Upgrade your Database - NOW! – Mike Dietrich's Blog About Oracle Database Upgrades... Mostly

DBMS_JOB one-off patch needed for Oracle 19.3.0 – 19.7.0

A while ago I blogged already about this behavior change for DBMS_JOB in Oracle Database 19c. Many of you are aware of this. But today I learned something new about it. Kudos to Alexey Makhmutov for bringing this to my attention. There is a very important fix you will need on top in 19c to avoid performance issues. If you rely on jobs with the old job interface, take note: DBMS_JOB one-off patch needed for Oracle 19.3.0 – 19.7.0

DBMS_JOB one-off patch needed for Oracle 19.3.0 - 19.7.0

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What is the problem?

As you can read from there is a internal …

AutoUpgrade and Plug In to a CDB – with a single command (and video)

I have to confess, this feature is out and available for quite a while. But only unofficially. AutoUpgrade can upgrade and plug in a non-CDB into a CDB. But it lacked flexibility. And we didn’t test it a lot. Hence, you could find it documented in our Hands-On Lab instructions. And we did this exercise with you already in our sold-out labs at OOW 2019 as well. But since a week and a bit, it is officially supported: AutoUpgrade and Plug In to a CDB – with a single command (and video).

AutoUpgrade and Plug In to a CDB - with a single command (and video)

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Of course, Oracle Clusterware is certified on OL8/RHEL8 as well

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Operating System 1

To be very honest, when I posted a few days ago, Oracle Database 19c is certified on OL8/RHEL8 I didn’t check for the Oracle Clusterware (OCW) certification. I blindly assumed that this is the case. But from comments and discussions on twitter, I realized it may be necessary to point this out explicitly to avoid confusion. Even though my fellow mate, RAC Product Manager Anil Nair has pointed it out already many times: Of course, Oracle Clusterware is certified on OL8/RHEL8 as well.

Of course, Oracle Clusterware is certified on OL8/RHEL8 as well

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Find it on MOS

Your source for certification information …

Oracle Database 19c is certified on OL8 and RHEL8

Posted on May 11, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Operating System 20

Oh … I’d say this was the question I’ve got asked the second most often in the past months (after a potential extension for Oracle 12.2.0.1 support): When will Oracle certify OL8 and RHEL8? And I read this question internally even more often. Now thanks to my team mate Daniel Overby Hansen who spotted it on Twitter on the weekend, we can tell you that … finally … drum roll … Oracle Database 19c is certified on OL8 and RHEL8.

Oracle Database 19c is certified on OL8 and RHEL8

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How do you get the information?

Go to MyOracle Support and hit …

4+1 Webinars: Upgrade, Migrate, Consolidate to 19c – not only for Australia

Posted on May 11, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 2

Actually this weekend Roy and I would have flown from Australia to New Zealand. We planned at least 5 seminars. And we’ll do them in person as soon as conditions allow. If you are not tired yet of all these webinars offered to you, then we have the right offering for you.

4+1 Webinars: Upgrade, Migrate, Consolidate to 19c - not only for Australia

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And not only for those of you based in Australia and New Zealand. Singapore, Japan, Korea and other countries in this part of the globe. Roy and I will run for 4+1 Webinars: Upgrade, Migrate, Consolidate to 19c – not only for …

Can you connect as SYSDBA without password into a PDB directly?

Posted on May 7, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Single-/Multitenant 20

I’m happy when I learn something new every day. And today, right before I wanted to turn my computer into “sleep”, I learned something which surprises me a lot. Have you ever asked the question: Can you connect as SYSDBA without password into a PDB directly? Of course with the usual way of “sqlplus / as sysdba”.

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Can you?

Our answer always was: No. You can’t. There is no bequeath connection available.

Today somebody asked a similar question internally. And the answer caught Roy, Daniel, Bill and myself by surprise. There is an …

Upgrade Testing with a Refreshable PDB – does this work?

