Just in case you’ve missed the date please be aware:
No bug fixes, no patches, no CPU/SPUs, no PSUs, no BPs will be produced for Oracle Database 11.2.0.3 since Augugst 28, 2015.
I know from the many emails I’m receiving that people are a bit disturbed since the Oracle Lifetime Support Policy brochure (Lifetime Support Policy and Brochure for Technology Products ) doesn’t talk explicitly about patch sets but offers support for Oracle 11.2 until January 2018.
But this – as always – applies to the terminal patch set only – i.e. Oracle Database 11.2.0.4.
For a detailed description please see MOS Note:742060.1 and my previous blog posts from:
I have visited customers with hundreds of Oracle 11.2.0.3 databases in the past months. If you are now sitting there with one or many or many many Oracle 11.2.0.3 instances don’t even think of moving to Oracle 11.2.0.4. The amount of work you’ll spend in evaluating Oracle 11.2.0.4 is exactly the same as testing Oracle 12.1.0.2. Move to Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 – NOW!
And keep in mind: there’s no such thing as a 2nd release anymore. Every patch set release is a full release – no matter if we talk about 11.2.0.4 or 12.1.0.2. Both have new features, new behavior etc etc.
–Mike
Why not upgrade to 11.2.0.4 if the vendor supports the 11.2.0.4 release but doesn’t support 12c yet? This way you get the full realm of support until 2018. Moving from .3 to .4 should be essentially a repeat of the tests you did for moving to .3.
Well,
if you want to pay for Extended Support (20% additional support fee per year in years 2 and 3) then feel free. No offense.
And I see your point of the application certification. But if SAP could certify 12.1.0.2 why can’t your app vendor do it? Ask them the question please 😉
And again, the tests for 11.2.0.4 vs 12.1.0.2 are exactly the same. 11.2.0.4 has plenty of changes over 11.2.0.3 as has 12.1.0.2. Whatever time/effort you put into releasing 11.2.0.4 you’ll put into 12.0.1.2.
Now do the math:
/1/ Less than 5 months Waived Extended Support for 11.2.0.4
/2/ If you are not willing to pay extra you’ll fly without patches
/3/ 12.1.0.2 will offer you almost 3 years of Premier Support
Cheers
Mike
" Move to Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 – NOW! "
As someone who bought into this hype and moved from 11.2.0.3 to 12.1.0.2, I’ll say this is horrible advice. I’ve found 12.1.0.2 to be absolutely riddled with bugs, a few key ones have made my life a living hell for the past 3 weeks and counting.
I can’t begin to describe how livid I am that Oracle would force customers to upgrade to a product that is so clearly not ready.
Don,
I have seen your tweet and I can just repeat my offer to check your SRs and issues.
Believe it or not, our teams has helped and helps customers every day, from smaller shops to large insurances including In-memory. I never say that 12.1.0.2 is bug free but most things can be avoided by studying the patch notes and following the advices in our slides.
Still this is no guarantee to hit no issue at all – that’s why proper testing is highly recommended for every environment of importance. Especially SPA (SQL Tuning Advisor) can be a great help to detect issues BEFORE upgrade.
No offense but my experience of dealing with upgrades and migrations in the past 12 years is often that proper testing is a big no-go in many shops for obvious reasons: Time, effort, costs, test environment, license costs for any pro testing tool etc etc. I can see that. I have seen this many many times.
Believe it or not, you’d have seen the same number of issues with 11.2.0.4 – and I completely disagree with you about your statement that 12.1.0.2 is not ready. Otherwise our reference customers Roy, myself and our team have helped to go live wouldn’t be happy and still alive.
Again, I can repeat my offer:
Send me a list of your SRs or at least the issues you have seen and I’m happy and eager to learn from your experiences.
Cheers
Mike
I’ll DM you some SRs later today. Thanks.
"Unfortunately" I’m now an Oracle employee, so I’m sure people will take my comments as tainted with bias, but all I can do is assure all that the comments below are genuine.
