RE: OT: Oracle Critical Patch Article

Very interesting analysis.  

Chris Taylor

Sr. Oracle DBA

Ingram Barge Company

Nashville, TN 37205

Office: 615-517-3355

Cell: 615-354-4799

Email: chris.taylor_at_ingrambarge.com

From: Paul Drake [mailto:bdbafh_at_gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 11:12 AM To: Taylor, Chris David
Cc: oracle-l
Subject: Re: OT: Oracle Critical Patch Article    

On Jan 15, 2008 10:42 AM, Taylor, Chris David <Chris.Taylor_at_ingrambarge.com> wrote:

How many of you guys have seen this?  

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic& articleId=9057226&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8  

What are your thoughts? I know our organization falls into that category but primarily because we aren't exposed to the outside world. We don't have external applications so most times I believe that critical patch updates can be applied during a normal maintenance period.  

chris

Chris,

The press release is located here:
http://www.sentrigo.com/press_releases-newsid-39.htm

and Pete Finnigan wrote about it here:
http://www.petefinnigan.com/weblog/archives/00001141.htm

Clearly, the company providing the figures has a self interest in having a market for its products and services (which is disclaimed at the bottom of the press release page).

"When asked: "Have you installed the latest Oracle CPU?" - Just 31 people, or ten percent of the 305 respondents, reported that they applied the most recently issued Oracle CPU."

I just downloaded "the latest" critical patch update this morning, as that is when it was released. I plan to apply it in a testing environment later this afternoon.
Perhaps semantics matter here just a bit.

Only 35 people in the survey replied yes to one of the questions. That's a fairly small sample, statistically speaking. If a dba only gathered (estimated) stats with a sample size of 32 blocks out of a table with say 32K blocks, I doubt that the stats would be very accurate.

Would developers be inclined to apply critical patch updates to development servers (where there is no formal dba position)? I would think not.

Are critical patch updates available for Oracle XE databases? No.

Are some applications running on database versions or patchsets that do not have critical patch updates made available? Yes. (8.1.7.4 and 10.1.0.4 spring to mind.)

Would a dba be concerned about remote vulnerabilities for databases that support only connections from application servers that are secured? Probably not.

I'm skeptical that the results are representative and are useful for anything other than stirring discussion (and marketing).

Paul

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