RE: Oracle 12.1.0.2 RIP

Sigh. Nostalgia pangs for the time when they essentially alternated new features and fixes only stable releases.  

That meant you could bring the new features versions up on your lab machines and after significant testing perhaps a few databases that were interrupt tolerant and less than 24by7, so you could cautiously help find bugs and then when the fixes only stable release came out your issues would be fixed already for your high availability databases.  

One more test of the lab database and other databases previously upgraded with the stable release, run your regression tests, and then much less heartburn upgrading the databases previously left on the previous stable release.  

But after a decade or so of that working very sweetly, someone decided it was more important to shove competitive feature answers out the door more quickly. Since then I really don’t know what the numbers and dot numbers really mean just by looking at them (as opposed to reading the notes with each release and patch). And since security patches became vogue (probably good, but do they or do they not have feature or behavior changes other than security? Hard to tell.)  

Fortunately I switched from single shop operations, architecture, development, and provisioning to being a consultant while it was still sane. And when it became insane, as a consultant I was paid to double check precisely, which really takes the sting out of it.  

Hats off to the organizers and participants in the beta test program. But even with that good tire kicking on the major releases, these time based releases sure seem somewhere between alpha and beta test release quality. I suppose that depends on platform and feature usage though.  

Anyway, good luck y’all! Real soon now I’ll be building a test platform for whatever the latest I can get my hands on just for fun.  

mwf  

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of dimensional.dba_at_comcast.net Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2019 11:22 AM To: martin.klier_at_performing-db.com; jkstill_at_gmail.com Cc: 'gogala mladen'; 'Oracle-L Freelists' Subject: RE: Oracle 12.1.0.2 RIP  

That was the problem with Oracle flipping to the year change numbers, which means from a business persons perspective it is a major upgrade yearly, when of course it is not.

It does take some explaining, but normally you can get the business people/your management past it by having rock solid procedures and providing the fastest possible service when fixing things.

I have a lot of clients that no matter how much testing is done in DEV/TEST there is one production database that we won’t hit problems until we upgrade it.

Doesn’t matter the length of time that the patch is in DEV/TEST it will never see the errors that occur in that one prod database.  

To get the business comfortable at all you simply have to stress process and all hands on deck when the errors occur in prod. Sadly although also positively for those singular troublesome prod databases the problems occur not just on major version jumps( by the number) but on most quarterly patch sets, so major version name change really is no different than quarterly patch set.      

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org> On Behalf Of Martin Klier - Performing Databases GmbH Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2019 7:31 AM To: jkstill_at_gmail.com
Cc: gogala mladen <gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com>; Oracle-L Freelists <oracle-l_at_freelists.org> Subject: Re: Oracle 12.1.0.2 RIP  

Could not agree more Jared.

Unfortunately, many customers jump back from the "major version change" the "upgrade" from 12.2 to 19c seems to bring. As we all know it's just numbers, and a 12.2 tech stack, but go ahead and tell them... feel like a prophet talking to camels in the desert sometimes... :)

--

Martin Klier // Performing Databases GmbH Managing Partner // Senior DB Consultant Oracle ACE Director

martin.klier_at_performing-db.com // https://www.performing-databases.com  

Von: "Jared Still" <jkstill_at_gmail.com> An: "gogala mladen" <gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com> CC: "Oracle-L Freelists" <oracle-l_at_freelists.org> Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. Oktober 2019 16:15:15 Betreff: Re: Oracle 12.1.0.2 RIP

agreed. 19c is the version of 12.2 that mostly works.  

On Sun, Oct 20, 2019 at 12:11 Mladen Gogala <gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com> wrote:

I was unable to download proactive BP 191015 for 12.1.0.2 because I don't have an extended support. With that, Oracle 12cR1 era is officially over. I recommend everyone to immediately upgrade to 19c, the last version in the 12c series of products.

--

Mladen Gogala
Database Consultant
Tel: (347) 321-1217

--

http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l

--

Jared Still
Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist

Principal Consultant at Pythian

Pythian Blog http://www.pythian.com/blog/author/still/

Github: https://github.com/jkstill  

--

http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Wed Oct 30 2019 - 21:28:31 CET