Oracle 18.3.0 on premises includes 1.4GB patches?

Oracle Database 18.3.0 on premises is available for download on Linux since July 23, 2018. The other ports will follow soon. And via twitter I received a question why Oracle 18.3.0 on premises includes 1.4GB patches?

Oracle 18.3.0 on premises includes 1.4GB patches?

When you unzip the downloaded database image:

Oracle 18.3.0 on premises includes 1.4GB patches?

then you may discover the following folder .patch_storage of 1.4GB size:

[oracle@localhost .patch_storage]$ ls -lrt
total 40
drwxr-xr-x. 4 oracle dba 4096 Jul 18 19:39 28090523_Jul_14_2018_00_03_50
drwxr-xr-x. 4 oracle dba 4096 Jul 18 19:40 28090553_Jul_11_2018_19_20_31
drwxr-xr-x. 4 oracle dba 4096 Jul 18 19:41 27923415_Jul_15_2018_10_33_22
drwxr-xr-x. 8 oracle dba 4096 Jul 18 19:43 NApply
-rw-r--r--. 1 oracle dba 5802 Jul 18 19:43 record_inventory.txt
-rw-r--r--. 1 oracle dba   92 Jul 18 19:43 LatestOPatchSession.properties
-rw-r--r--. 1 oracle dba 5917 Jul 18 19:43 interim_inventory.txt
drwxr-xr-x. 4 oracle dba 4096 Jul 18 19:44 27908644_May_4_2018_01_21_02
[oracle@localhost .patch_storage]$ du -sh
1.4G

It contains 4 major subdirectories of different sizes:

Why weren’t these patches included directly into the shipped home?

Actually they are. When you look at the time stamps of certain files you’ll recognize that it says July 18. But the .patch_storage is needed for rollback reasons. And it contains the correct scripts to adjust a freshly created databases.

Final check with the check_patches_18.sql script (CDB/DBA_REGISTRY_SQLPATCH have been changed significantly in Oracle 18c):

    CON_ID ACTION_TIME    PATCH_ID PATCH_TYPE ACTION     DESCRIPTION                      SOURCE_VERSION  TARGET_VERSION 
---------- ------------ ---------- ---------- ---------- -------------------------------- --------------- ---------------
         1 2018-07-25     27923415 INTERIM    APPLY      OJVM RELEASE UPDATE: 18.3.0.0.18 18.1.0.0.0      18.1.0.0.0     
                                                         0717 (27923415)                                                 

         1 2018-07-25     28090523 RU         APPLY      Database Release Update : 18.3.0 18.1.0.0.0      18.3.0.0.0     
                                                         .0.180717 (28090523)                                            

         2 2018-07-25     27923415 INTERIM    APPLY      OJVM RELEASE UPDATE: 18.3.0.0.18 18.1.0.0.0      18.1.0.0.0     
                                                         0717 (27923415)                                                 

         2 2018-07-25     28090523 RU         APPLY      Database Release Update : 18.3.0 18.1.0.0.0      18.3.0.0.0     
                                                         .0.180717 (28090523)

This means: Binary files are patched already. But databases you create need to see the SQL changes.

List of Fixes

If you’d like to see which fixes are included in 18.3.0, please see this note:

–Mike

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