Posted on May 5, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Single-/Multitenant 2

Yesterday, Daniel pinged me to discuss an upgrade testing scenario I had evaluated briefly by myself a while ago. I can’t remember why I gave up. But Daniel had some great ideas and tried already a lot in our OCI cloud. We want to use a refreshable PDB. And keep it up to date, then upgrade it. The idea of this approach: Whereas a CLONE or RELOCATE uses the initial command as the marker, a REFRESH would allow me to be way more in synch. So the question is: Upgrade Testing with a Refreshable PDB – does this work?

Upgrade Testing with a Refreshable PDB - does this work?

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3 Live Webinars: Multitenant Webinar 3 Questions answered

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 0

This is the third and final QA blog post for the webinars we did in the last week of April 2020. Thank you for your attendance. I will publish the replay recordings as soon as they are available and link them as well. For now, please find here 3 Live Webinars: Multitenant Webinar 3 Questions answered.

3 Live Webinars: Multitenant Webinar 3 Questions answered

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Your Questions, our Answers for Webinar 3: Multitenant

103	We are in the process of migrating to Oracle Cloud using the xtts method for cross platform migration and we seem to be encountering an issue with it

3 Live Webinars: Upgrade and Performance Webinar 2 Questions answered

Posted on May 2, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 2

Thanks a lot to all of you who participated also in our second Webinar. Below you find now 3 Live Webinars: Upgrade and Performance Webinar 2 Questions answered.

3 Live Webinars: Upgrade and Performance Webinar 2 Questions answered

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Your Questions, our Answers for Webinar 2: Upgrade and Performance

I this blog post I answer all questions from the second seminar about AutoUpgrade to Oracle 19c and Performance Stability. Please find the links to the other QAs for Webinar 1 (Release Strategy, Patching and Cool Features) and Webinar 3 (Migration to Multitenant) below in the Links section of this blog post.

We need

3 Live Webinars: Slides Download and Questions Webinar 1 answered

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 0

Thanks a lot to all of you who participated this week in the 3 live Webinars about Database Upgrade, Performance Stability and Multitenant. We were just overwhelmed but so many tuning in. And I hope you’ve enjoyed it. As promised here you’ll get more. So find here for all 3 Live Webinars: Slides Download and Questions Webinar 1 answered. Once the recordings are published, I will tell you via the blog of course as well.

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Slides Download

Thanks again also to Laura Garcia Villareal from Oracle University. If you have more questions regarding …

Less is more – faster Oracle database upgrades with less memory

Posted on April 30, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Best Practice 7

The title of this post sounds a bit weird: Less is more – faster Oracle database upgrades with less memory. Just a few weeks ago, I posted about How long will my upgrade take … revisited. And Daniel adds a very useful piece to the upgrade speed topic. Read about his tests below.

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Less is more – faster Oracle database upgrades with less memory

by Daniel Overby Hansen, Senior Principal Product Manager,
Oracle Database Upgrades and Cloud Migrations

Daniel Overby Hansen

Mike and I had a talk with a customer the other …

3 Live Webinars: Database Upgrade and more – April 28, 29 and 30, 2020

Posted on April 24, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 13

Well, everybody does Webinars now, right? Just in case you sit at home next week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, you’ve just had your lunch. And you don’t know what do to in the afternoon, sign up and click in to our 3 Live Webinars: Database Upgrade and more – April 28, 29 and 30, 2020. Every day at the same time, 14:30h CET (or 13:30 GMT or 18:00 IST).

3 Live Webinars: Database Upgrade and more - April 28, 29 and 30, 2020

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Another Webinar?

It’s free – FIND THE REGISTATION LINKS BELOW – of course. My colleague Laura Garcia and I will talk each day …

JDK patching happens with every RU since January 2020

Posted on April 22, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 8

A while ago, a customer asked me whether he needs to apply JDK patches separately. He discovered that the JDK in the $ORACLE_HOME is quite outdated. But there was no clear answer available. And the MOS Note he pointed me to, seemed to be quite incomplete. But times have changed. And JDK patching happens with every RU since January 2020.

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JDK who?

