Bundle Patch

Take special care on Oracle Text when you migrate with TTS

Posted on October 5, 2026 by Mike.Dietrich Transportable 0

Transportable Tablespaces or Full Transportable Export/Import are the common techniques you typically use when you are going to migrate larger databases from one operating system to a different one. Usually, a Endianness-change is involved. And very often you will use our M5 scripts to benefit of incremental backups to reduce the downtime. In the past weeks I learned from two customers that you need to take special care on Oracle Text when you migrate with TTS. Hence, again I need to thank you for sharing your findings with me.

Take special care on Oracle Text when you migrate with TTS

What is TTS all about?

For those you are approaching …

Transportable Tablespaces with M5 scripts support now 26ai

We have a lot of information in our seminars and blogs about Transportable Tablespace migrations. And since we have the M5 scripts for RMAN incrementally rolled forward backups and new RMAN functionality which avoids the spare storage, life has gotten so much easier. Now, some great news from the authors of the M5 scripts: Transportable Tablespaces with M5 scripts support now 26ai.

Transportable Tablespaces with M5 scripts support now 26ai

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M5? Almost as fast as the car!

Some of you may still know the V4 PERL scripts. They had an evolution from V1 to V4 over the years and were our …

The downsides of in-place patching – and a patching lab

Posted on January 10, 2024 by Mike.Dietrich Best Practice Patch Recommendation 40

Happy New Year to all of you at first. I hope you all had a good start – and for myself, I promise to blog a bit more again in 2024. Let me start with my first post since I received a question very often: Why should I patch out-of-place with a new Oracle Home? Since I need to patch a bit today I can easily show the downsides of in-place patching – and a patching lab.

The downsides of in-place patching - and a patching lab

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It all started at OCW 2023

Ok, we didn’t really start it at OCW 2023 in …

Apply the Data Pump Bundle Patch – non-rolling but online?

Posted on December 13, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Data Pump Patch Recommendation 24

Yesterday I have blogged about an issue with the highly recommended Data Pump Bundle Patches. And today I would like to shed some light on how to Apply the Data Pump Bundle Patch – non-rolling but online?

Apply the Data Pump Bundle Patch - non-rolling but online?

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Download the Data Pump Bundle Patch

You can download the correct Data Pump Bundle Patch from MOS Note: 2819284.1 – Data Pump Recommended Proactive Patches For 19.10 and Above. It’s just a few MB, and it is a generic patch with a separate download for the Windows platform. So far so good.

…

Data Pump Bundle Patches: You may need to download and apply again

Posted on December 12, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Data Pump Oracle Database 19c Patch Recommendation 46

The Data Pump Bundle Patches get released on top of every RU since over a year now. But a real issue with missing files got detected recently. So in case you had applied Data Pump Bundle Patches: You may need to download and apply again.

Data Pump Bundle Patches: You may need to download and apply again

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What is in the Data Pump Bundle Patch?

The Data Pump Bundle Patch is a convenient and very useful vehicle to apply Data Pump patches which are usually not included in a Release Update (RU). While RUs are per definitionem RAC-rolling and Standby-First, the Data Pump Bundle …

Certifying an application on a specific RU-only is wrong

Posted on September 14, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Best Practice Patch Recommendation Release Schedule 15

Well, there are still 80+ comments I need to answer and reply to on the blog. So please be patient – nothing gets deleted or ignored. But it happens that a topic crosses my inbox, and I need to blog about it right now. Today, it is a case where a customer asked me for advice, and mentioned on the side that they are going to 19.6.0 in OCI. In this relation I’d like to explain why Certifying an application on a specific RU- only is wrong.

Certifying an application on a specific RU only is wrong

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What’s the story?

At first, …

Patching most of my environments with the July 2022 Bundle Patches

Posted on July 21, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 42

It’s brutally hot out there. It must be July. And I sit in my cool basement office and start my quarterly patching journey hoping that you can enjoy the sun and the sea somewhere. It is time to do my usual exercise, this time Patching most of my environments with the July 2022 Patch Bundles.

