How to upgrade and downgrade Oracle Database 18c to 19c

Today my experiment will be upgrading 18c (18.14) to the latest 19c version (currently it is 19.12) in multitenant architecture with 2 PDBs. The idea of this scenario is to validate and test not only the upgrade process but especially the downgrade strategy. Please note I will keep the COMPATIBLE parameter of my target 19c …

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Creating a snapshot sparse clone from a different Release Update

Those days, I was testing if it is possible to create a snapshot sparse clone in one database referencing a PDB on a lower release (like 19.11), and later applying datapatch on this cloned PDB to take it to the higher release (like 19.12). Technically I couldn't see any constraint, given the Snapshot Copy requirements …

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Dissecting what is new in Oracle Database 21.3.0 (vs 19c)

Oracle Database 21c (21.3.0) was just released last Friday (14/Aug/2021) for Linux x86_64! If you open the New Features APEX page (https://apex.oracle.com/database-features/) and filter with "21c" and "New features only", you will see there are about 215 features, which is impressive! However, sometimes you want to understand better the changes performed by a new release …

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Patching fails with "Linux x86-64 that is not one of the supported platform"

The 19.12 patch cycle was out last week for both Database and Grid Infrastructure. Since then, I've seen some customers complaining about an issue in the tomcat patch when trying to patch their environment with the latest opatch version: The oracle home /u01/app/grid has a platform Linux x86-64 that is not one of the supported …

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Dissecting Oracle Database 19.11.1 vs 19.11.0

Starting this patch cycle (July-2021), I will write quarterly blog posts giving much more details about the internal changes performed by patches in Oracle internal dictionary views and files. In the past, those changes included only code changes. Please leave in the comments if you think that anything would worth to be included. For some …

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