Learning is not a spectator sport

As colleagues Mike Dietrich and Daniel Overby Hansen have always stated – It’s important to keep your database patched and up to date.

For many of us, the first thing that springs to mind when you read or hear statements like that are the “usual suspects” – patching and upgrading ensures that security holes are fixed, we pick up bug fixes and ensure that we stay within the relevant support timeframes.

But applying release updates can also get you better access to existing features. Let me explain.

I’ve been tinkering with some database features with some local colleagues, and I had assumed that a particular features I was working on (memoptimize fast ingest – future blog post coming) was limited to engineered systems. A quick google finds several blog posts out there that suggest the same.

However, it is always worth taking a fresh look at the Licensing Guide from the time to time, because things change! They can even change with a simple release update.

For example, if you haven’t patched your 19c database to Release Update 19.12 – you are probably missing out on these two features

Maybe you’ve been diligent and got yourself up to say 19.20.  In that case, I’d say you should be pushing along to 19.22, and you pick up the following feature as well!

Or if you have one of those old 11g or 12c databases, that you have never got around to upgrading, then just getting to 19c grabs you not just the new features in that release, but also frees up some licensing you might have been on the hook for previously.

So make sure you keep your databases up to date with release updates. You get more bang for your license dollar.

(Kudos to Alexander Day for taking the time to check out the license documentation.)