Pythian Group

Hot on the heels of 11.2.0.3 coming out for Exadata, there’s yet another Exadata patch schedule out: the Quarterly Database Patch for Exadata (QDPE). They’re designed to being some of the predictability of Oracle’s quarterly critical patch updates (CPU) to the Exadata world. Behind the new naming, it looks like these are ordinary Exadata bundle patches, and even have BP numbers, but will have the predictable quarterly release schedule, synchronized with the CPU schedule (quarterly Tuesday nearest to 17th of the month it appears). Ordinary bundle patches aren’t going away quite yet though: there’s still a need to get patches out more frequently, and will still come out monthly or bimonthly on top of the quarterly patches. Oracle’s patching recommendations have changed too: QDPE patches are recommended, but other bundle patches are recommended only if experiencing issues resolved by them. From My Oracle Support note 888828.1, the following patches for Oracle 11.2.0.3 are planned:
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The 5 hour flight to San Francisco for OpenWorld is a good chance to catch up on some blogging I’ve been meaning to do. Now if only Air Canada would get some in-flight Internet (they ran a trial last year an shut it down without comment in April)

With the release of the 11.2.0.2 patchset, Oracle has stopped releasing sets of individual patches, but instead is packaging it as a self-contained, complete software install. I can see many benefits to this method, and quite frankly am wondering why it took so long to come about:
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We’re in the process of applying Exadata Bundle Patch 5, and ran into an issue I wanted to share.

Step 5 in the post-install instructions in the README says:

5. Recompile all invalid objects before using in catmet2

@?/rdbms/admin/utlrp.sql
@?/rdbms/admin/catmet2.sql

— recompile dbms_metadata_int to enable the diffing code
alter package dbms_metadata_int compile plsql_ccflags = ‘ku$xml_enabled:true’;

— recompile dbms_metadata_util to enable the xmlschema load code
alter package dbms_metadata_util compile plsql_ccflags = ‘ku$xml_enabled:true’;

========================================================================================

NOTE: If warnings are received after running the catmet2.sql and the alter
packages for dbms_metadata_int and dbms_metadata_util like below :

Received “Warning: Package altered with compilation errors.”

Please recompile those packages manually and re-run catmet2.sql:

alter package DBMS_METADATA_INT compile body;

alter package DBMS_METADATA_UTIL compile body;

@?/rdbms/admin/catmet2.sql

========================================================================================

The system didn’t have a XDB user, and likely because of this, the two “alter package” commands invalidated the dbms_metadata objects. The subsequent recompilations all failed. On advice from Oracle support, we ended up backing out the patch and re-applying without running these “alter package” commands, and confirmed that DBMS_METADATA works fine.

So if you don’t have XDB installed, skip the “alter package” commands. I hope the README is updated soon.

This is the 182nd edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Make sure to read the whole edition so you do not miss where to submit your SQL limerick!

This week started out with me posting about International Women’s Day, and has me personally attending Confoo (Montreal) which is an excellent conference I hope to return to next year. I learned a lot from confoo, especially the blending nosql and sql session I attended.

This week was also the Hotsos Symposium. Doug’s Oracle Blog has a series of posts about Hotsos. If all this talk about conferences has gotten you excited, Joshua Drake notes that 14 days and the hotel is almost full for postgresql conference east which is March 25th-28th in Philadelphia. And the Oracle database insider notes that the Oracle OpenWorld call for papers is now open.

According to Susan Visser this week (ending tomorrow) is also read an e-book week. So if you have not already done so, read an e-book! She links a coupon for an e-book in the post.
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E-Business Suite patching is very broad topic. I’m going to cover just a fraction of this vast theme, one that I believe is often overlooked. I decided to split it into two logical parts.

Part 1) Oracle E-Business Suite patch terminology

• patch type hierarchy
• patch naming convention
• naming differences between 11i and R12

Part 2) Querying patches, patchsets, family packs

• how to check if a patch was applied
• what patchset am I on?
• what family pack am I on?
• is there a newer patchset/family pack?

This blog could also be called “Oracle EBS patch evolution theory.” Like any other theory, it can be challenged and proven wrong. I tried to make it unbiased based purely on my experience and to present it in the way that makes sense in context of general patching activities.

Patch hierarchy in 11i

EBS patch taxonomy consists of a number of species. Here is a list of those which I recognize to be valid in the long-term. The exact naming may vary over the years, but the names used here are as they are commonly understood by Apps DBAs.

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