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Patch your databases against AI-enabled cybersecurity threats

I guess you all read the announcements and predictions over the past weeks. New AI models and improvements to existing models may allow to find security issues in existing software much quicker. While this sounds alarming on one side (yes, it does), it also enables software vendors to secure their software. But in order to benefit from it, you must patch your databases against AI-enabled cybersecurity threats.

Patch your databases against AI-enabled cybersecurity threats

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Read the official announcements

At first, please read the official announcements released here:

Accelerating Vulnerability Detection and Response at Oracle (3 min read – April 29,

OJVM patching fails with ORA-1403 in 19.30 if JAVAVM is not installed

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls JVM Patch Recommendation 107

Thanks to all the people (Jeff, Daniele, Lothar and others) who alerted me about this topic. Some of you had even created their own fix already. So, this is about an issue which happens only if you have no JAVAVM installed in your database or PDB but you still apply the OJVM Bundle on to of the Oracle Database 19.30 Release Update. You may find then: OJVM patching fails with ORA-1403 in 19.30 if JAVAVM is not installed.

OJVM patching fails with ORA-1403 in 19.30 if JVM is not installed

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When does this happen?

This issue happens when you apply the OJVM bundle together with …

How long can I request a backport for Oracle Database RUs?

Posted on December 2, 2024 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation Release Schedule 0

I’ve had this topic on my “to write about” list for a long time. But somehow it felt through the cracks. Especially in relation to the recently announced extension of the Oracle Database 19c Premier and Extended Support periods it may be useful if you are aware of this policy since you may ask yourself: How long can I request a backport for Oracle Database RUs?

How long can I request a backport for Oracle Database RUs?

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What is a backport?

As we explain in Virtual Classroom Seminar – Episode 17: From SR to Patch – Insights into the Oracle Database Development process we fix …

Hide and Seek with RU 19.18.0

Posted on February 2, 2023 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls Patch Recommendation 46

One and a half weeks ago we released the Database and Grid Infrastructure Release Updates (RU) 19.18.0. You could read on the blog how to apply it, and you could read also about an alert. So far, all was more or less transparent but apparently sort of an Hide and Seek with RU 19.18.0 has happened. So let me shed some light.

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Heads Up!

I am just the messenger trying to bring some light into the topic. Neither is our team responsible nor do we have any sort of control on this process. I …

Upgrading a PDB with JVM may result in ORA-7445 joevm_invokevirtual

Posted on September 29, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls JVM 3

As you know, this blog is also my brain dump about Oracle topics. Since this one happened yesterday, mostly at night with the help of my team mates and the Java team, I’d like to write it down into this blog post: Upgrading a PDB with Java may result in ORA-7445 joevm_invokevirtual() as it is still fresh and may affect you as well. If you don’t have PDBs, if you don’t have Java (or JVM) in it or if you upgraded already to Oracle Database 19c, you can stop reading now.

Upgrading a PDB with Java may result in ORA-7445 joevm_invokevirtual

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What

DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE and disabling another fix

Posted on August 11, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Optimizer Patch Recommendation 8

Yes, DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE week it is. As I received so many good questions and input after my blog post whether you should enable _fix_controls with DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE or not, now I can easily fill the rest of the week with new content. Today it will be about a customer’s question regarding DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE and disabling another fix.

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Disabling another fix

The setup is pretty simple. Stefan wanted to disable a different fix while he had all fixes from the most recent RU enabled on purpose. Sounds simple but has a dangerous pitfall.