JDK stands for Java Development Toolkit. As the Wikipedia article explains, “the JDK includes a private JVM and a few other resources to finish the development of a Java Application”. …

OJVM datapatch fails with ORA-29532 – but the root cause is noncdb_to_pdb.sql

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls JVM 2

Kudos to Robert Ortel who brought this nice misbehavior to my attention. And even though it looks like this would be an OJVM issue, it is caused by noncdb_to_pdb,sql, the script which is used to convert a non-CDB to a PDB. When you apply an OJVM patch, OJVM datapatch fails with ORA-29532 – but the root cause is noncdb_to_pdb.sql.

OJVM datapatch fails with ORA-29532 - but the root cause is noncdb_to_pdb.sql

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It’s a bit tricky

First things first. This is not a blog post to blame OJVM. The problem just happens because datapatch for an OJVM patch touches data in the dictionary which hasn’t …

OPatch Alert: Be aware of cleanup issues – and the JDK version

Posted on April 17, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls Patch Recommendation 4

This is just a quick alert blog post for Friday with an OPatch Alert: Be aware of cleanup issues – and the JDK version. And thanks to several people who either commented or mailed me directly and asked if I could alert others as well.

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OPatch cleanup issue

At first, you may have read earlier this week my article about patching my environments with the April 2020 bundle patches. For my patch activity, I’ve had to exchange my OPatch versions for 11.2.0.4, 12.2.0.1 and 19.7.0. And I guess, I would have had …

Oracle 12.2.0.1 Support extended with Limited Error Correction Support

Posted on April 15, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 Release Schedule 14

There was sort of a rumor already as some customers sent mail to me last week whether we may extend the support period for Oracle 12.2.0.1. And thanks to my friend, Robert Pastijn, who alerted me minutes ago, you can find this information now as well in the single source of truth, MOS Note:742060.1.

Oracle 12.2.0.1 Support extended with Limited Error Correction Support

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Limited Error Correction announced for 12.2.0.1 Database

There are three important bullet points in the Patching End Dates table for Oracle Database 12.2.0.1:

Error Correction / Patching is available until Nov 30, 2020
Limited Error Correction (Sev 1 and

Online Clone a PDB and synch with Oracle GoldenGate?

Posted on April 15, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Single-/Multitenant 4

A few weeks ago I published two blog posts, one about Online Cloning and one about Relocate for PDBs. As in many cases, the blog posts got triggered by actual customer questions – and of course out of my own curiosity. In addition, we received the ultimate question: Can I Online Clone a PDB and synch with Oracle GoldenGate? And while my answer would have been “Of course!” a few doubts came up. But read below …

Online Clone a PDB and synch with Oracle GoldenGate?

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Online Clone versus Relocate of PDBs

I received very good ideas and feedbacks from you regarding …

Patching all my environments with the April 2020 Patch Bundles

Posted on April 14, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 28

My quarterly routine happens when the new security alerts get published. And it is time again. I’ll show you as usual how Patching all my environments with the April 2020 Patch Bundles works.

Patching all my environments with the April 2020 Patch Bundles

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Security Alert April 2020

Let’s start with the Security Alerts for April 2020. It leads me to the April 2020 Critical Patch Advisory. I’m a database guy, so I’m interested in: Oracle Database Server, versions 11.2.0.4, 12.1.0.2, 12.2.0.1, 18c, 19c. And this link brings me directly to the Risk Matrix for the database products.

You will spot three …

Upgrade: What if your time zone in source is newer than in target?

Posted on April 9, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Time Zone - DST 2

Sometimes there is just a simple question at the beginning. Like Daniel and I discussed this morning. Does AutoUpgrade check if the time zone file in source is higher than in target? While we discussed this, I downloaded the patches already to try it out. And in addition, I could double-check whether the time zone patches for 19c are now RU-independent finally. But the question remains for Upgrade: What if your time zone in source is newer than in target?

Upgrade: What if your time zone in source is newer than in target?

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My intention wasn’t initially to write a longer blog post. But read below …

Troubleshooting, Restoring and Restarting AutoUpgrade

Posted on April 8, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich AutoUpgrade 15

What if … something goes wrong during your database upgrade with AutoUpgrade? Of course, this never happens. But just in case, no worries – one of the really big advantages of AutoUpgrade (and the command line upgrade with “dbupgrade” as well) is its resumability and restartablity. But in this blog post I would like to cover a bit more. I will show you more details on Troubleshooting, Restoring and Restarting AutoUpgrade.

