21c

DBUA Deprecation and future Desupport in Oracle Database 23c

Daniel pointed me to Tim Hall’s blog post about deprecated and desupported features in Oracle Database 23c. And his first bullet point mentioned is the DBUA Deprecation and future Desupport in Oracle Database 23c. Since Daniel and I agree that this needs a bit more explanation, we would like to share more background information with you.

Deprecated vs Desupport?

At first, let me refresh an old topic. What does deprecated mean, and what is the difference to desupport? A long while ago I wrote this blog post about it, and nothing …

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Zero Downtime Upgrade of Timezone Data in Oracle 21c and 23c?

There is a feature in Oracle Database 21c I planned to write about for a very long time: Zero Downtime Upgrade of Timezone Data in Oracle 21c and 23c. This sounds very promising – but let us take a closer look together in this blog post.

Time Zone Upgrade?

There is of course an ongoing discussion whether and when you should upgrade the DST version of your database to a current value. Since we all live in a more and more globalized world, this topic becomes more and more important. Even more important …

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Patching my environments with the January 2023 Bundle Patches

Mid-of January. It’s patching time again. So let me show you the quarterly exercise of Patching my environments with the January 2023 Bundle Patches. Let’s see this time if I will have to remove my Data Pump Bundle Patch and the 19.17.0 MRP2 at first when I patch in-place.

Patching my environments with the January 2023 Bundle Patches

Photo by karokrasinska on Unsplash

As usual, an important annotation upfront: I patch in-place due to space issues. But in reality, you please patch always out-of-place with a separate home. Please see this blog post about how to apply the RU directly when you provision a new home with OUI

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RUs contain now all available DST patches

At first, Happy New Year everybody. There was silence on the blog for some weeks but I took an extended longer time off. Well, and once you return, there are some emails in your inbox which need some work. You’ll see several new blog posts getting published in the coming days. Back to normal, yesterday night RU 19.18.0 among other patch bundles has been released. And there’s a huge fantastic surprise in it: RUs contain now all available DST patches.

 

What’s the story?

There are some good news. We discussed this internally …

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Why you simply can’t upgrade from Oracle 11g or 12c to Oracle 23c

It’s time for a Monday morning rant. I receive more and more questions which all start similar. “My customer is on Oracle 11g and/or 12c, and want to know whether the next long term support release …“. Now let me clarify Why you simply can’t upgrade from Oracle 11g or 12c to Oracle 23c. And why you MUST upgrade to Oracle Database 19c.

Why you simply can't upgrade from Oracle 11g or 12c to Oracle 23c

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What is the intention?

After a lot of discussions across many regions, especially in JAPAC during the past weeks I realized that there is a reason for all …

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

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
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Migrating Flashback Data Archive (FDA) tables

This morning I received an email question from a customer asking whether there is support for the Migrating Flashback Data Archive (FDA) tables in Oracle 19c. And since this is not the first time I received this question, I thought it may be good to have a blog post about it.

What is Flashback Data Archive (FDA)?

Well, google it. Actually I was looking for a link in our documentation but to my surprise I found the usual suspects such as Tim Hall’s excellent oracle-base page – but not much in our own doc …

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

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.

 

Oracle Database 11g?

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Oracle Fail Safe is desupported in Oracle Database 21c

You may wonder about this message out of the blue. I wrote a blog post about Oracle Fail Safe being deprecated in Oracle 19c a while ago. But a customer recently pointed me to the fact that I didn’t blog about the fact that Oracle Fail Safe is desupported in Oracle Database 21c.

Oracle Fail Safe is desupported in Oracle Database 21c

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Deprecated? Desupported?

A very quick recap about what deprecated and desupported mean. In short, deprecated means “we don’t develop something further but it is still fully supported”. Whereas desupported means “it may still work or may be gone, and you …

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AutoUpgrade 2.0 has been released – and got reuploaded

Many of you have used AutoUpgrade for your database upgrades already. Just a few days ago I received some almost enthusiastic comments which made me very very happy. And if you thought it can’t get any better, no worries: AutoUpgrade 2.0 has been released – and got reuploaded.

Why AutoUpgrade 2.0?

As you know, we don’t do marketing but just talk tech. But you may have also recognized that we slowed down in our agile release cycle for AutoUpgrade. The simple reason for this long period of silence was that we’ve had a …

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What does datapatch do when you have different components in PDBs?

