Performance

CDB upgrades – explaining catctl_options

When you upgrade your entire CDB with AutoUpgrade, there is a parameter which allows you some tuning or tweaking. And I often see some misunderstanding here. Therefore, for CDB upgrades – explaining catctl_options is my focus today.

CDB upgrades - explaining catctl_options

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catctl_options – what it is meant for

This AutoUpgrade config file parameter allows you to set specific settings, mostly for tuning, but also to override some defaults. In the documentation you will find the whole list of options. You can set it in your AutoUpgrade config file, e.g.:

upg1.catctl_options=-T

catctl_options in CDB upgrades

Here, …

Your chance: Full-day Upgrade to 26ai Workshop in Sydney on Jan 20, 2026

Posted on January 15, 2026 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 4

Happy New Year to all of you at first. And just at very short notice a quick announcement for next week in case you are in the Sydney area in Australia. This is Your chance: Full-day Upgrade to 26ai Workshop in Sydney on Jan 20, 2026 has still a few open seats, and you could join, I’d be happy to see and meet you there.

And of course, it will be 2026, and not 2025 … OMG … 🙂

Your chance: Full-day Upgrade to 26ai Workshop in Sydney on Jan 20, 2026

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When, how and why?

Well, this is potentially the day (or a few hours …

Full Day Upgrade / Migration / Patching Workshop in Prague on September 17, 2025

Posted on September 2, 2025 by Mike.Dietrich Upgrade / Migration Workshop 0

Summer season is almost over. And in between Oracle AI World in Las Vegas in October and now, there is one chance to meet us for a Full Day Upgrade / Migration / Patching Workshop in Prague on September 17, 2025. There are still some seats open, so please find the details below.

Full Day Upgrade / Migration / Patching Workshop in Prague on September 17, 2025

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When and why should you attend?

September 17, 2025 – 9:30h-16:30h.

This is a full package of marketing-free technical content – we share not only slides but also information from our projects, lots of customer experience, gotchas, tips and …

Queries on dictionary tables are slow in Oracle Multitenant?

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Mike.Dietrich Flaws and Pitfalls Single-/Multitenant 12

I love to learn something new every day. And on Friday afternoon last week I learned something new again. It started (as often) with a very simple question from a colleague working from the Oracle Malaga office in Spain. The customer has an issues with some queries being slower than before once they moved from on-prem to the cloud into a PDB. But are queries on dictionary tables are slow in Oracle Multitenant generally?

Queries on dictionary tables are slow in Oracle Multitenant?

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What was the case?

The customer ran some queries against dictionary views in the PDB in Oracle Database …

IMPORTANT: Location change for the Warsaw workshop

Posted on February 26, 2024 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 0

Those of you who have received an email to attend the Upgrade / Migration / Performance / 19c / 23c workshop on Feb 27, 2024 in Warsaw, Poland, please note that we have changed the location to accommodate more people.

IMPORTANT: Location change for the Warsaw workshop

Photo by Łukasz Nieścioruk on Unsplash

Originally, the workshop was going to happen at the Oracle Office in Warsaw. But we moved it to:

HUB Convention Center
Crowne Plaza® Warsaw – The HUB
Holiday Inn Express® Warsaw – The HUB
Rondo Daszyńskiego 2
00-843 Warsaw

Please make sure to arrive at 9:00h, we will start straight at 9:30h and …

Your chance – in-person Oracle 23c upgrade workshops in Warsaw and Munich

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 9

We have a rare offer for you. Not Santa but Daniel and I are coming to town. So, this is your chance – in-person Oracle 23c upgrade workshops in Warsaw and Munich. You are signing up for a packed day of tech. No marketing slides – just facts and features, not only Oracle Database 23c, the new upcoming long-term support release. But certainly we’ll have enough for all those you are just in the process of moving to Oracle Database 19c.

Your chance - in-person Oracle 23c upgrade workshops in Warsaw and Munich

Photo by Łukasz Nieścioruk on Unsplash

When?

We are absolutely excited to offer you a full-day in-person all-tech …

Monitor progress of Oracle Data Pump impdp

Posted on October 26, 2023 by Mike.Dietrich Data Pump 11

This blog post is a quick brain dump. I realized that I have so many “blog posts to write” that I need to dump the ideas or information much quicker. So, feel free to comment and correct. These queries may be useful when you run a larger import, and you would like to monitor progress of Oracle Data Pump impdp.

Monitor progress of Oracle Data Pump impdp

Photo by George Vidos on Unsplash

Monitor Data Pump progress during impdp

To monitor the progress of Data Pump during impdp you can use the following queries.