This is what …

AutoUpgrade may run into a timeout when GI is lower than 19.10.0

Posted on June 21, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI Patch Recommendation 9

The other day I received a question from a colleague about the risk of having GI and database both not being on the same RU. And a long while ago I blogged about it. We recommend that you keep it in synch. But you don’t have to. At the same time I received a wish from Ernst Leber to post something on the blog he and his colleague had trouble with when upgrading to 19c in a RAC environment. AutoUpgrade hung. But he titled his email with “not an AutoUpgrade problem!”. Still I agree, it is worth to write …

ORA-1422 and ORA-6512 from SYS.DBMS_STATS in Post Upgrade

Posted on May 4, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Optimizer Patch Recommendation 3

Ernst Leber sent me an email today. He hit an error at a customer upgrading to Oracle 19.9.0 on Exadata with AutoUpgrade. ORA-1422 and ORA-6512 from SYS.DBMS_STATS in Post Upgrade were signaled – and he better flashed back to the Guaranteed Restore Point. He found even a MOS note but still had questions. So time to blog about it in case you hit this error sequence as well.

ORA-1422 and ORA-6512 from SYS.DBMS_STATS in Post Upgrade Phase

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What happens, and when does it happen?

At first, this is not an AutoUpgrade issue. You may see the same error stack in the post upgrade …

Oracle 19c on Windows may flood your trace file directory

Posted on March 11, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls Oracle Database 19c 21

Oh … it’s Windows week here. And all this even though since I didn’t install Oracle on Windows for quite a while. But of course I’m fully aware that many of you out there operate Oracle on Windows. In this particular case thanks to Joël for the pointer to this issue. Oracle 19c on Windows may flood your trace file directory.

Oracle 19c on Windows may flood your trace file directory

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What happens?

In every release of Oracle 19c, at least until 19.10.0 BP, you may find out that every few minutes a trace file gets written into the %ORACLE_BASE%\diag\..\..\trace directory. And all …

Apply Patch 31088341 before Upgrade to prevent ORA-1403

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls 6

As I learned from a customer this week, this patch is a must have when you use Partitioning and you attempt to upgrade to Oracle 19.9.0 or earlier. So please apply patch 31088341 before Upgrade to prevent ORA-1403 happening.

Apply Patch 31088341 before Upgrade to prevent ORA-1403

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What is the issue?

This applies to all 19c upgrades at least until 19.9.0.

The fix is included from 19.10.0 Release Update onward. So if you are upgrading to 19.10.0 or higher, you can stop reading here (thanks Pablo for the hint!).

You may see this error pattern in catupgrd0.log:

==Error from catupgrd0.log===

=================================================================

ORA-29702 – and your instance does not startup in the cluster anymore

Posted on November 13, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI Flaws and Pitfalls Patch Recommendation 11

This is the right blog post for a Friday 13th. And please forgive me – I wanted to put this on the blog earlier as two of my customers hit this weeks ago already. But it must have fallen through the cracks. Still, now it is hopefully not too late to tell you what you should do if you hit ORA-29702 – and your instance does not startup in the cluster anymore. Especially when you tested a database upgrade – and after a restore, the database doesn’t want to start, no matter what you try.

ORA-29702 - and your instance does not startup in the cluster anymore

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MGA Issue – and it is fixed with Oracle 19.8.0 and newer

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich ASM / RAC / GI Flaws and Pitfalls 6

Where do I start? One of the customer accounts I worked the longest time with recently upgraded to Oracle 19c on Exadata. They are an Exadata customer since 2009. After going live on 19c, a few days later they hit an MGA Issue – and it is fixed with Oracle 19.8.0 and newer. But question no.1 was: Why hasn’t Oracle warned us – and how could we have learned about it?

MGA Issue - and it is fixed with Oracle 19.8.0 and newer

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What is the MGA?

OK, I have heard of SGA and PGA. But MGA? The first two hits when I search with …

OJVM datapatch fails with ORA-29532 – but the root cause is noncdb_to_pdb.sql

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls JVM 2

Kudos to Robert Ortel who brought this nice misbehavior to my attention. And even though it looks like this would be an OJVM issue, it is caused by noncdb_to_pdb,sql, the script which is used to convert a non-CDB to a PDB. When you apply an OJVM patch, OJVM datapatch fails with ORA-29532 – but the root cause is noncdb_to_pdb.sql.

