Oracle Database

Your Upgrade / Migration / Patching Guide for OCW23

Thanks for using this blog post. It will be your Upgrade / Migration / Patching Guide for OCW23. You will find the slide decks to download, the coming talks, the HOL as well as the survey links and other important sources. We wil update it every day throughout the conference. If you have questions, please use the “Comment” option below the blog post. And we won’t post content BEFORE the session but instead AFTER the sessions.

Your Upgrade / Migration / Patching Guide for OCW23

All you need, day by day

Please find – grouped day by day – each of our talks with the survey links and …

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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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Applying the MRP from December 2022 to Oracle 19c

Well, couldn’t there be a nicer pre-Christmas present than the December 2022 Monthly Recommended Patches (MRP)? You know, I’m just kidding. But since I received the first questions from customers – and before I send an email internally – I wanted to try out Applying the MRP from December 2022 to Oracle 19c.

 

Download the December MRP

Actually you need to access MOS Note: 888.1 -Primary Note for Database Proactive Patch Program since the link is not in MOS Note: 555.1 – Oracle Database 19c Important Recommended One-Off Patches even though it …

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Patching all my environments with the October 2022 Bundle Patches

Oh yes, it is patching time (again). And this time I somehow missed the slot since the quarterly critical patch updates got released right during Oracle Cloud World. Since I didn’t want to stretch the hotel WiFi too much – and since I wouldn’t have had enough time to install and write-up this blog post, I do it now with a week of delay. So as usual every quarter, follow me for patching all my environments with the October 2022 Bundle Patches.

As usual, an important annotation upfront: I patch in-place due to …

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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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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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After patching, Spatial Index creation fails with ORA-13249

Thanks again to Peter Lehmann from T-Systems for highlighting this issue to me. After patching, Spatial Index creation fails with ORA-13249. And Peter’s customer was quite worried. But see what may have caused this, and how we fixed it.

After patching, Spatial Index Creation Fails with ORA-13249

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

What happened?

Peter patched a system from 19.10.0 to 19.11.0. This database has undergone an upgrade from 12.2.0.1 to 19.7.0 before, then got patched to 19.9.0 before. The database has the Oracle Locator only but no Spatial installed. The patching including datapatch worked fine. All seemed to be good. Until the customer tried to …

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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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ORA-1555 won’t get reported into alert.log anymore since 19.4.0

Many thanks to a German customer for showing me this tiny behavior change with Oracle Database RU 19.4.0. From this RU on the well known ORA-1555 won’t get reported into alert.log anymore since 19.4.0. But if you still like to see the “snapshot too old” error, then you can use a workaround.

Why has this been changed?

Actually this is something I don’t understand completely. It may be just a side effect. Unpublished fix bug 29424999 – DUMP MINIMAL DIAGNOSTICS BY DEFAULT IN CASE OF ORA-01555 IN ADW/ATP ENV has been

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Config file for AutoUpgrade 19c – Advanced options

Config file for AutoUpgrade 19c – Advanced optionsIn the previous blog post I explained how to create a config file for the AutoUpgrde utility. And now I’d like to show how you can use some important advanced options to have the AutoUpgrade utility do or skip specific tasks. Read about how you can tweak the config file for AutoUpgrade 19c – Advanced options.

I will describe only the most important advanced parameters which I think can be very useful in your environments. Of course, there are many more as you can see in the Database Upgrade Guide.

AutoUpgrade – Step-by-step

  1. The new AutoUpgrade Utility – Download,
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Oracle Database 18c for AIX, HP-UX and zLinux available

I rarely blog twice a day – but this message is the one a good number of people have waited for quite a while. Oracle Database 18c for AIX, HP-UX and zLinux available for download from eDelivery as of now. The software is not on OTN or oracle.com yet in the usual download section. I’m blindly guessing that it will be there soon, maybe tonight already.

Oracle Database 18c for AIX, HP-UX and zLinux available

→ Please go to eDelivery (also known as the Oracle Software Cloud) and type into the search line:
Oracle Database” – then hit …

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Current Support Status for Oracle Database Releases

Yesterday a former colleague from the UK pointed me to a very old blog post about the fact that no patches will be produced for Oracle 11.2.0.3 anymore. Which is a true fact. But it reminded me that it may be time for an overview on the current support status for Oracle database releases as of October 2018.

Current Support Status for Oracle Database Releases

Current Support Status for Oracle Database Releases

First of all, the single source of truth in case you’d like to look up support dates and patching periods is MOS Note:742060.1. Please always check this note first. Our Support Lifetime

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OOW2018: The new AutoUpgrade for the Oracle Database

As I wrote the other day, OOW 2018 is not too far away anymore. And if you’d like to see something really new, something which can really really ease your database upgrades in the near future, then you may visit our first talk right on Monday morning at OOW2018: The new AutoUpgrade for the Oracle Database.

OOW2018: The new AutoUpgrade for the Oracle Database

What is this talk all about?

First of all, let me emphasize that we don’t do marketing. We would like to introduce you to a brand new tool we’ll currently have in beta operation at selected customers. And which we’ll release in the …

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Video: The New Database Release and Patching Model

Video: The New Database Release and Patching ModelThe last Office Hours I’ve run about the New Release and Patching Model didn’t go very well technically. I’ve had screen/display issues. And Steven Feuerstein tried to save the best parts – but despite Steven’s awesome work neither him nor I did really like the result. So I decided that it may be better to record a Video: The New Database Release and Patching Model again (which I actually planned for quite a while already anyway.

Video: The New Database Release and Patching Model

The video is based on the slide deck you’ll find in the Slides download section of

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What does DEPRECATED mean? And DESUPPORTED?

There’s sometimes a misunderstanding about what we mean with the term DEPRECATED? And what is the difference to DESUPPORTED? Actually there’s a full chapter in the Database Upgrade Guide listing deprecated and desupported features.

Deprecated

Especially this message puzzled a lot of customers stating that the non-CDB architecture is deprecated in Oracle Database 12c.

In the Database Upgrade Guide we clearly explain what deprecated means:

By deprecate, we mean that the feature is no longer being enhanced but is still supported

So for you it means just be …

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It’s always the Optimizer, isn’t it?! – Part 1

Wouldn’t you agree?

My colleagues from the Optimizer Development might forgive me but a lot of people would say: “Everything went fine after upgrade – except for those tiny 3 queries!”. And I know, you have tested a lot. I’d like to tell you about a few issues we’ve seen post upgrade with 11.2.0.2.

  1. You have captured your plans in Oracle 10.2 pre-upgrade.
  2. You have moved these plans from your SQL Tuning Set into the SQL Plan Baseline in Oracle 11.2.
  3. But the optimizer doesn’t pick them although you have:
    (a) ACCEPTED and
    (b) FIXED them.

Why?

It …

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