When looking for the latest PSU's for 12.1.0.2 this week i noticed that the names have been changed (to protect the guilty...?).
What we'd all got quite used to with the 5th digit changing to reflect the PSU that was present (though annoyingly this never actually changed v$version etc) has now been changed to be a 'date'.
So for example the last PSU i applied was
12.1.0.2.5 and i was expecting 12.1.0.2.6 this quarter - what i have instead is
12.1.0.2.160119 (that's 19th January 2016 - i hate that date format by the way oracle......)
This apparently is to make things easier and i guess it is useful to have the date when comparing multiple bits of the software stack. I initially don;t like it but it's just a case of getting used to it i guess.
We now need to change our ORACLE_HOME's though as we roll this out as we actually name each home with the PSU version - this makes it easier to manage for us. When we want to apply a PSU we just switch the DB to a new home rather than patching in place.
Now we'll just end up with homes called /oracle/12.1.0.2.date from now on - hopefully there is no impact on any scripts etc by having this new longer name.....
There is more info here:
https://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=2061926.1
and also on Mike's excellent blog here:
https://blogs.oracle.com/UPGRADE/entry/january_2016_psu_bp_available
A variant that might be easier on your scripts (or potentially worse... I guess it really depends) is to use a subdirectory: /oracle/12.1.0.2/160119
ReplyDeleteAs I doubt they would release two PSUs or CPUs (now renamed SPUs
BTW) in a month, I wish they'd gone with e.g. 1601 and left off the day.
I don't know if this is the actual reason for having the date format in that way, but one advantage of it is the numbering will always be in ascending order. I use the same format for ordering files I produce on a fortnightly basis for our local Vinnies conference, and it makes it very easy to find the most recent file. :)
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