OJVM datapatch fails with ORA-29532 - but the root cause is noncdb_to_pdb.sql

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It’s a bit tricky

First things first. This is not a blog post to blame OJVM. The problem just happens because datapatch for an OJVM patch touches data in the dictionary which hasn’t …

Transportable Tablespace PDB Migration and Local Undo

Posted on May 17, 2019 by Mike.Dietrich Single-/Multitenant 4

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Sometimes it is necessary to warn you about known pitfalls to avoid frustration. In this particular case I decided not to blog about it simply because I thought this won’t happen to too many other people. Well, yesterday my good friend Philippe Fierens dropped me a message about an issue he ran into with a Transportable Tablespace PDB Migration and Local Undo. And I immediately knew what caused him trouble – and I regret that I didn’t blog about it (sorry Philippe!). We’ve seen the same problem with a large ExaCC migration project …

In case you miss DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE in 12.2

Posted on February 11, 2019 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls 0

Strange things happen sometimes. I got alerted by a customer before Christmas about package DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE missing after applying a Release Update. I’ve had a conversation with Nigel Bayliss, the Optimizer PM – but Nigel hasn’t heard of such things either. We both investigated but couldn’t reproduce the issue. But after the end-of-the-year holidays I received similar messages from other customers. In case you miss DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE in 12.2, then this blog post should help you.

In case you miss DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE in 12.2

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What is DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE?

I blogged about this package in the past already several times:

Fixes for Adaptive Features are included

RMAN Backup Gives RMAN-06091: No Channel Allocated for Maintenance

Posted on August 21, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls RMAN 19

RMAN Backup Gives RMAN-06091: No Channel Allocated for Maintenance I really don’t want to turn this blog into an accumulation of issues and flaws. But as I explained many times before, the blog for me is also a way to dump information I likely will need the sooner or later again.

Recently I blogged about another RMAN issue in Oracle 12.2.0.1 with traces. This was fixed with the July 2018 RU for Oracle 12.2.0.1. But the issue below about which Piero Ferraz from Brazil alerted me (thanks!!!), happens in exactly this RU.

RMAN Backup Gives RMAN-06091: No Channel Allocated for Maintenance

This issue gets introduced with the July …

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 …

Special characters show junk in CLOB columns after upgrade to Oracle 12.2.0.1 with JDBC

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 8

Thanks to my support colleague Roland Graeff who told me about this issue at a customer today. And I consider this a pretty serious issue. It can happen that Special characters show junk in CLOB columns after upgrade to Oracle 12.2.0.1. with JDBC.

This is as bad as it sounds. Roland told me about a case where the application showed weird characters instead of German umlauts (ä, ö, ü, Ä, Ö, Ü) after an upgrade from Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 to 12.2.0.1.

Special characters show junk in CLOB columns after upgrade to Oracle 12.2.0.1 with JDBC

Roland explained to me that …

MMON unconditional traces in Oracle 12.2.0.1

Posted on May 23, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls 10

MMON unconditional traces in Oracle 12.2.0.1 I love visiting customers onsite. Last week I visited die Mobiliar in Bern, Switzerland. I received a list of open issues to discuss – which is very good to prepare a visit. And when we all were sitting together there was this “Ah, one final thing”. They have an issue with traces the databases writes every few seconds. As a remedy the DBAs increased the backup interval to remove the traces as otherwise the system would potentially run out of inodes or space. All the traces had the same pattern. And I learned quickly: these are MMON unconditional traces in …

Additional Info for Adaptive Features Fixes in Oracle 12.1.0.2

Posted on January 18, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Optimizer Patch Recommendation 0

I blogged about the Adaptive Features fixes in the past several times. But following some of the comments readers had I believe there’s some additional info for Adaptive Feature Fixes in Oracle 12.1.0.2 necessary.

What happened so far?

We delivered the most important fixes not only for adaptive features but only for dynamic sampling and some other things with the Database Bundle Patch in October 2017 for Oracle Database 12.1.0.2. The fixes got delivered on MS Windows a bit earlier.

