12.1.0.2

Should you attempt double-hop Oracle Database upgrades?

A long while ago I wrote a blog post about multiple-hop upgrades. And just recently I received many questions about whether one could skip Oracle Database 19c, and rather move into Oracle Database 23ai directly. So, the ask is: Should you attempt double-hop Oracle Database upgrades?

Should you attempt double-hop Oracle Database upgrades?

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What is a double-hop or multiple-hop upgrade?

Let me clarify the self-invented term here at first. In every Oracle database release we define the minimum database version you can directly upgrade from. With “upgrade” we refer to using the scripts or tools such as AutoUpgrade. Please …

Virtual Classroom Seminar #14: AutoUpgrade 2.0 on May 5, 2022

Posted on May 3, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 4

If you finally want to see all the cool new features of AutoUpgrade 2.0 (the 2.0 is just a marker we use to say: We improved it significantly!), the please sign up to Virtual Classroom Seminar #14: AutoUpgrade 2.0 on May 5, 2022.

Virtual Classroom Seminar #14: AutoUpgrade 2.0 on May 5, 2022

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

What are we going to talk about?

The development team invested a lot of resources to implement some of the most wanted features in AutoUpgrade. Spoiler: One feature is still missing but will be released very soon. In this Thursday’s Virtual Classroom Seminar we will talk about:

PDB and non-CDB

Why you can’t stay on Oracle Database 11g forever

Posted on April 6, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Release Schedule 24

Oracle Database 11g? In 2022? Yes, I know – and you know too – there are Oracle 11g databases out there in production. And blindly I’d say: Too many. Of course, we are the “upgrade guys” trying to convince you to move to Oracle Database 19c. And I bet, for each of your 11g databases there’s a valid and legit reason why they haven’t upgraded yet. But there is one often neglected technical reason Why you can’t stay on Oracle Database 11g forever. So let me explain this below.

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Oracle Database 11g?

Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 certified on Oracle Linux 8 and RHEL8

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Operating System 12

The other day I received a question on Twitter regarding my experience with Oracle 12.1.0.2 on Linux 8. I first thought this may be an error. Why should Oracle 12.1.0.2 been certified on Linux 8. And I didn’t see anything internally about Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 certified on Oracle Linux 8 and RHEL8.

Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 certified on Oracle Linux 8 and RHEL8

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But it is true …

Thanks to Marian Bednar (Thanks a lot!!) who couldn’t find any information on my blog, now I know. Marian pointed me to the Release Notes Oracle Database 12.1.0.2. They’ve got updated in July 2020 already …

Does your GI RU/RUR patch level has to match your database’s?

Posted on June 11, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI 5

A long while ago I blogged about whether you should keep your patch versions between Grid Infrastructure and Databases Homes in synch, or not. And today, Daniel dropped me a note mentioning that this old blog post may need an update for 18c/19c. He’s right. And as I’ve had trouble finding my old blog post, I title this one a bit more obvious: Does your GI RU/RUR patch level has to match your database’s?

Does your GI RU/RUR patch level has to match your database's?

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Before Oracle Database 18c

Since Oracle 18c we move from a 5-number release schema to a 3-number one. …

Extended Support for Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 extended

Posted on December 16, 2019 by Mike.Dietrich Release Schedule 13

These are good new in case you plan to use Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 longer in production. Just last week we extended the Extended Support for Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 by one additional year.

Extended Support for Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 extended

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Extended Support Extension for Oracle 12.1.0.2

Before, the Extended Support for Oracle 12.1.0.2 ended end of July 2021. Now you can purchase it until end of July 2022. For those of you who have it included in your contract anyway (for instance if you have a ULA or PULA), these are great news.

Please see:

MOS Note: 742060.1 – Release Schedule of

You MUST patch 12.1.0.1 and 11.2.0.3 and older databases before June 2019

Posted on February 25, 2019 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls 18

First of all, this blog post is not new. I blogged about this SCN topic a while ago already. But some of you seem to operate still older databases for various reasons. And even if you think that you are safe, double check for any older databases in your environments. You MUST patch 12.1.0.1 and 11.2.0.3 and older databases before June 23, 2019. And just to be clear: June 23, 2019 is going to happen in less than 4 months.

You MUST patch 12.1.0.1 and 11.2.0.3 and older databases before June 2019

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Who is NOT affected?