What object types are left?

select unique object_type_seqno, object_type
from system.sys_import_full_01
where

In-person Upgrade Workshops in Brussels and Utrecht

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 11

For a long time we haven’t met in person I guess. But I know very well that the audiences in Brussels, Belgium, and Utrecht, Netherlands, are very active. And it’s actually the best to meet for In-person Upgrade Workshops in Brussels and Utrecht in October – not via zoom 🙂 And this is your change to sign up if you haven’t already.

In-person Upgrade Workshops in Brussels and Utrecht

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

When will it happen?

Very simple – and you are just one click away:

Both events …

Cleaning up older patch artifacts – improving opatch performance

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 51

This blog post is about a feature not only I but you did ask for actually for a long time. Cleaning up older patch artifacts – improving opatch performance. Both in one opatch release. And opatch 12.2.0.1.37 from April 2023 has it.

Cleaning up older patch artifacts - improving opatch performance

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A little bit of history

One of the longest journey I had ever done in my long time in Oracle was helping customers to find a voice for patch cleanup. Oracle 19c is a long term support release. Many customers upgraded to it already. And you apply patches on a regular …

Datapatch may be slower when Traditional and Unified Auditing are on

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Mike.Dietrich Auditing Flaws and Pitfalls 7

I wrote several times especially about Unified Auditing in the past. It is a very efficient and useful way to audit operations in the database. But you need to be a bit careful about what’s on, and what isn’t. Now we recently had a customer case where it was clearly proven that Datapatch may be slower when Traditional and Unified Auditing are on. But how can this happen?

Datapatch may be slower when Traditional and Unified Auditing are on

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Recapping Traditional Auditing

At first, I am neither a security not an auditing expert. But I played quite a bit with Unified Auditing over the …

Oracle Cloud World 2022 – Database Upgrade and Patching Labs

Posted on September 28, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich OOW 2

Oh … it’s just a few weeks left until Oracle Cloud World 2022 will start on Oct 17, 2022 in Las Vegas. If you have some final doubts whether you should go or not, let me tell you that it’s like Oracle Open World just under a different name. And in a different place. But with the same cool people and many great talks. Take the chance to meet the developers, their managers and the product managers behind the features you daily use – or miss. We’ll be there – and this is YOUR chance now to sign up for …

Intel uses AutoUpgrade to upgrade from Oracle 11.2.0.4 to 19c

Posted on September 27, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Customer Success 18

Funny, I was traveling recently with RAC PM Anil Nair – but he forgot to tell me that this cool story has been published just a few days before we took of for YATRA 2022 to India: Intel uses AutoUpgrade to upgrade from Oracle 11.2.0.4 to 19c. I know that Anil is simply so busy – and my surprise was huge.

Intel uses AutoUpgrade to upgrade from Oracle 11.2.0.4 to 19c

Photo by Daniel Pantu on Unsplash

What’s the story?

Gagan Singh, Enterprise Architect at Intel, shared it with me last week. The goal was to upgrade from Oracle 11.2.0.4 to Oracle 19c with the least amount of downtime …

OC YATRA 2022 visiting 6 cities in India in July 2022

Posted on July 19, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 0

Yes, you read correctly in my blog post’s title: OC YATRA 2022 visiting 6 cities in India in July 2022. And it is already July. Just a few days to sign up – if you haven’t already. So please register here: https://www.aioug.org/ocyatra-2022

Just pick one of the six cities from the agenda page:

23 July 2022, Saturday – Chennai
24 July 2022, Sunday – Bengaluru
26 July 2022, Tuesday – Mumbai
28 July 2022, Thursday – Pune
30 July 2022, Saturday – Delhi
31 July 2022, Sunday – Hyderabad

And register yourself.

Please check out the awesome agenda with …

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 …

Virtual Classroom Seminar #14: AutoUpgrade 2.0 on May 5, 2022

Posted on May 3, 2022 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 4

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

Some very important MOS Notes when you upgrade and patch

Posted on May 27, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Patch Recommendation 16

Today, I would like to publish only a short blog post with some hints to MyOracle Support (MOS) notes we find quite helpful. The idea of all these notes I will list below is to help you finding the right patches before you upgrade or patch to Oracle 19c. So see our collection of Some very important MOS Notes when you upgrade and patch below.

Some very important MOS Note when you upgrade and patch

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Why do you need patch bundles?

At first, it is always our recommendation to upgrade to the most recent Release Update (RU). This is currently Oracle 19.11.0 while I’m …

Data Pump Super Patch for Oracle 19.10 and newer

Posted on April 15, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Data Pump Patch Recommendation 64

Just a few days we released a Data Pump Super Patch for Oracle 19.10 and newer. “Newer” refers to the fact that once 19.11.0 will be available, this merge patch I’m writing about will be available as well right away (sorry, got delayed a bit). And if you work with Data Pump, you may want to consider this performance patch collection.

Photo by paolo candelo on Unsplash

Why do you need this patch?