Issue with PDB Archives in Oracle 12.2.0.1 in ASM

Posted on May 22, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls Single-/Multitenant 7

There is a fancy new command to unplug a PDB in Oracle Database 12.2.0.1:

ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE pdb1 UNPLUG INTO 'pdb1.pdb';

The nice thing with this command differing in the file ending of ‘pdb‘ instead of ‘xml‘ as you used it in Oracle 12.1 (and the ‘xml‘ option is still available of course): Instead of just creating an xml description file it zips everything together into a PDB archive.

SQL> show pdbs

    CON_ID CON_NAME			  OPEN MODE  RESTRICTED
---------- ------------------------------ ---------- ----------
	 2 PDB$SEED			  READ ONLY  NO
SQL> create pluggable

RMAN Recovery Catalog with July PSU: How to resolve RASCHEMAVER and BASCHEMAVER schema mismatch

Posted on October 7, 2016 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation RMAN 3

Problem and Analysis

You’d apply the July 2016 PSU or BP. According to the readme you are required to upgrade your RMAN catalog afterwards. The …

Speed up Upgrade Phase 65 with a new catuposb.sql

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls Upgrade / Migration 10

Credits to Chris Smids from Proximus in Belgium 🙂 Thanks, Chris!!!

Upgrade to Oracle 12.1.0.2 is slow in phase: #65 ?

You are wondering why phase: #65 of the database upgrade to Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 takes quite a while. You dig down into the catupgrd0.log and recognized this statement taking a while:

dbms_output.put_line('catuposb, update 4 - rows updated ' || rows_updated);
END; -- end of update for system internally generated objs
/

The cause for this issue is buried in the script catuposb.sql hitting stale histograms which did not get refreshed even if you gathered dictionary stats before the upgrade …

RMAN Catalog Upgrade fails – ORA-02296 – error creating modify_ts_pdbinc_key_not_null

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls RMAN 4

This issue got raised to my via a customer I know for quite a while – all credits go to Andy Kielhorn for digging down into that issue and solving it.

Failed RMAN Catalog Upgrade from 11.2.0.4 to 12.1.0.2

The RMAN catalog upgrade:

SQL> @?/rdbms/admin/dbmsrmansys.sql

$ rman CATALOG rman/xxx@rman01

RMAN> UPGRADE CATALOG; 

RMAN> UPGRADE CATALOG;

failed with the following sequence of error messages:

error creating modify_ts_pdbinc_key_not_null
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-06004: ORACLE error from recovery catalog database: ORA-02296: cannot enable (RMAN.) - null values found

error creating modify_tsatt_pdbinc_key_not_null
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR

Query on ALL_SYNONYMS is slow in Oracle Database 12c

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls Oracle Database 12c Performance Tuning 5

A customer (Thanks Stefano!) alerted me on this issue during a workshop and I did some further investigation. Basic headline is:

Query on ALL_SYNONYMS is very slow in Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 compared to 11g.

The workaround for this 21324443: SLOW QUERY IN 12C ON ALL_SYNONYMS. is:

dbms_stats.gather_table_stats('SYS','OBJ$',estimate_percent
=>100, method_opt => 'for columns flags size 1, spare3 size 254, type# size 254');

and I see that at least 8 other customers opened SRs hitting the same issue.
Does the workaround suit you in any way?

The bug had no progress since it was opened. If you are seeking progress …

bug

Read the official announcements

When does this happen?

What is a backport?

Heads Up!

What

Disabling another fix

What happens, and when does it happen?

What happens?

What is the issue?

What is the MGA?

It’s a bit tricky

What is DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE?

RMAN Backup Gives RMAN-06091: No Channel Allocated for Maintenance

When does it happen?

Special characters show junk in CLOB columns after upgrade to Oracle 12.2.0.1 with JDBC

What happened so far?

Problem and Analysis

Upgrade to Oracle 12.1.0.2 is slow in phase: #65 ?

Failed RMAN Catalog Upgrade from 11.2.0.4 to 12.1.0.2

Query on ALL_SYNONYMS is very slow in Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 compared to 11g.

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