The last weeks, literally weeks, I have spent a lot of time with several patching topics. And in order to clean up my inbox a bit I will dump the learning into several blog posts. This one today will be about an interesting case I came across when a customer ran into problems with the runtime of datapatch in an ExaCC environment. Hence, today’s topic will be: What does datapatch do when you have different components in PDBs?

Annotation

If you are on 19.16.0 or higher, than you can safely ignore this blog post

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Patching all my environments with the October 2021 Patch Bundles

My calendar has no error or NLS conversion issue – I was just way to busy the past two months with seminars. But today a colleague asked me whether my 21.4 install reports a 21.3 Build Label in the trace files. And this reminded me that I should now finally apply the patch bundles from October 2021 to our Hands-On Lab environment. So again, another blog post about Patching all my environments with the October 2021 Patch Bundles.

Patching all my environments with the October 2021 Patch Bundles

Photo by NCI on Unsplash

As usual, an important annotation upfront: I patch in-place due to space issues. But in reality, you …

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Oracle Database 21c for Windows is available as EE, SE2 and XE

Oracle Database 21c for Windows is available as EE, SE2 and XE now for download following the Linux version with a few weeks of delay.

Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition 2

Please find the download for Oracle Database 21c and Oracle Grid Infrastructure 21c for Windows here:

Express Edition

Regarding Oracle Database 21c XE, please see this blog post regarding the Linux version:

I just posted a few week ago.

Further Links and Information

Downloads

Documentation

Related Blog Posts

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Oracle Database 21c XE (Express Edition) for Linux

I haven’t blogged for a while. And I know, there are a lot of comments waiting in the queue to be approved and answered. But meanwhile, let me tell you that Oracle Database 21c XE (Express Edition) for Linux is available for download now.

It’s been a while

Oracle XE (Express Edition) is the free version of the Oracle Database with almost full Enterprise Edition feature set but with some additional restrictions. The last version being available was Oracle 18.4. Now the 21c version is available for Linux.

If you wait for the Windows …

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Which releases allow you to upgrade to Oracle Database 21c?

As I wrote before, the release you should upgrade to is clearly Oracle Database 19c. Unless you need to use one of the new features in Oracle 21c. But as you have seen in the past, some of them get backported to 19c as well. Still, in case you can’t resists or you love upgrades as much as we do, the question may be: Which releases allow you to upgrade to Oracle Database 21c?

Upgrade-supported Releases

The Database Upgrade Guide for Oracle 21c is your best friend here. Right at the beginning in the first chapter you will find this …

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Pitfall: Upgrade to 21c fails when ORDIM is present but no SDO

You may have read my previous blog post about Upgrading a non-CDB to Oracle Database 21c. And I referred to a potential Pitfall: Upgrade to 21c fails when ORDIM is present but no SDO. In this blog post I would like to explain how to avoid this pitfall beforehand and explain what needs to be done.

Pitfall: Upgrade to 21c fails when ORDIM is present but no SDO

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What’s the problem?

In my previous blog post I showed you the ideal and normal way. But during my tests I came across an issue I was not aware of – and I simply had no …

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Upgrading a non-CDB to Oracle Database 21c with AutoUpgrade

Yesterday I wrote about the installation of Oracle Database 21c on Linux. But today it is time for Upgrading to Oracle Database 21c with AutoUpgrade.

Upgrading a non-CDB to Oracle Database 21c with AutoUpgrade

Photo by Arjun MJ on Unsplash

AutoUpgrade

You may have heard it already from us and other colleagues, but we can’t repeat it often enough: There is only one recommended tool to upgrade your databases – and this is AutoUpgrade.

In my 21c home, I’m checking the deployed version of AutoUpgrade at first:

[CDB3] oracle@hol:/u01/app/oracle/product/21/rdbms/admin
$ java -jar autoupgrade.jar -version
build.hash 57ab246
build.version 21.1.3
build.date 2021/04/21 13:32:13
build.max_target_version 21
build.supported_target_versions 12.2,18,19,21
build.type production

Now please …

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Oracle Database 21c is available for download on Linux

It took a while into 2021 – but now Oracle Database 21c is available for download on Linux.