If you use the following Oracle database releases …

Current Support Status for Oracle Database Releases

Posted on October 16, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Release Schedule 11

Yesterday a former colleague from the UK pointed me to a very old blog post about the fact that no patches will be produced for Oracle 11.2.0.3 anymore. Which is a true fact. But it reminded me that it may be time for an overview on the current support status for Oracle database releases as of October 2018.

Current Support Status for Oracle Database Releases

First of all, the single source of truth in case you’d like to look up support dates and patching periods is MOS Note:742060.1. Please always check this note first. Our Support Lifetime …

How long can you provision database version X in the Cloud?

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Cloud 2

That’s a question I have gotten several times already: How long can you provision database version X in the Cloud? Meaning, is there a fixed date when you’ll be unable to provision an instance containing Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 for instance?

How long can you provision database version X in the Cloud?

Please find the updated blog post here:

How long can you provision database version X in the Cloud? – NEW

–Mike…

Patching my databases with the July 2018 PSU, BP and RU

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 38

Patching my databases with the July 2018 PSU, BP and RU As usual I download the patch bundles and apply them to our Hands-On Lab environment as quickly as possible. First of all for the simple reason that I don’t want to trap into issues which are fixed already. Second for the reason that I always tell you: YOU MUST PATCH! But if I’m saying this over and over again, then I can’t have my own environments unpatched. And at third, because I want to learn if anything is not working correctly or has changed (see below).

Of course my tiny single instance environments are not comparable to your critical production …

Data Pump 12.1.0.2 – Wrong Dump File Version – ORA-39142

Posted on July 16, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Data Pump Flaws and Pitfalls Patch Recommendation 2

Data Pump 12.1.0.2 - Wrong Dump File Version - ORA-39142 Again I’ll have to thank my colleague Roland Gräff from the German ACS Support team in Stuttgart for bringing this into our radar. Roland alerted me a week ago about an issue with exports in Oracle 12.1.0.2 only when you are on a certain patch level. I summarize the issue here under Data Pump 12.1.0.2 – Wrong Dump File Version – ORA-39142.

In the below blog post you will learn about the actual issue, where it happens and when, and of course how to workaround it.

When does it happen?

The issue I will describe below happens only with …

Don’t drop the AUDSYS user before upgrading

Posted on February 27, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Auditing 4

Don't drop the AUDSYS user before upgrading This is a very interesting case Martin Berger sent to me a week ago. A colleague and him were basically wondering if they should follow the advice in the Oracle 12.2 upgrade guide and drop the AUDSYS user, or if they better don’t drop the AUDSYS user before upgrading.

What is AUDSYS meant for?

In short, it is the auditing user schema for Oracle 12c and especially Unified Auditing. You’ll find a bit more information regarding Unified Auditing on this blog:

September 2017 releases of preupgrade.jar and preupgrd.sql are available

Posted on September 11, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Upgrade / Migration 7

On a regular basis the Database Upgrade Team releases new and improved versions of the preupgrade tools via a MyOracle Support note. And it’s time again: the September 2017 releases of preupgrade.jar and preupgrd.sql are available for download.

September 2017 releases of preupgrade.jar and preupgrd.sql are available

Please ALWAYS download the most recent versions of preupgrade.jar for upgrades to Oracle Database 12.2 and preupgrd.sql (including utluppkg.sql) for Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 upgrade from MOS Note: 884522.1. The version you’ll download is way newer than the version you’ll get with the base installation.

preupgrade.jar – Rel.7 – September 2017

Please …

PGA_AGGREGATE_LIMIT enforces default since Oracle Database 12.2.0.1

Posted on May 4, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Behavior Change Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 Parameters 13

The init.ora/spfile parameter PGA_AGGREGATE_LIMIT got introduced in Oracle Database 12.1.0.1.

As per documentation in Oracle Database 12.1 it got defined as:

“PGA_AGGREGATE_LIMIT specifies a limit on the aggregate PGA memory consumed by the instance.“.

Furthermore the algorithm for its setting got described as:

“By default, PGA_AGGREGATE_LIMIT is set to the greater of 2 GB, 200% of PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET, and 3 MB times the PROCESSES parameter. It will be set below 200% of PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET if it is larger than 90% of the physical memory size minus the total SGA size, but not below 100% of PGA_AGGREGATE_TARGET.”

