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.
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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 …
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Underscore parameters are a wonderful thing in Oracle. They are treated like a secret. But you can view them of course. Everybody can. Make a guess how many underscore parameters exist in Oracle 12.2.0.1.0. You’ll find the answer at the end of this blog post. But why should you remove underscore parameters not only before you upgrade?
XDB Clean Up in Oracle Database 11.2-12.2 will apply to Oracle Database 11.2.0.x only as XDB became a mandatory component since Oracle Database 12.1.0.1. You can’t have an Oracle 12c database without XDB. Therefore the following blog post won’t explain how to clean up XDB from an Oracle 12c database. It explains only briefly the case before Oracle Database 12c.
Oracle XML DB provides full support for all of the key XML standards, including XML, Namespaces, DOM, XQuery, SQL/XML and XSLT. By providing full support for XML standards, Oracle XML DB …
JAVAVM and XML clean up in Oracle Database 11.2-19c is a tough topic. Many have suffered from the rolling patch upgrade issues with the OJVM (Oracle Java Virtual Machine) even though most of the issues have been cured with the recent patches.
Enterprise Manager (EM) clean up in Oracle Database 11.2-12.2 is targeting Enterprise Manager Database Control only. EM DB Control does not exist anymore since Oracle Database 12c and got replaced by EM Express, a light-weight EM.
As Enterprise Manager Database Control gets replaced by 
Oracle Expression Filter and Rules Manager (EXF, RUL) clean up in Oracle Database 11.2-12.2 is very simple and straight forward. One script, and several seconds later EXF and RUL are cleaned up. Both options require JAVA to be installed into the database. But their removal doesn’t do anything to JAVA.
Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) clean up in Oracle Database 11.2-12.2 is very simple and straight forward. There’s only one script to execute. And it completes flawless and does not require any workarounds.
According to 
Oracle Multimedia (ORDIM) clean up in Oracle Database 11.2-12.2 is not complicated especially as the removal script checks for the usage of the option first.
Please be aware that Oracle Spatial (SDO) depends on Oracle Multimedia. Therefore, when you remove Oracle Multimedia then Oracle Spatial will be removed as well.
Oracle Text (CONTEXT) clean up in Oracle Database 11.2-19c is an interesting topic. A removal script exists but some additional tasks may be necessary depending on the database release.
Oracle Text (formerly known as Context Option) is a excellent feature a lot of people using actively. You can access 
Oracle Spatial (SDO) clean up in Oracle Database 11.2-19c is mostly straight forward. You can do it with the database up and running in Oracle Database 12c. Nevertheless it is very important that you check beforehand if Spatial and/or Graph are in use.
Oracle Spatial (formerly known as Spatial Data Option) and Graph are great …
Oracle Label Security (OLS) clean up in Oracle Database 11.2-19c is almost as simple and straight forward as removing OWM or APEX. You can do it online without downtime. But in older releases a relink operation did cause downtime. Oracle Label Security is an 
Oracle Label Security is dependent on Oracle Database Vault (DV). In case DV is present you must remove it first if you plan to remove Oracle Label Security.
