patch wizard and recc. patch

[Linda]

Hi Erman!
Its me again :)
You know I am very frustrated with oracle .. :) Lets be honest, we are all sometimes :)

As you know we  upgraded from 12.1.3 to 12.2.6
So to be proactive put  the remaining patches  that are reccomended by Oracle.

Created Patch wizard filter for recommended and new code line  patches in EBS:
Got the newest InstalledBundle  and run offline with that stage directory
Applied ALL those.

And now TODAY we got a problem in AR and Support says apply 22961500:R12.AR.C
Why - in earth - it was not reccomended ?!!!
How do I assure that we have all patches installed in EBS  just to make sure we step again and again on new patches..

The patch wizard is the reccomended way, BUT why its not THEN reccomended that patch ?
So, do oracle also differentiate for reccomended and just simple ones, just in case - as this 22961500 ?
How do you get those, only like that with testing-patching-againtesting...
If this is the case, its not good way from oracle to make customers happy :)

Any thoughts :) Thanks for reading :)
Br,Linda

[Linda]

and followup:
I aslo went to Metalink patch and updates and queried for :

Product is Oracle Receivables; Include all products in a family is True; Release is Applications R12.2; Platform is IBM AIX on POWER Systems (32-bit); Updated in the last 12 Months; Exclude superseded patches is True;

Ha -> that patch 22961500 is not there either... ( was updated in July)
In that patch search only one version is available is 12.2, not 12.2.6 ... (Arghh)

So, seems there is NO otherway to find those, unless you step on  it in testing..
and it really sucks ! :(

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

Hi Linda,

So Oracle development thinks that patch 22961500 is not a recommended one then :)

Because, according to the documentation; "Recommended patches are those marked as 'Critical' or 'Recommended' when the patch is built."

Unfortuneatly, the situation is like this.

So, I think the best way is;

Apply the recommended patches using Patch Wizard or Oracle Support. (this is not enough it seems , so proceed with the following ->)

Make a list of the products that you are using.
Use Oracle support or patch wizard to list all the patches (not only the recommended ones) specific to your platform (product by product)
Export these lists to excel
Send them to your functional admins and superusers
Apply the patches that functional admins find useful and critical.


:) What do you think?

[Linda]

Hi Erman!

Yes.. I was thinking about that ..
You can get only reccomended from the patch wizard and new code line. -> We have applied those.

Then in EBS searching , it doesn't give you to search on  top of 12.2.6. It gives you only 12.2 (arghh)
I run for AR ONLY  and updated >=1 year ago...  as 12.2.6 we have.
119 patches ...  So, I am looking at around 100 patchesx 20 productes used =2000 patches :)
So, then I need to check every readme for prereq and merge those..
Do other apps dbas are doing that, what I am thinking  to start ...:) ?
Do you ? :)  I want to be pro-active, but this is a hell alot of work..

Br,Linda

[ErmanArslansOracleBlog]

Yes!
It is lots of work.
When 20 products considered , it is not realistic.
Reviewing 2000 patches is not a clever thing to do, I agree with you :), but it is the only way, if you want to be fully proactive in every manner.

What can be done and what is more realistic to do is, applying recommended patches and then giving the system to a full test.. During the tests in the TEST envrionment, the problems will appear in anyways, so you can build an additional recommended patch list by summing up the patches that you need to apply for fixing your environment specific problems.

At the end of the day, you apply the recommended patches + additional patches of yours in to your LIVE environment and feel proactive :)