Online patching in Oracle 11g

This article presents new features of 11g added to opatch.

It’s very nice feature of 11g for applying “online” bug fixes on live databases:

  • install online patch
  • enable online patch
  • disable online patch

This functionality is provided with commonly know opatch command-line utility and new type of patches “online”.

New opatch features:

  • apply an online patch on running database(no shutdown/restart instance, no relinking of binaries)
  • detects conflicts between patches (online-online, online-conventional)
  • simple check if a patch is online
opatch query -is_online_patch <patch>
opatch query <patch> -all

“Online patch” features:

  • is supported by RAC
  • persist across database restarts
  • fast install/uninstall usually a few seconds
  • easy detect of conflicts between patches
  • list in patch inventory
  • requires more memory versus conventional patch. It depends on size of patch and number of concurrently running Oracle processes. Minimum one OS page per running Oracle process
  • supported on many platforms: Linux, Aix, Windows, Sun, HP
  • can be installed online

I think it’s great functionality especially that you can install/deinstall it in a few seconds and no shutdown is required.

Have a fun 🙂

Tomasz

 

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