Patching most of my environments with the July 2022 Bundle Patches

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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 …

Binary patching is slow because of the inventory

Posted on May 10, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 57

The headline of this blog post may sound a bit cryptic: Binary patching is slow because of the inventory. But actually this seems to be one of the main causes when your binary patching gets slower and slower with every patch you apply.

Photo by Valdemaras D. on Unsplash

The more you patch, the worse it gets

Well, this is a tough headline. But you may have read my blog posts about my quarterly patching experience. It actually started with the July 2021 RU in my 19c environment when I wrote:

At least in my environment, both checks with the

How to speed up your database and GI patching

Posted on May 9, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 12

Several of you mailed me already and commented. And I know that I promised this blog post for weeks, if not longer. So let me try to explain How to speed up your database and GI patching. Since this blog post has a longer history, I’d say far over 6 months, it will be a bit longer than the usual posts. At when I started writing it, I decided to split it up into several pieces to make it more digestible but also to allow easier finding of certain topics. I hope it may help easing some recent patching …

Adding the Oracle 19.14.0 OCW / GI bundle patch to my database home

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 16

Actually I planned for a different blog post this morning. But since I have a backlog of unanswered comments accumulated I came across this interesting question from Pedro. He wanted to know how he can patch the OCW component in his database home. So I thought I will show you the process of Adding the Oracle 19.14.0 OCW / GI bundle patch to my database home.

Adding the Oracle 19.14.0 OCW / GI bundle patch to my database home

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Is this necessary?

That’s a good question for a Monday morning. I think: No, that isn’t necessary for a “Database only” home where you don’t have or …

Patching all my environments with the January 2022 Patch Bundles

Posted on January 20, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 60

It’s patching time. When I checked an SR and had a quick discussion with a customer yesterday, Peter reminded me that it’s patching day. And at about 20:00h CET the new patch bundles appeared on MOS. So let me show you again Patching all my environments with the January 2022 Patch Bundles for 11.2.0.4, 12.2.0.1, 19c and 21c.

Patching all my environments with the January 2022 Patch Bundles

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DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE and Out-Of-Place Patching

Posted on August 12, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls Optimizer Patch Recommendation 10

Well, you see, this is most likely my special DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE week. And since I receive quite a number of questions, it may be good to discuss here about DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE and Out-Of-Place Patching?

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Out-of-place Patching

When you patch out-of-place with a new home – which is clearly our recommendation – you may see another tiny pitfall with DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE.

When you check DBA_DIRECTORIES, you will find two directories being related to DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE.

SQL> select directory_name, directory_path from dba_directories where directory_name like '%OPTIM%'

DIRECTORY_NAME	     DIRECTORY_PATH
-------------------- --------------------------------------------------
DBMS_OPTIM_LOGDIR    /u01/app/oracle/product/19/cfgtoollogs
DBMS_OPTIM_ADMINDIR  /u01/app/oracle/product/19/rdbms/admin

You see the “19” in the …

Patching all my environments with the July 2020 Patch Bundles

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 26

Quarterly routine: When the new security alert get published, then it is patching time again. I’ll show you as usual how Patching all my environments with the July 2020 Patch Bundles works. And I heard your comments – in the next round in October, I will do this for GI and OJVM most likely, too. If not earlier …

Patching all my environments with the July 2020 Patch Bundles

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And just 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.

Security Alert July 2020

This is the Security Alert for …

Issues with seed databases, patch bundles and OJVM in 19c

Posted on February 18, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls JVM 15

I really rely on people telling me about issues they saw. And in this case, it happened twice within a few days. At OOW London, a customer came after my talk and told me about invalid objects and an incredible long recompilation time. In fact, he had to apply an OJVM patch in order to solve this. When I returned home, Jure commented on the blog about a very similar issue. I spent some time on the weekend to check it out. And I realized: There are issues with prebuilt seed databases and OJVM in 19c.

