JAN18: Database 11gR2 PSU, 12cR1 ProactiveBP, 12cR2 RU

By Franck Pachot

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If you want to apply the latest patches (and you should), you can go to the My Oracle Support Recommended Patch Advisor. But sometimes it is not up-todate. For example, for 12.1.0.2 only the PSU is displayed and not the Proactive Bundle Patch, which is highly recommended. And across releases, the names have changed and can be misleading: PSU for 11.2.0.4 (no Proactive Bundle Patch except for Engineered Systems). 12.1.0.2 can have SPU, PSU, or Proactive BP but the latest is highly recommended, especially now that it includes the adaptive statistics patches. 12.2.0.1 introduce the new RUR and RU, the latest one being the one recommended.

To get things clear, there’s also the Master Note for Database Proactive Patch Program, with reference to one note per release. This blog post is my master note to link directly to the recommended updates for Oracle Database.

Master Note for Database Proactive Patch Program (Doc ID 756671.1)
https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocContentDisplay?id=756671.1

11.2.0.4 – PSU

Database 11.2.0.4 Proactive Patch Information (Doc ID 2285559.1)
https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocContentDisplay?id=2285559.1
Paragraph -> 11.2.0.4 Database Patch Set Update

Latest as of Q1 2018 -> 16-Jan-2018 11.2.0.4.180116 (Jan 2018) Database Patch Set Update (DB PSU) 26925576 (Windows: 26925576)

12.1.0.2  – ProactiveBP

Database 12.1.0.2 Proactive Patch Information (Doc ID 2285558.1)
https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocContentDisplay?id=2285558.1
Paragraph -> 12.1.0.2 Database Proactive Bundle Patches (DBBP)

Latest as of Q1 2018 -> 16-Jan-2018 12.1.0.2.180116 Database Proactive Bundle Patch (Jan 2018) 12.1.0.2.180116 27010930

12.2.0.1 – RU

Database 12.2.0.1 Proactive Patch Information (Doc ID 2285557.1)
https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocContentDisplay?id=2285557.1
Paragraph -> 12.2.0.1 Database Release Update (Update)

Latest as of Q1 2018 -> 16-Jan-2018 12.2.0.1.180116 (Jan 2018) Database Release Update 27105253 (Windows: 12.2.0.1.180116 WIN DB BP 27162931)
 

Don’t forget SQL Developer

In the 12c Oracle Home SQL Developer is installed, but you should update it to the latest version.
Download the following from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/downloads/index.html
– The SQL Developer zip for ‘Other Platforms’, currently 17.4
– The SQLcl zip for ‘All Platforms’, currently 17.4

On the server, remove, or rename the original directory:

mv $ORACLE_HOME/sqldeveloper $ORACLE_HOME/sqldeveloper.orig 

Unzip what you have downloaded:

unzip -d $ORACLE_HOME/ sqldeveloper-*-no-jre.zip
unzip -d $ORACLE_HOME/sqldeveloper sqlcl-*-no-jre.zip

I suggest to have a login.sql which sets the beautiful ansiconsole for SQLcl:

echo "set sqlformat ansiconsole" > $ORACLE_HOME/sqldeveloper/sqlcl/login.sql

On 12.2 you can run SQLcl just with ‘sql’ (and same arguments as sqlplus: / as sysdba or /nolog,…) because this is what is defined in $ORACLE_HOME/bin.
However, it sets the current working directory and i prefer to keep the current one as it is probably were I want to run scripts from.

Then I add the following aliases in .bashrc

alias sqlcl='JAVA_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME/jdk SQLPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/sqldeveloper/sqlcl bash $ORACLE_HOME/sqldeveloper/sqlcl/bin/sql'
alias sqldev='$ORACLE_HOME/sqldeveloper/sqldeveloper.sh'

When running SQL Developer for the first time you can create automatically a ‘/ as sysdba’ connection (but remember this is not a good practice to connect like this) and a connection for each user declared in the database: Right click on Connections and Create Local Connections