Default

Unified Auditing – Performance Improvements in Oracle 12.1.0.2

Posted on April 19, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Auditing Performance Tuning Security 14

Unified Auditing got introduced in Oracle Database 12.1.

Unified Auditing - Performance Improvements in Oracle 12.1 The downsides of the “old” auditing facilities became obvious when too many users had activities or transactions at the same time leading to audit records being written into AUD$. Contention was a typical issue. The same thing happened when too many users tried to login at the same time. Furthermore protecting the auditing information required Database Vault as there was no default protection available.

This – and some other things – should be remedied by Unified Auditing which is available since Oracle Database 12c. It gets enabled in sort of a “mixed …

GC Freelist Session Waits causing slowness and hangs

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Mike.Dietrich Behavior Change Flaws and Pitfalls Oracle Database 12c Parameters Patch Recommendation 0

One of the best things in my job:
I learn from you folks out there. Everyday.

Credits here go to Maciej Tokar who did explain the below topic to me via LinkedIn – thanks a lot, Maciej!

Locks are not being closed fast enough, resulting in gc freelist waits

You can find a reference for Global Cache Freelist in the Oracle Documentation. This issue here can or will lead to database being slow, up to complete hangs. Based on my research it looks as the issue is not related to RAC only but a general thing. In your session …

Parameter Recommendations for Oracle Database 12c – Part II

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Mike.Dietrich Behavior Change Oracle Database 12c Parameters Patch Recommendation 6

Preface

Again, please be advised – the following parameter list is mostly based on personal experience only. Some of them are officially recommended by Oracle

Parameter Recommendations for Oracle Database 12c – Part I

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Mike.Dietrich Oracle Database 12c Parameters Patch Recommendation 5

Preface

Please be advised – the following parameter list is mostly based on personal experience only. Some of them are officially recommended by Oracle Support. Always use proper testing mechanisms.

We strongly recommend SQL Performance Analyzer to …

Where do these large trace files come from in Oracle 12c?

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Mike.Dietrich Behavior Change Oracle Database 12c Parameters 5

Just had an observation about very large trace files on one of my customers I’m working with at the moment. When I write “very” I mean “VERY” as some grew over 10GB within a few hours.

Growth - Trace Files - (c) Mike Dietrich

The files contained a ton of such messages:

----- Cursor Obsoletion Dump sql_id=5p8a9d4017bq3 -----
Parent cursor obsoleted 1 time(s). maxchild=1024 basephd=00007FFB8AD45CB0 phd=00007FFB8AD45CB0

After doing a bit of research I came across this document and an explanation:

MOS Note:1955319.1;
Huge Trace Files Created Containing “—– Cursor Obsoletion Dump sql_id=%s —–“

Well, we introduced an Enhancement – via an unpublished bug (and I’d guess it is …

Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 SE2 – Support and Patches for Oracle Database 12.1.0.1 SE/SE1

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Mike.Dietrich SE2 - Standard Edition 2 6

Oracle SE2

Please find all our articles about Oracle Database Standard Edition 12.1.0.2 SE2:

Some questions regarding support for Oracle Database Standard Edition 12.1.0.1 (SE/SE1) came up in the past days.

Most of those are answered already in MOS Note 2027072.1 (Oracle Database 12c Standard Edition 2
(12.1.0.2) )

How long will

Upgrade downtime credited to APEX

Posted on September 1, 2015 by Mike.Dietrich APEX 5

What do you think when you see this post-upgrade result?

Oracle Database 12.1 Post-Upgrade Status Tool           08-07-2015 15:08:26

Component                               Current         Version  Elapsed Time
Name                                    Status          Number   HH:MM:SS

Oracle Server                          UPGRADED      12.1.0.2.0  00:19:26
JServer JAVA Virtual Machine              VALID      12.1.0.2.0  00:10:52
Oracle Workspace Manager                  VALID      12.1.0.2.0  00:01:52
OLAP Analytic Workspace                   VALID      12.1.0.2.0  00:00:34
OLAP Catalog                         OPTION OFF      11.2.0.3.0  00:00:00
Oracle OLAP API                           VALID      12.1.0.2.0  00:00:42
Oracle XDK                                VALID      12.1.0.2.0  00:01:07
Oracle Text                               VALID      12.1.0.2.0  00:01:36
Oracle XML Database                       VALID      12.1.0.2.0  00:03:55
Oracle Database Java Packages             VALID      12.1.0.2.0  00:00:22
Oracle Multimedia                         VALID      12.1.0.2.0  00:03:57
Spatial                                UPGRADED      12.1.0.2.0  00:08:56
Oracle Application Express                VALID