Issues with seed databases, patch bundles and OJVM in 19c

Photo by Max

Oracle Security Alerts for July 2019 got published

Posted on July 16, 2019 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 14

It’s patching day. And I’m already downloading the patch bundles for all my installations (11.2.0.4, 12.1.0.2, 12.2.0.1, 18c and 19c). The Oracle Security Alerts for July 2019 got published today.

Oracle Security Alerts for July 2019 got published

Patch Advisory and Risk Matrix

You can find the July 2019 Patch Advisory here. I checked the risk matrix for the database. It contains 8 new fixes for the database server. Please pay attention that 3 of the vulnerabilities may be exploitable from a client without an Oracle Database server being installed. The highest score is 9.8.

Please check the risk matrix by yourself:

Does OJVM patching require a specific Database Release Update?

Posted on December 12, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich JVM 0

This question came up several times in the past days: Does OJVM patching require a specific Database Release Update? People mentioned that there’s a significant difference between the OJVM Patch Readme between Oracle 12.2.01 and Oracle 18.4.0.

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What’s the point?

In the OJVM (Oracle Java Virtual Machine) Patch Readme for Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 a sentence clarified that you can combine different states of OJVM and Database patch bundle with each other. Your database home could have been patched with the April 2018 Update, whereas you decided to apply the October 2018 OJVM patch.

The …

July 2018 Update, Revision, BPs, PSUs – delays and other issues

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 7

This is a Friday morning blog post. And actually I had no intention to write it. I don’t mean it offensive. But yesterday I received an interesting email from Frits Hoogland from Enkitec/Accenture. Frits asked me about the July RUR and some unlogic things on MOS. Once I had answered his email, the next question came in. Hence, I thought I need to write something about our July 2018 Update, Revision, BPs, PSUs – delays and other issues.

From being on stage at last year’s DOAG Conference for a “Patching Forum” I know that things aren’t as …

July 2018 Update, Revision, BP and PSU

Posted on July 18, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 13

Hurray, it’s patching day! I know, YOU did look forward to July 17, 2018 as it is patching day again. Last night we released the following Patches: July 2018 Update, Revision, BP and PSU.

July 2018 Update, Revision, BP and PSU

First of all, I’m doing the usual check for the alert and the risk matrix to see whether there’s are really important security patches included. For the risk matrix you’ll have to scrooooooooooolllll down quite a bit as the list of products is strictly alphabetically ordered:

Critical Patch Update – July 2018 – Patch Advisory
Risk Matrix for Oracle

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

Posted on April 23, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 29

Patching is fun, isn’t it? And you may have heard already that the April 2018 patch bundles got released on April 17, 2018. And I thought I share a little bit of fun with you with a quick guide to patching my databases with the April 2018 PSU, BP and RU. For this exercise I use our Hands-On Lab with Oracle 11.2.0.4, Oracle 12.1.0.2 and Oracle 12.2.0.1 installed.

Prerequisites for patching my databases with the April 2018 PSU, BP and RU

First of all, in my VBox environment, I shutdown the databases for each release before patching them – …

Fixes for Adaptive Features are included in Oracle 12.1.0.2 October 2017 BP

Posted on October 19, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Optimizer Patch Recommendation 26

Finally … the two most important fixes for Adaptive Features are included in Oracle 12.1.0.2 October 2017 BP (Bundle Patch). I’m absolutely happy about this. Almost all of my customer and many folks outside I’m dealing with on a regular basis had to request and wait for merge patches over and over again. And we all knew – also based on the experience of the Real World Performance Team – that these two patches are so important to stabilize Oracle 12.1.0.2 production systems.

You may find this ALERT on MyOracle Support:

MOS Note 2289719.1
ALERT: Oracle Recommended Adaptive Feature Configuration …

Oracle 12.2.0.1 – June 2017 Bundle Patch is available for Linux

Posted on June 27, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 Patch Recommendation 3

After the removal of the first Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 Bundle Patch in May, the June 2017 Proactive Bundle Patch on Linux got released now:

Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 Proactive Bundle Patch – June 2017 – BP170620

What’s inside?