Many customer will know the issue that adding changes with datapatch may take a long time as soon as dpload.sql is involved. And this …

Sign up for the Upgrade 19c Virtual Classroom Seminars for the US, Canada and LAD

Posted on January 21, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 7

It took a while. And many of you asked whether we will run our Virtual Classroom Seminars we ran successfully for Australia and New Zealand in April and from June to now in EMEA for the US, Canada and South and Latin America time zones as well. And we do. It’s time to Sign up for the Upgrade 19c Virtual Classroom Seminars for the US, Canada and LAD.

Photo by Philippe Bout on Unsplash

Everything you need to know about Upgrade, Migration and Consolidation

When we ran these events especially for EMEA, a lot of colleagues asked us whether …

Cool Features not only for DBAs – Virtual Classroom Series No.7

Posted on January 11, 2021 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 0

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.

Cool Features not only for DBAs - Virtual Classroom Series No.7

Photo by Jason Blackeye on Unsplash

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 …

Upgrade Seminars 1 and 2 – A quick recap, slides download and more

Posted on June 25, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Best Practice Workshop 2

Thank you for participating in the first two seminars. Roy and I did already the “Release and Patching Strategy” webinar on Tuesday, June 23. And today “AutoUpgrade to Oracle 19c”. So it time for Upgrade Seminars 1 and 2 – A quick recap, slides download and more.

Photo by v2osk on Unsplash

Slides Download

I uploaded the slides already to https://mikedietrichde.com/slides/#WEB2020. Of course, I will upload the other slide decks as well to the same location.

Seminar Recordings

As soon as the recordings page has been completed, we will send out an email. And I will post the links …

Upgrade to Oracle Database 19c – Virtual Classroom Series

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 22

Roy and I delivered a similar seminar already for the Australia and New Zealand region. And now it is time at a more convenient time zone setting for EMEA and India. So if you are not tired of web seminars yet, please sign up for our Upgrade to Oracle Database 19c – Virtual Classroom Series.

Upgrade to Oracle Database 19c - Virtual Classroom Series

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4 Web Seminars – Going far beyond upgrades

The idea for this series of 4 web seminars is to cover not only the database upgrade itself. You will get much more than technical upgrade information. And we will …

4+1 Seminars: Upgrade, Migrate, Consolidate to 19c – not only for Australia

Posted on May 11, 2020 by Mike.Dietrich Workshop 6

Actually this weekend Roy and I would have flown from Australia to New Zealand. We planned at least 5 seminars. And we’ll do them in person as soon as conditions allow. If you are not tired yet of all these seminars offered to you, then we have the right offering for you.

4+1 Seminars: Upgrade, Migrate, Consolidate to 19c - not only for Australia

Photo by Carles Rabada on Unsplash

And not only for those of you based in Australia and New Zealand. Singapore, Japan, Korea and other countries in this part of the globe. Roy and I will run for 4+1 Seminars: Upgrade, Migrate, Consolidate to 19c – not only for …

Unified Auditing policies can slow down the upgrade

Posted on August 28, 2018 by Mike.Dietrich Auditing 0

I posted several blog posts about Unified Auditing in the past. And recently a large customer in the UK alerted me about their upgrades with PDBs from 12.1 to 12.2 taking much longer when Unified Auditing policies were enabled. It looks like as if Unified Auditing policies can slow down the upgrade.

We did some further investigations. See the results below.

Unified Auditing

You find a good number of blog posts explaining how to migrate to Unified Auditing, the performance tweaks in Oracle 12.1.0.2 and some other things:

Unified Auditing – Performance Improvements in Oracle 12.1.0.2

Posted on April 19, 2017 by Mike.Dietrich Auditing Performance Tuning Security 14

Unified Auditing got introduced in Oracle Database 12.1.

Unified Auditing - Performance Improvements in Oracle 12.1 The downsides of the “old” auditing facilities became obvious when too many users had activities or transactions at the same time leading to audit records being written into AUD$. Contention was a typical issue. The same thing happened when too many users tried to login at the same time. Furthermore protecting the auditing information required Database Vault as there was no default protection available.

This – and some other things – should be remedied by Unified Auditing which is available since Oracle Database 12c. It gets enabled in sort of a “mixed …

Performance

catctl_options – what it is meant for

catctl_options in CDB upgrades

When, how and why?

When and why should you attend?

What was the case?

When?

Monitor Data Pump progress during impdp

What object types are left?

When will it happen?

A little bit of history

Recapping Traditional Auditing

What’s the story?

The more you patch, the worse it gets

What are we going to talk about?

Why do you need patch bundles?

Why do you need this patch?

Everything you need to know about Upgrade, Migration and Consolidation

Why Cool Features for DBAs?

Slides Download

Seminar Recordings

4 Web Seminars – Going far beyond upgrades

Unified Auditing

Unified Auditing got introduced in Oracle Database 12.1.

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