Since its introduction in July 2005, 10gR2 has become the database version of choice for many E-Business Suite environments. Originally released as 10.2.0.1 it has been regularly enhanced with new patches to 10.2.0.3. In the last several months, the third patch set was released for 10gR2, raising its current version to 10.2.0.4. In the last week it has been certified with most platforms for the E-Business Suite 11i.
Oracle Database 10gR2 is eligible for Oracle Premier Support through July 2010 and eligible for Extended Support through July 2013. Sustaining support is still listed as “indefinite” in Oracle’s Lifetime Support Policy located at http://www.oracle.com/support/lifetime-support-policy.html.
This new release is certified on all platforms (HPUX, AIX, Linux, Solaris and Windows) in both 32 and 64 bit versions. Keep in mind that this patchset does not provide any additional functionality only applying bug fixes.
Digging into the Metalink documents (Patch# 6810189) it was nice to find that10.2.0.4 includes the January and April 2008 Critical Patch Updates (CPU), which consolidates the effort of doing them. The CPU for July 2008 (Doc# 467881.1) would still need to be applied after this patch. Three issues are noted with this patchset. The one of interest is that parameter “CURSOR_SPACE_FOR_TIME” is being deprecated.
So what are the primary fixes in this 10.2.0.4 patchset? You can check them out in Doc#401436.1 on Metalink (metalink.oracle.com). A quick read show that this new release includes over 3,000 individual bug fixes. In the patchset notes Oracle has identified 14 new issues/bugs that are introduced by this patchset, so be sure to read through them as well.
Stephen Chan has a brief article on the certification of 11i and 10.2.0.4 on his BLOG, so check that out as well. To summarize, it indicates that 10.2.0.4 is certified with E-Business Suite Release 11.5.9.CU2 and higher as well as 11.5.10.CU2 and higher. Real Application Clusters (RAC), Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) and Automated Storage Management (ASM) are also certified. Database Vault is not yet certified.
This patchset includes an update to the Oracle time zone definitions to Version 4 which includes the changes to daylight saving time in the USA in 2007. You can determine which version you have with this query, “SELECT version FROM v$timezone_file;”.
Lastly, while some of the documentation says that this patch includes up to the January 2008 Critical Patch Update (CPU), it actually includes the April 2008 CPU as well (see Metalink Note 555579.1).
Happy Patching!