Oracle Database 21c is available for download on Linux

Photo by Kahika on Unsplash

Download Location

Please go to either oracle.com or edelivery:

On edelivery you need to search for “Oracle Database”:

Oracle Database 21c is available for download on Linux

On oracle.com you need to scroll down a bit:

Oracle Database 21c is available for download on Linux

Other OS Ports

As you can see in MOS Note: 742060.1 – Release Schedule of Current Database Releases  – Table 2, Oracle Database 21c will be available on Linux x86-64, Microsoft Windows x64 and HP-UX Itanium. It won’t be available on SPARC or Intel Solaris, neither will it …

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New version of AutoUpgrade (21.2) is available for download

As we often tell you, our Upgrade Development team is working hard to ensure an agile release cycle for AutoUpgrade. And the New version of AutoUpgrade (21.2) is available for download.

How to download?

As usual, you can (and should) always download the most recent version of AutoUpgrade from this MOS Note: 2485457.1. Usually the tool gets refreshed every 6-8 weeks. And the version you will download is guaranteed newer than the one you could get on disk.

New version of AutoUpgrade (21.2) is available for download

The fact the tool has a 21c versioning does not affect 19c upgrades. There …

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aioug Webinar Series July 2021: Database Upgrade and Migrations

Many people on the northern hemisphere will escape during July into the summer holidays. But we won’t. Instead, thanks to Sai Penumuru, we will give seven webinars for the aioug. And we are looking forward to talk to you soon at the aioug Webinar Series July 2021: Database Upgrade and Migrations.

aioug Webinar Series July 2021: Database Upgrade and Migrations

When will it happen?

This morning I looked into my calendar. And I realized: Wow, July 2021 is just a few days away. Roy will start with the first session on Friday, July 2. And then myself, Rodrigo, Daniel, Fred and Bill will …

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Messaging Gateway – Upgrade can’t find mgwu122.sql

Thanks to Christian Ballweg from Optiz Consulting who brought this issue to my attention. I haven’t seen it before since I haven’t installed it but you may encounter this if you have the Messaging Gateway – Upgrade can’t find mgwu122.sql.

What is the Messaging Gateway?

Actually I steal this from the documentation:

Messaging Gateway enables communication between applications based on non-Oracle messaging systems and Oracle Database Advanced Queuing.

Oracle Database Advanced Queuing provides propagation between two Oracle Database Advanced Queuing queues to enable e-business (HTTP through IDAP). Messaging Gateway extends

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Cool Features not only for DBAs – Virtual Classroom Series No.7

Happy New Year to all of you. I hope you are all well. After an heavily active 2020 with more virtual seminars than ever before it’s time to start in 2021 with Cool Features not only for DBAs – Virtual Classroom Series No.7 on Jan 14, 2021.

Why Cool Features for DBAs?

Actually the idea is not new. And we’ve included some slides into our workshops already for quite a while. But there are simply too many cool features. Our focus is in features which usually don’t make it into advertising or …

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Download the newest AutoUpgrade for 19c and 21c upgrades

It’s out now and available since yesterday: AutoUpgrade 21c. Download the newest AutoUpgrade for 19c and 21c upgrades with many new features and improvements.

Download it!

This is the current version of AutoUpgrade:

build.hash 8ee6880
build.version 21.1.1
build.date 2020/12/14 14:41:34
build.max_target_version 21
build.supported_target_versions 12.2,18,19,21
build.type production
48 bug fixes since v21.0.0 release
Tag: v21.1.1
Description: This is the release for 21.1.1 MOS only

As usual, download it please from:

What’s new?

  • Non-CDB to PDB Upgrades
    • AutoUpgrade can upgrade and convert a non-CDB to a PDB in a new
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Oracle Database 21c is available in the cloud – plus documentation

It’s time for a new release. And as of this morning, Oracle Database 21c is available in the cloud – plus documentation is accessible as well. This is just the first blog post about Oracle Database 21c – more will follow within the next days. Stay tuned 🙂

Oracle Database 21c

Oracle Database 21c is now available on Always Free Autonomous Database (only in the following regions: IAD, PHX, LHR, FRA) and Database Cloud Service (RAC and single-instance on VM; single-instance on Bare Metal).

In addition, you can download the 21c client from the …

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