The Proactive Bundle Patch 12.2.0.1.170620 contains the June Database Bundle Patch and the June Grid Infrastructure Patch Set Update.

Proactive Bundle Patch – June 2017 – Linux – Oracle Database 12.2.0.1

More information about previous and future BPs?

First of all, the well known schedule for BPs (and of course PSUs) will be kept – so please expect the next Proactive Bundle …

Can you apply Bundle Patches to SE2 databases?

Posted on June 15, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation SE2 - Standard Edition 2 0

Can you apply Bundle Patches (BP) to Standard Edition (SE2) databases?

This question got raised by Adam (thanks!) via the comments section of the blog. But a few days later I read it on the internal mailing lists as well. Adam was referring to this sentence in the BP READMEs since October 2015:

“In this document Oracle Database Home refers to Enterprise Edition. Standard Edition Database software installs should install Database PSU.”

Why was this sentence added?

There were issues with enabling functionality on SE2 databases by accident with a Proactive Bundle Patch – something which got fixed and …

Oracle 12.2.0.1 Bundle Patch 12.2.0.1.170516 DBBP on Linux x86-64 is available [not anymore]

Posted on May 19, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 Patch Recommendation 19

All credits go to Ricardo Maeda as I knew that we’ll release a Bundle Patch for Oracle 12.2.0.1 sometime this week – but I couldn’t find it linked from the usual MOS notes. And please don’t ask my why that is.

Anyhow, with patch 2579308 you’ll get access to the first BP for Oracle Database 12.2.0.1. There will be a first bigger Proactive Bundle Patch in July at the usual schedule – but this one is at least a start.

Plus in addition get the OPatch version 12.2.0.1.7 via patch 6880880.

The BP contains:

First 12.2.0.1 Bundle Patch

PSU or BP? Patch Set Update or Bundle Patch? RUR or RU?

Posted on May 12, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 28

Well, in my new role as unofficial Junior Product Manager for Patching (just kidding) I get asked once a day (at least!) via email or in customer meetings or workshops: Should we take the PSUs or the BPs? Or RUs or RURs?

Addition: I updated the blog post due to the arrival of the RUs and RURs in Oracle Database 12.2.0.1.Changes are marked in orange.
See. https://mikedietrichde.com/2017/07/19/first-ru-oracle-12-2-0-1-available/

Should we take the PSUs or the BPs? RURs or RUs?

PSUs are Patch Set Updates, BPs are (sometimes called: Proactive) Bundle Patches.
RUs are Release Upgrades which replace …

New SPFILE parameters in Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 with July 2016 (and newer) PSU/BP

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Behavior Change Oracle Database 12c Parameters 7

New Parameters in Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 with July 2016 PSU/BP

By following an internal discussion and checking parameter changes between Patch Set Updates (PSU) and Proactive Bundle Patches (BP) I learned that we introduced two new SPFILE parameters in Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 with the July PSU and BP. One is documented in the patch readme, the other one can be found right now only in the Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 manual:

ALLOW_GROUP_ACCESS_TO_SGA

ENCRYPT_NEW_TABLESPACES

The Oracle 12.2 documentation about ALLOW_GROUP_ACCESS_TO_SGA, the parameter which appears not in the Oracle 12.1 documentation right now, says:

ALLOW_GROUP_ACCESS_TO_SGA controls group access to shared memory

Bundle Patch

What is TTS all about?

M5? Almost as fast as the car!

It all started at OCW 2023

Download the Data Pump Bundle Patch

What is in the Data Pump Bundle Patch?

What’s the story?

The more you patch, the worse it gets

Is this necessary?

Out-of-place Patching

Security Alert July 2020

Patch Advisory and Risk Matrix

What’s the point?

July 2018 Update, Revision, BP and PSU

Prerequisites for patching my databases with the April 2018 PSU, BP and RU

What’s inside?

More information about previous and future BPs?

Can you apply Bundle Patches (BP) to Standard Edition (SE2) databases?

Why was this sentence added?

Should we take the PSUs or the BPs? RURs or RUs?

New Parameters in Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 with July 2016 PSU/BP

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