Oracle 12.1.0.2

To which release should you upgrade to? Revisited …

I’ve had so many discussions with customers and partners, and also with colleagues in the past weeks and months about the support time frames for Oracle Database 12.2. Now I checked the blog, and I found so many posts about support periods. And I wrote a similar blog post already 1.5 years ago. I think it’s time to summarize all that. And give you some guidance as well about to which release should you upgrade to? Revisited …

To which release should you upgrade to? Revisited ...

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash

Overview

Basically there are 2 sources to learn about Support time frames for the database release:…

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To which release should you upgrade to? Plus: Extended Support?

To which release should you upgrade to? Plus: Extended Support?

A few days ago I blogged about the Current Support Status for Oracle Database Releases. And you’ve sent several questions to me. Some asked about clarification to which release should you upgrade to? Plus: Extended Support questions were quite frequent. So let me clarify this previous blog post a bit.

To which release should you upgrade to?

A few weeks ago we initiated global communication to all customers who had opened an SR within the past 3 years explaining to which release you should upgrade to. Just in case you haven’t seen this communication, I will give you more …

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

RMAN Backup Gives RMAN-06091: No Channel Allocated for MaintenanceI 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 …

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

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

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Additional Info for Adaptive Features Fixes in Oracle 12.1.0.2

Additional Info for Adaptive Features Fixes in Oracle 12.1.0.2I 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.

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Minimum Supported Version for Database Upgrades

This question comes up very often: What is the minimum supported version for database upgrades? Or a question I received today: “I have an Oracle 10.2.0.4 database, can I upgrade directly to Oracle 11.2.0.4?”

Usually I have to dig into my old slides from the past to give a definite answer. And of course, the Database Upgrade Guide of each version has the same information somewhere as well. Therefore I’d like to summarize the releases supported for direct database upgrades since Oracle 11.2.0.4 below.

Upgrade?

When I speak about database upgrades, I mean you’ll use either the command line

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

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

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DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE – only available in Oracle 12.1.0.2 – or not?

DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE - only available in Oracle 12.1.0.2The DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE package got introduced with the April 2014 Exadata 11.2.0.4 Bundle Patch. And it got introduced for all Oracle 12.1.0.2 databases with the April 2017 Bundle Patch (BP). DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE is only available in Oracle 12.1.0.2.

Addition March 6, 2018:
See the updated blog post about DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE available in Oracle 12.2 and 18c onwards.
https://mikedietrichde.com/2018/03/08/dbms_optim_bundle-package-oracle-12-2-18c/

For more information on this package on Exadata in Oracle 11.2.0.4 you may look at:

Purpose of DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE package in Oracle 12.1.0.2

The package got introduced to enable module bug fixes which …

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Issue with 2k and 4k db_block_size – ORA-1450 when upgrading to Oracle 12.2.0.1

Recently we got alerted by a customer and a colleague from Italy about an issue with the upgrade from Oracle 12.1.0.x to Oracle 12.2.0.1 if – and only if – your database got created with 2k or 4k db block size.

Problem

If your database got created with 2k or 4k db block size, and you attempt an upgrade from any upgrade-supported Oracle version to Oracle Database 12.2.0.1 the upgrade – regardless of DBUA or catctl.pl – will fail with an ORA-1450: maximum key length (1478) exceeded.

Analysis

In the catupgrd0.log – regardless of using the DBUA or …

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Can you have Oracle Multitenant in Oracle 12.1.0.2 SE2?

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

 

 

 

Can you have Oracle Multitenant in Oracle Standard Edition 12.1.0.2 SE2?

No, you can’t as Oracle Multitenant is a licensable option for Enterprise Edition (EE) databases only.

But wait a second …

You can do Oracle Single

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Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) – Datapatch?

I have blogged about the Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) a while back:

And Markus Michalewicz, our Director of Product Management, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), has published a very interesting and helpful insight article about GIMR on July 30, 2015. Read it here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-handle-oracle-gimr-markus-michalewicz


Since Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 the GIMR database will be created by default – and it is a single tenant database having a CDB$ROOT and one active PDB.

