Going through my feeds I read from Kevin Closson that Oracle 10.2.0.3 patchset is not functional on Solaris SPARC 64bit platform with datafiles on Veritas VxFS. Actually, Metalink Note for bug 5747918 says it’s for “any database related files on Veritas” so not sure if simple VxVM raw devices are affected as well as Veritas Cluster Filesystem.

However, you still have something to worry about even if you are not using that combination. You might want to check Metalink Note 5667023.8 if you are on Red Hat Linux and maybe even SUSE - you never know. RHEL AS Update 4 supposed to be fine while CRS might not start after patchset installation on Update 3. Workaround is available.

Other platforms to watch out with 10.2.0.3 patchset are Windows and Linux 32 bit - Metalink Note 403616.1 “Many Child Cursors create in 10.2.0.3 on Windows and Linux”. This will likely affect applications with heavy usage of bind variables (perhaps, ones with cursor_sharing=force/similar as well) and busy OLTP is a good candidate. See for yourself the note I mentioned above - it describes some symptoms and consequences (latch contention, ORA-4031, ORA-600) pretty well. The good news is that Linux platform has one-off patch available already - patch 5705795.

Finally, if you are using LDAP you might want to check Bug 4279598 out. It’s not a new bug but rather a behavior change that might affect you. Though, not very likely for generic scenarios.

Once again a confirmation of a golden rule - unless you are a brave tester, don’t rush into new Oracle patchsets. It’s also a good habit to review “Known Issues” Metalink Note for a particular patchset even in case it was out for a while - they tend to get updated. For 10.2.0.3 it’s Metalink Note 401435.1. Happy patching!

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