Release Dates Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 on-prem – Extended Support Waiving for Oracle 11.2.0.4 / 12.1.0.2

Mike says:

No, not correct. It depends.

If you haven’t do anything yet regarding upgrade/migration of your 11.2.0.4 systems, then yes, most people would prefer to wait for 12.2.0.2 or 12.2.0.3 and then shift. But those patch sets are not there yet. We propose a potential planning date in the above MOS note – not more and not less than that.

Speaking for 12.1.0.2 we know exactly what we get. It is there. We know how to tweak it, the optimizer fixes I blogged recently about are very important.

That’s why I personally would either move to 12.1.0.2 right now or run with a mixed strategy, bringing systems to 12.1.0.2 and once 12.2 proofs the same stability and my tests are completed shift systems to whatever patch level of 12.2..

And unfortunately a lot of database I see today when visiting customers are not even on 11.2.0.4 yet. I see customers with hundreds of databases on 11.2.0.3, I see customers with a ton of systems on releases below.

And I can only emphasize that you shouldn’t just sit there and stare out of the window. But approach your upgrades now and not sometime in the future.

Cheers
Mike

Mike says:

Smrithi,

while I fully understand your frustration please understand as well that I’m not the right person to answer your question.

Please do the following:
– if you have already an open SR please insist in the SR that you’d like to discuss this further
– if the SR has been closed, reopen it
– if the SR can’t be reopened, open a new one referencing to the previous one
– if that doesn’t satisfy you ask for an escalation and a callback by a manager
– make sure the SR has Sev.2 but not Sev.3 or 4.
– check when you have escalated if the SR’s escalated flag reflects your escalation status

Sorry for the inconvenience – but often Support’s engineers hands are tied as well when the bug is opened but no progress. And sometimes it’s not a matter of two lines of code to fix something broken.

It’s always good as well to explain why you need this fix, how it is impacting your business not to have it, what your deadlines and commitments are. But at the end of the day the support engineer can only escalate the bug but won’t be able to fix it for you.

Thanks
Mike

RMPJ says:

Always helpful, thank you, Mike.

guest says:

Hello,

Current graph in the 742060.1 is showing free ES for 11.2 only until end of 2017.
So is the text invalid, or the picture? 🙂

Mike says:

Matej,

thanks again – the owners corrected it yesterday 🙂

Cheers
Mike

Alan says:

Hey Mike,
Will Roy and yourself be doing another Upgrade HOL for 12.2? That VM was really nice to play around with. Appreciate all the hard work that went into it.

Thanks,
Alan

guest says:

Hi…does the extended support include version 11.2.0.2

guest says:

Hi Mike,
I wouldn’t agree that "upgrading" from 11.2.0.2 to 11.2.0.4 is the same effort. This may be true regarding only the sole upgrade process of the database and not the applications.
Our upgrade from 11.2.0.2 to 11.2.0.4 some years ago went completely smooth and we had to change nothing in our applications.

In contrast the upgrade from 11.2.0.4 to 12.1.0.2 in combination with the migration to the recommended SingleTenant-Architecture was really hard work. We had lots of performance issues, that forced us to change our applications in more than one statement.
It was very difficult to keep plans stable, because they got changed surprisingly by the adaptive features of the optimizer, and in most cases not to better performance.

We had to learn that not every parameter gets into force, if only set and changed in the PDB. This made tuning work not easier. Details can be read in Chris Antogninis blog.
We have still a SR in state "development working".

So out of my experience I would strongly recommend to install the patchset 11.2.0.4 for security reasons, but to think twice before upgrading to 12.1.0.2. The waived extended support for 12.1 lasts only half a year longer.

Regarding the changes in the parameters of the optimizer in 12.2 I’m expecting another intensive testing and tuning session again, when we have to upgrade to 12.2 some day.
This work has to be done only once if you upgrade directly from 11.2.0.4 to a stable version of 12.2.
I would only upgrade a running application to 12.1 if I really need one of the undoubtedly nice new features.

Bye
Thomas

guest says:

I am eagerly awaiting the licensing document to catch up with the on premise release.

http://docs.oracle.com/database/122/DBLIC/Licensing-Information.htm#DBLIC-GUID-AB354617-6614-487E-A022-7FC9A5A08472

Table 1-1 Oracle Database Offerings needs update and also some new columns need to be added to Table 1-2 Feature Availability by Oracle Database Offering.