Log Writer Slave Issues in 12.1.0.2 – mainly on IBM AIX and HP-UX but also on Linux

Posted on July 1, 2015 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls Oracle Database 12c Parameters 10

Currently we see a lot of issues with the Multiple Logwriter feature in Oracle Database 12.1.0.2, especially on the IBM AIX platform.

What are Multiple LGWRs?

You will see multiple LGnn (Log Writer Worker) processes on multiprocessor systems, The LGWR (Log Writer) creates worker processes (slaves) to improve the performance of writing to the redo log. LGnn (Log Writer Worker) processes are not used when there is a SYNC standby destination. Possible processes include LG00–LG99.

Here is a list of new background processes in Oracle Database 12.1:
MOS Note 1625912.1 – New Background …

Some Data Pump issues: DBMS_DATAPUMP Import via NETWORK_LINK fails + STATUS parameter giving bad performance

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Mike.Dietrich Data Pump 8

One of my dear Oracle ACS colleagues (Danke Thomas!) highlighted this issue to me as one of his lead customers hit this pitfall a week ago. .

DBMS_DATAPUMP Import Over NETWORK_LINK fails with ORA-39126 / ORA-31600

Symptoms are:

KUPW$WORKER.CONFIGURE_METADATA_UNLOAD [ESTIMATE_PHASE]
ORA-31600: invalid input value IN ('VIEWS_AS_TABLES/TABLE_DATA') for parameter VALUE in function SET_FILTER

This can be cured with the patch for bug 19501000 – but this patch can conflict with:Bug 18793246 EXPDP slow showing base object lookup during datapump export causes full table scan per object and therefore may require a merge patch – patch 21253883 is the one to …

New version of the BIG 12c SLIDE DECK available

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Mike.Dietrich Slides 1

I’m not on vacation right now. I’m just very busy traveling between customer onsite visits, customer meetings and workshops, internal and external workshops, testing sessions … and so on …

A lot of stuff has been stacked up in my inbox regarding changes in Oracle 12c, changed behavior – and thanks for your inputs. I will blog on it as soon as I have understood the issue and the solution – so plenty of stuff should come in the next weeks 😉

Just end of last week Roy and I uploaded a new version of our BIG slide deck – …

ORA-20000 Unable to gather statistics concurrently: Resource Manager is not enabled
ORA-06512: at “SYS.DBMS_STATS”

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls Oracle Database 12c Upgrade / Migration 12

We are running a great training this week in Munich, called TECH CHALLENGE for Oracle people only. And one group hit the below issue so I thought I should share this as it is very likely it will happen with the upgrade to Oracle Database 12c in your environment as well.

During the run of catctl.pl or DBUA you may get an error saying:

ORA-20000: Unable to gather statistics concurrently:
Resource Manager is not enabled.

ORA-06512: at “SYS.DBMS_STATS”

Even worse, the upgrade will fail and exit in phase 68 of the parallel upgrade.
This issue is new with Oracle Database …

12.1.0.2

What is a double-hop or multiple-hop upgrade?

What are we going to talk about?

Oracle Database 11g?

But it is true …

Before Oracle Database 18c

Extended Support Extension for Oracle 12.1.0.2

Who is NOT affected?

Current Support Status for Oracle Database Releases

How long can you provision database version X in the Cloud?

When does it happen?

What is AUDSYS meant for?

September 2017 releases of preupgrade.jar and preupgrd.sql are available

preupgrade.jar – Rel.7 – September 2017

Default

Unified Auditing got introduced in Oracle Database 12.1.

Locks are not being closed fast enough, resulting in gc freelist waits

Preface

Preface

How long will

What are Multiple LGWRs?

DBMS_DATAPUMP Import Over NETWORK_LINK fails with ORA-39126 / ORA-31600

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