Troubleshooting, Restoring and Restarting AutoUpgrade

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And as often, the cause for this blog post is an email from Hervé Schweitzer, the CTO of dbi-services. Hervé told …

Oracle Database Upgrade – Quick Start Guide available

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Best Practice 2

If you don’t deal with databases upgrades every day but just want to see a short and good overview about how to do a successful database upgrade, then this is for you. A few days ago we’ve made the Oracle Database Upgrade – Quick Start Guide available for download.

Oracle Database Upgrade - Quick Start Guide available

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Why a Quick Start Guide?

If database upgrades are your daily topic, you won’t need our quick start guide. But if you need a short overview about the right steps to approach an upgrade, this guide is for you. Thanks to my PM colleague, …

AutoUpgrade – New Version with RAC Database Upgrade Support

Posted on April 1, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI AutoUpgrade 4

Thanks to all our customers who participated in our evaluation test for RAC upgrade support with the AutoUpgrade Tool. And my colleagues worked hard to deliver the new version as quickly as possible. Just to make sure: This is not an April’s fools blog post. Since 2 days, you can download AutoUpgrade – New Version with RAC Database Upgrade Support.

AutoUpgrade - New Version with RAC Database Upgrade Support

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Where to download it?

As usual, you can download the newest version – in this case 19.8 aka 20200327 from MOS Note: 2485457.1:

You simply copy the new version into your 19c (or …

OJVM and the Mitigation Patch – Things to know in 2020

Posted on March 31, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich JVM 0

Today my headline sounds a bit like “Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf” – but there is a reason why I’d like to write about about OJVM and the Mitigation Patch – Things to know in 2020. We are working with a customer right now where preupgrade.jar gave a warning about the existence of the Mitigation patch in an 11.2.0.4 home – despite the fact that JAVAVM is not configured in this database. And this looked strange to us.

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Mitigation Patch?

A quick search on my blog shows me that …

AutoUpgrade and the COMPATIBLE parameter

Posted on March 18, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich AutoUpgrade 2

Several times I’ve got asked by customers if AutoUpgrade does change the COMPATIBLE parameter. So let me explain what happens to COMPATIBLE when you upgrade. And give you also some hints about AutoUpgrade and the COMPATIBLE parameter.

AutoUpgrade and the COMPATIBLE parameter

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Does AutoUpgrade change COMPATIBLE?

No. Clearly, AutoUpgrade does not change the COMPATIBLE parameter for several reasons. At first, we recommend to not change the COMPATIBLE parameter right after the upgrade if you can afford another downtime soon after. By keeping COMPATIBLE on the previous (before upgrade) value, you have the choice to revert back to the previous …

How long will my database upgrade take? Revisited …

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Best Practice 4

I received this question twice within a few days. And I remember that a tiny little while ago I wrote something on the blog about it. But as this “while” is 11 years ago, I came to conclusion to refresh this topic – and write something about How long will my database upgrade take? Revisited …

How long will my database upgrade take? Revisited ...

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Is there a query?

At first, before I go into details, an important fact upfront: There is neither any query nor any tool giving you a rough estimate or precise figure of how long your upgrade will …

What is the problem?

Create

Find it on MOS

How do you get the information?

Can you?

Your Questions, our Answers for Webinar 3: Multitenant

Your Questions, our Answers for Webinar 2: Upgrade and Performance

Slides Download

Less is more – faster Oracle database upgrades with less memory

by Daniel Overby Hansen, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Database Upgrades and Cloud Migrations

Another Webinar?

JDK who?

It’s a bit tricky

OPatch cleanup issue

Limited Error Correction announced for 12.2.0.1 Database

Online Clone versus Relocate of PDBs

Security Alert April 2020

Why a Quick Start Guide?

Where to download it?

Mitigation Patch?

Does AutoUpgrade change COMPATIBLE?

Is there a query?

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by Daniel Overby Hansen, Senior Principal Product Manager,
Oracle Database Upgrades and Cloud Migrations