*Before* I joined Oracle, the previous year was spent upgrading my employer’s databases, covering:
11.2.0.3 => 12.1.0.1
11.2.0.4 => 12.1.0.1
11.2.0.4 => 12.1.0.2
12.1.0.1 => 12.1.0.2
the mix being simply due to the timing of each, and what the state of the source database was. Plenty of variety across all of these databases – some small, some large, some RAC, some single instance, some became pluggable, some became single instance, some were 24×7 (with DataGuard, cross-site mirroring etc), some were less critical.
Adding to the mix was that some were same platform upgrade (Intel Linux => Intel Linux), and others were cross-platform migration (pSeries AIX => Intel Linux).
So pretty much the whole gamut of possible scenarios were in there. And I can say that the experience of moving from 11g to 12c has been overall a very positive one. It’s like every other upgrade (Oracle or otherwise) that you’d expect to see, namely, 10% of your stuff runs better, 80% of your stuff runs the same, and 10% of your stuff might need a closer look when you move to the new version.
Like any upgrade, the aim is to capture that knowledge during testing, which was what the client did in the main, but due to tight schedules some of the testing was curtailed on the understanding that we’d need to be extra sharp and reactive should we see these issues in Production. And we were.
But no "show stoppers" were discovered.
I know this comes across as a "well, it worked on my machine" style comment, but thats not the intent. Its sad that other’s experiences have not been as positive as mine, but all I can say is – my perception (as both a non-Oracle employee and as an Oracle employee) of the move to 12c has been a very happy one.
Hope this helps,
Connor
Connor,
thanks for your comments and the insight view into your experiences. I appreciate this a lot!
Just to mention this regarding the above comments (and no offense to anybody – we are all hard working people):
Until now I haven’t gotten any list of SRs or at least issues to comment on (see the above comments). I really will need a list of issues (or even better: SRs) as otherwise a statement saying "12c is just crap" is not useful to anybody.
Cheers
Mike
I’ve emailed the list of SRs to Mike just now. I tried to include Connor as well but my guess at his oracle.com email address seems to be wrong.
Dear Sir,
I am student and I want to practice upgrade from oracle 11.2.0.1.0 to higher versions
I downloaded the oracle software from oracle website and install it on vmware.
I have not any licence because i download for my learning purpose but I want to do upgrade practice because I face a interview and they put question about upgrade.
Is there any licence requirement to download update release or it is free from oracle website.
Please guide me I am beginner in oracle .
Thanks and Regards
Basant Kumar
Basant,
as far as I know you can download and test everything you want. But I’m not a license person.
You should find any answer in here:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/license.112/e47877.pdf
But you can take also our hands-on-lab which has exercises as well – see to your right in the SLIDES DOWNLOAD CENTER on the blog.
Cheers and all the best
Mike
just a side comment for Mike’s Extended Support note.
Oracle ULA contract (if you have a privilage to have one) covers Extended Support. Means no extra fee required.
— Kirill
Kirill,
that depends a lot on the ULA agreement – Extended Support is (as far as I know) not necessarily part of an ULA – but it can be included. Still in this case it won’t help you for 11.2.0.3 😉
But thanks for the addition!
Cheers
Mike
Hi,
We have been using 11g R2 forms and forms builder. We have 11.2.0.3 database. We are planning to migrate the database to 12C. Is the 11g forms compatible with 12c database?
Please see:
Oracle Support Document 1050790.1 (Oracle Forms/Reports Certification Reference) can be found at: https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=1050790.1
12c Release 2
Forms/Reports 12.2.1 (Fusion Middleware 12cR2)
In version 12.2.1, middle tier, client tier, and browser certifications are listed within the same document.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ias/downloads/fusion-certification-100350.html
For information regarding certified database versions, please refer to the above reference.
11g Release 2
Forms/Reports 11.1.2.x (Fusion Middleware 11R2)
In version 11.1.2, middle tier and client tier certifications are listed within the same document.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/ias/downloads/fusion-certification-100350.html
For information regarding certified database versions, please refer to the above reference.