Patching Oracle without shutting down the database

From: Vsevolod Afanassiev <vafanassiev_at_yahoo.com>
Date: 12 Nov 2006 23:03:05 -0800
Message-ID: <1163401385.271694.204870@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>

Somehow it appears to be possible to patch Oracle on AIX 5.3 without shutting down the
databases - and everything works fine!
- We have several AIX 5.3 servers running Oracle 9.2.0.7.0 Enterprise
Edition
- Partitioning Option wasn't installed

I installed partitioning option by running 9.2.0.1.0 Installer, then 10g Installer then comes with 9.2.0.7.0 Patch Set, and then Patch 5496862 using OPatch - and then realised that the database was up.
Everything seems OK, there were no errors during installation, timestamp on the file $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle shows that it was re-created, I can shut down and start the database, partitioning works
The experiment was repeated on the second server with 6 databases running - same result.

Is it a feature of AIX?

Thanks
Sev Received on Mon Nov 13 2006 - 01:03:05 CST