Tales From A Lazy Fat DBA

Hi Mates,
With the introduction of Oracle 12c the SQL commands belonging to one patch are not installed by the catbundle.sql but by the “datapatch” tool, located in the OPatch directory. Apart from that the datapatch checks before if the requirement for the installation are met.

Let me be more simple — Datapatch is the new tool that enables automation of post-patch SQL actions for RDBMS patches. So, In 12c you don’t use carbundle psu apply now this is all done using datapatch.

With the Enterprise Manager and OPatchAuto we gets the further automation of database patches by calling datapatch automatically after applying the binary patch.

Enterprise Manager: Starting version 12.1 Enterprise Manager now calls datapatch to complete post patch actions upon any 12c or later database restart.

OPatchAuto : OPatchAuto calls datapatch to complete post patch actions upon installation of the binary patch and restart of the database.

OPatch : Datapatch integration with OPatch is not possible as OPatch is executed when the database is down and datapatch requires the database to be opened to complete its activity.
When patches are installed or rollbacked using OPatch then datapatch needs to be explicitly invoked if instructed to do so in the patch readme.

RAC specific: For a RAC environment, after the binary patch has been applied on all nodes run Datapatch to complete the post-install SQL deployment for the PSU only from one node. Datapatch need not be run on all the nodes.

Below are the steps that you normally perform while applying a patch.

Restart your Database now when the patch is successfully applied to the binaries.

Now apply the patch to the database using DATAPATCH Utility from ORACLE_HOME/OPatch directory.

Lest query the database to check the patch apply status.

or

To check the PSU applied to your database using the following SQL statement

select * from DBA_REGISTRY_SQLPATCH;

Hope It Helps
Prashant Dixit