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
