Most of you may have recognized the desupport of UTL_FILE_DIR with Oracle Database 18c. Reason is mostly that UTL_FILE_DIR opens a lot of possibilities to do insecure things. But this has another effect which may not be obvious to you. There’s a behavior change in Oracle 18c/19c: No symbolic links for Data Pump directories. Read further to learn more about it.
UTL_FILE_DIR Desupport
In Oracle Database 18c we announced the desupport of UTL_FILE_DIR initialization parameter. But as you can read as well in the Database Upgrade Guide, there’s this remark:
UTL_FILE Package Symbolic Link in Directory Paths Not Supported
I know that Oracle Database 18c is available in the Oracle Cloud and on Exadata engineered systems only right now. But actually I’ve had conversations with some customers who downloaded Oracle 18c on-prem software for Exadata and installed it on their systems. Therefore it may be useful to talk about Oracle Database 18c – Some important changes.