Recently the question came up if – in the likely event of applying a PSU …

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Package Differences between Oracle 11.2.0.4 and 12.1.0.2?

The question sounds pretty trivial:

Which packages did exist in Oracle 11.2.0.4 but don’t exist in Oracle 12.1.0.2 anymore?

And going a bit deeper into the topic,

Which procedures and functions calls of SYS packages have been changed since then?

A colleague of mine (thanks to Thomas Kempkens from ACS Support for writing up a fancy procedure – all credits go to him) had to dig this out for a customer,

See the result.
These packages don’t exist in Oracle 12.1.0.2 anymore but did exist in Oracle 11.2.0.4 (without PSUs):

CWM2_OLAP_INSTALLER
DBMS_AMD
DBMS_APPCTX
DBMS_DBLINK
DBMS_DM_IMP_INTERNAL
DBMS_DM_UTIL_INTERNAL
DBMS_DUMA_INTERNAL
DBMS_JDM_INTERNAL
DBMS_RULE_COMPATIBLE_90
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Parallel Index Creation with Data Pump Import

Here is a new capability that might be interesting to anybody who is performing a migration using Data Pump. Previously, Data Pump would create indexes one at a time, specifying the PARALLEL keyword for the CREATE INDEX statement to invoke parallel query for index creation. We used to recommend a workaround to create indexes in parallel, which involved a three-step process of importing without indexes, then creating a SQLFILE of the CREATE INDEX statements, and breaking that file into multiple windows.

Through extensive performance testing we found that it is faster to create multiple indexes in parallel (using a parallel …

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Downgrade Oracle Restart 12c – Grid Infrastructure only?

Oracle RestartCan you downgrade your Oracle Restart installation from Oracle 12c back to Oracle 11g?

Actually there’s no real direct downgrade supported for Oracle Restart. But of course there’s a way to do it.

Basically it is:

  • Deconfigure Oracle Restart in 12c
  • Configure Oracle Restart in 11g

But wait a minute. It is very important to know if you have upgraded your database already. If that is the case then first you MUST downgrade your database(s) as you can’t manage a higher version Oracle Database with a lower version Clusterware.

So first of all, please downgrade your Oracle database(s) first:…

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Grid Infrastructure PSU Jan 2015 – Am I too intolerant?

Germans are not only known for being precise and timely – but sometimes also for being too direct. Well, Roy could tell you stories … and I always honor his politeness 🙂

Enough about stereotypes. I work with a customer at the moment on their 12c upgrades. And I did recommend the most recent PSU (Patch Set Updates) for their Grid Infrastructure environments running Oracle Restart. Same of course for the database homes but this blog post will just name some findings I’ve had the other night when trying to apply the January 2015 GI PSU to my …

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Maintenance Windows is too small? Autotask Jobs fail

Since Oracle Database 10g we have automatic maintenance jobs in the database running. Since Oracle Database 11g (and the same applies to 12c) we have:

  • Weekday Jobs being able to get executed from 10pm until 2am on MON-FRI
  • Weekend Jobs being able to get executed from 6am until 2am on SAT-SUN

A support colleague contacted me a while ago asking why at his customer the jobs don’t start anymore as they have set the duration for weekdays to 15 minutes. You may adjust the window generally by yourself with:

  • exec DBMS_SCHEDULER.SET_ATTRIBUTE(‘MONDAY_WINDOW’,’DURATION’,numtodsinterval(2,’hour’));

But in this particular case only changing the default

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

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 …

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Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) database now mandatory in Oracle GI 12.1.0.2

During the installation of Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12.1.0.1 you’ve had the an option to choose YES/NO to install the Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) database MGMTDB – but as of Oracle 12.1.0.2 Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) database now mandatory in Oracle GI 12.1.0.2:

Grid Infrastructure Management Repository (GIMR) database now mandatory in Oracle GI 12.1.0.2

GIMR database now mandatory in Oracle GI 12.1.0.2

With Oracle Grid Infrastructure 12.1.0.2 this choice has become obsolete and the above screen does not appear anymore. The GIMR database has become mandatory.

What do we stored in the GIMR?

In addition please see the

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