As I said multiple times, we have the best and most knowledgeable customers out there. Julian Frey is one of them, and there is a good and legit reason why he is an ACE Director since (I think) two years. Julian alerted me the other day about an ORA-43907: Potential behavior change with Oracle RU 19.28.0. And I guess, some of you would like to learn about this, too.

Oracle OpenWorld had been renamed to Oracle CloudWorld, and it got rebranded to Oracle AI World this year. And we PMs, Alex, Daniel, Rodrigo and myself look forward to see you there. It's a perfect opportunity to touch base, discuss your migration challenges, your patching fun - and upgrades certainly, too. You not only can grab a sticker…

Summer season is almost over. And in between Oracle AI World in Las Vegas in October and now, there is one chance to meet us for a Full Day Upgrade / Migration / Patching Workshop in Prague on September 17, 2025. There are still some seats open, so please find the details below. When and why should you attend?

AIOUG OC Yatra 2025 is over, and I somehow recovered as well. As I wrote here, it was (again) an incredible experience with all those wonderful people (you!!) and those crazy speakers (us!) - and I learned a lot again. Still, I had no clue that Database and Developer evangelist and video wizard Connor McDonald would react to my friendly nagging 🙂

YouTube video by Oracle Database Upgrades and Migrations

Learning something new every day is the best part of my job. And as you can see and read on the blog, thanks to YOU, I learn a lot. This one I learned from Johannes Ahrends at my workshop for ora2know in Munich in early July this year. Were you aware of the two hidden columns in CDB-Views? I confess honestly: I wasn't.

This time the AutoUpgrade team did magic and included so many great new features and useful enhancements into the new version of AutoUpgrade. So, please note: The August 2025 version of AutoUpgrade (25.4) is available for download. You should refresh your current versions, especially when you use it for patching, and especially if you attempt to do in an RAC (Real Application Clusters) environment. 

I really love our customers. Many people are so super-smart. A few weeks ago I delivered a full-day hands-on workshop for ora2know in Munich and some (positively) crazy people fly in very early morning from the other end of Germany to attend. Others catch a train at night time (which is the bigger adventure in Germany these days). I feel really grateful since this was also a pay-for-it workshop.

I just returned the other day from the most strenuous trips I do once a year: The AIOUG Oracle Community Yatra tour. 6 cities in 9 days. It's a wild ride with flights and bus transfers in between, monsoon rain, heat and nasty mosquitos - but it is still one of the most exciting trips I do. So, let me r…

YouTube video by Oracle

Time flies so quickly. Soon we'll get together again in Las Vegas for Oracle Cloud World 2025. This year, it will be in October where hopefully it's a few degrees colder (or less hot) than in early September last year. And as in the past years, we'll do at OCW25 - Pre-Event Training: Mastering Oracle 23ai Upgrades. Will our pre-event training be different this year?

Those of you who have been to our workshops in the past 3 years know that we promote one feature as the ultimate killer feature for moving to Oracle Database 19c and 23ai: Refreshable Clones. These work not only from PDB to PDB, but magically also with a non-CDB. And our teams works with a good number of customers using exactly this technique to Oracle 23ai.

Let's kick it off. When the ora2know group started at DOAG conference in Nuernberg in November 2024, we committed ourselves to support them. And this is exactly the reason why I am going to invite you to this unique event in Munich on July 10, 2025. I will run an ora2know Hands-On Workshop: Upgrade to Oracle 19c and 23ai. And you are going to type 🙂 You need to sign up early since we have only a limited number of seats available.

Many of you know it and downloaded it already. But just in case you are not aware yet, let me give you a quick summary since the May 2025 version of AutoUpgrade (25.3) is available for download. How to download it? That's very simple. You either download it via the well-known MOS Note: 2485457.1 - AutoUpgrade Tool or you…

Not a big deal - but Samo has brought this to my attention. And the RMAN development and PM team was happy to help and shed some light here. But one after another - what actually is the topic here? Well, RMAN speaks a bit more to you since 19.25 - which isn't bad but may need some additional explanation.

ORAdiff is an amazing tool I use at least once a day. And if you did the same before applying 19.26.0 or moving from 19.25.0 to 19.27.0, you may have spotted this change as well. There is a DB_LOST_WRITE_PROTECT default change in RU 19.26.0. What is DB_LOST_WRITE_PROTECT? This is quite a useful parameter, especially for Data Guard environments. The parameter enables or disabled the data block write-protection.

I could have sworn that I had blogged about it. Aleksey had a comment on the blog and I could not find the answer. But I knew that I had discussed this topic with several people in email already. Maybe it has fallen off my long list of future blog posts. No worries, here it is: DBMS_OPTIM_BUNDLE and the standby database?

No worries, I don't start writing a travel blog. Or, maybe one day I will. But not for now. Daniel and I will be on the road again next week for a full day workshop in Utrecht on May 6 and in Brussels on May 7. Brussels is sold out already, the registration is closed. But in Utrecht we still have a few seats open due to the superb conference auditorium space in the Oracle office.

I keep saying this - we have the best and most skilled customers. Christian Klose from my Franconian home region contacted me via LinkedIn and asked for some assistance with an SR. I confess, I replied way too late (information overflow). But the finding Christian had is great to know. There are new interesting underscores for more than 255 _FIX_CONTROL…