How long will Oracle Database 12.2 be supported?

This question sounds very simple: How long will Oracle Database 12.2 be supported? Right? But I learned at a customer site recently that the information about the support periods for Oracle 12.2 may puzzle people sometimes. Hence I thought some clarification may be useful.

Lifetime Support Policy Brochure

First of all, when you have a look into the Lifetime Support Policy brochure the answer you’ll read there is:

• Premier Support until March 2023
• Extended Support until March 2026

But this doesn’t give you any distinction between Oracle 12.2.0.1, Oracle 18c and Oracle 19c. These three releases fall under the Oracle 12.2 Release Family umbrella.

The problem here: One may just note down that Oracle 12.2 is in Premier Support until March 2023.

But this is not the complete picture.

Addition on Nov 14, 2019:

It took a longer while to convince some people that the above (now: older) table may lead to misunderstandings. But finally, the table has been updated end of October 2019 and differs now between Oracle 12.2.0.1, Oracle 18c and Oracle 19c – and this way, the information is now accurate and easier to understand:

The Single Source of Truth

I call MOS Note: 742060.1 (Release Schedule of Current Database Releases) the single source of truth as it gives much more detail than the Lifetime Support Brochure.

But, in this specific case, the graph MOS Note: 742060.1 displays may be puzzling as well as it has an “12.2” bar above Oracle 12.2.0.1, Oracle 18c and Oracle 19c.

I just had a discussion where customers interpreted this in conjunction with the Lifetime Support Brochure as if Oracle 12.2.0.1 would get Premier Support until March 2023. Oracle 12.2 == Oracle 12.2.0.1.

But I write this blog post to clarify that this is not the case.

Bug fixing will end for Oracle 12.2.0.1 on Nov 20, 2020. This strange date is derived from the availability of Oracle 18c for HP, AIX and zLinux. From this availability date on the clock of 2 years bug fixing support for Oracle 12.2.0.1 started ticking.

The end of bug fixing support for Oracle 18c will be announced once all ports for Oracle Database 19c on-premises becomes available.

You can find this information also in MOS Note: 742060.1 when you scroll down a bit to table 2:

This is the important information. And the reason why I call MOS Note: 742060.1 “the single source of truth”. Only Oracle Database 19c gives you the full span of bug fixing support until 31-Mar-2023 with the option to have Extended Support until 31-Mar-2026.

No Extended Support for Oracle 12.2.0.1 and Oracle 18c

And MOS Note: 742060.1 presents also another VERY important detail: There won’t be any Extended Support available for Oracle 12.2.0.1 or Oracle 18c. This is no different from previous releases as for example Oracle 11.2.0.1 or Oracle 11.2.0.2 didn’t get Extended Support either. Only the Terminal Patch Set (or here: the Terminal Release) received Extended Support optionally, in some cases waived.

Important Addition as of April 15, 2020:
And another important change: Oracle 12.2.0.1 got Limited Error Correction Support added until 31-Mar-2022.
See here: Oracle 12.2.0.1 Support extended with Limited Error Correction Support

You may read also a bit more about the topic here:

• Premier Support Extension for Oracle 19c – and more
• How long can you provision database version X in the cloud?
• Oracle 12.2.0.1 Support extended with Limited Error Correction Support

–Mike