oracle.com
You must hit the Visit button. Clicking on the larger …
Continue reading...AI World this year in Las Vegas is going to happen in about 4.5 weeks from now on. In case you’ll be there on Sunday (which makes perfect sense this year), you may want to consider signing up at AI World 2026: Pre-Event Masterclass: Upgrade, Migration and Patching. Yes, we are doing it again. A full day of specially curated content – with very little overlap with out talks and labs. You are having a full day from 9-5 with the guys who breath upgrades, migrations and patching everyday.
First of all, it is …
Continue reading...I received multiple questions from colleagues and customers over the past weeks regarding the security content in RUs and MRPs. See also my blog post from yesterday where I touched this topic briefly. The question regarding RUs, MRPS and CSPUs often is: Are there security fixes included? Which CVEs?
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As I explained already, Release Updates (RU) are the primary and main vehicle to deliver security fixes. MRPs and CSPUs contain only a smaller portion, usually those fixes with really high CVE scores which can’t wait until …
Continue reading...Be aware, this is a longer Monday blog post. Upfront, I am not the master of patching. And I clearly see that many of you struggle with the current situation. Not only regarding Oracle software but I guess, this extends to almost every software or OS. Since I get asked almost daily about the ideal approach, and since we discuss these topics internally across the tech teams as well, I thought I would share here my personal Patching recommendations: Which route is the best? RUs, MRPs, n-1??
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Two important things I’d like to …
Continue reading...Christian asked this question today. Specifically, in his case for Bug 26749785 – PERF_DIAG: NEED TO HAVE MORE CONTROL IN DICTIONARY FOR AUTO_STATS_ADVISOR_TASK. Several of his customers suffer from this issue, and they repeatedly need to ask for backports or merge patches. I have seen this several times as well. Anyway, he is not only one who asked: Why is the fix for bug nnn not included in any RU?
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In order to be able to include a bug fix into an MRP, CSPU or RU, it has to be …
Continue reading...Thanks to Peter Lehmann who always alerts me about findings and encounters he had in his test and production RAC cluster environments. Peter dropped me an email the other day, and I share his suspicion that this may effect many in the coming weeks operating RAC environments. If you don’t have a RAC, you may not see this happening with GI 19.31 and 19.32: trace file flooding in mgmtca.trc can happen.
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It took me a bit of searching, and Peter collected a lot of information already.
Two months after patching GI …
Continue reading...Quick blog post today since we still have a few remaining seats open and available for next week for the Upgrade / Migration / Patching Workshops in Warsaw and Prague on Sep 7 and 8, 2026. Your chance to sign up now and grab your slot. And if you are at POUG, too, then we may meet before already.
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We will deliver two workshops next week, Monday in Warsaw, Poland, and Tuesday in Prague, Czech Republic. It’s full day workshops – and you better stay till the end …
Continue reading...This question came up by a customer, and it was referring to the FAQ MOS note for MRPs. In brief, it was stated that you could apply a higher RU into a home where an MRP up to MRP3 had been installed in the previous home. So the question raised to me was: Can I apply an RU to a home with an MRPÂ as it was mentioned in the FAQ document?
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The FAQ2283 – Introducing Monthly Recommended Patches (MRPs) and FAQ stated the following under Q18:
… Continue reading...Q18:
You know, I am not a fan of in-place patching. Actually, I think everyone should always patch out-of-place. But I know that for instance EBS with a 19c database requires in-place patching, and out-of-place will be supported only with 26ai for EBS. Therefore, in relation to an exercise I did over the weekend, let me share how to rollback an MRP.
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Very briefly, it stands for Monthly Recommended Patch – thus MRP. And it co-exists with CSPUs. I described the difference here. Read more if you are interested.
… Continue reading...There are questions coming in from time to time, and I see that not everything can be always covered in an FAQ document. But we try our best. And sometimes, there are questions even I need to think twice before I answer. Here is the newest for More clarifications on RUs, MRPs and CSPUs.
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Don’t even read further if you haven’t read already:
The latter MOS FAQ is incredibly …
Continue reading...In a week from now I should arrive in Asuncion, Paraguay, if all goes well. It it time for the Latin America Oracle User Group tour 2026 – and it has been started already going from north to south. I will participate in three stops at LAOUC 2026: Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay. And I am looking forward to see you soon.
🇵🇾 August 26 | Paraguay | Oracle Users Group Paraguay (OUGPY)
Yeah, you beat us Germans at the world cup, and luckily, I did not watch it since I was traveling abroad. Congratulations 🙂 In reverse, I …
Continue reading...I totally forgot to announce the 26.4 version of AutoUpgrade. And now, the new AutoUpgrade version 26.5 is available (plus 26.4) already. The AutoUpgrade Development team did an amazing job in shortening the release cycle. This way, we can deliver quick fixes faster to you. When you study the list of enhancements and fixes carefully, some of you will say: Great, this is what I was waiting for.
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As I described already in AutoUpgrade Patching – From Zero to Hero – Part 1: Download AutoUpgrade, you have several ways to fetch …
Continue reading...This is a blog post I wanted to write a long time ago – and I missed it. Today, my best buddy Jony Safi shared an issue from a customer migration he had been pulled in the other day. I read the SR, and it dawned me that others may have seen this error as well. As a result, Transportable Tablespaces fails with ORA-01647 – TABLESPACE IS READ-ONLY – and there are two ways to solve this. Let me add ORA-6512 and ORA-1647 in case you search without the trailing zero.
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Since several customers asked me about it, I realized that I have never blogged about LTRUs – and as of now, Long-Term Release Updates are paused. Let me explain what the concept meant, where you can find information about it and what it would mean in your environment.
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The idea is smart for those customers who can’t move forward on Release Updates (RU) as quickly as we recommend it. Which means: apply them quarterly. Long-Term Release Updates (LTRU) seemed to be a good approach. You take an LTRU, and then we …
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