Laughter, by Jimmy_Joe

Laughter, by Jimmy_Joe

Did anyone else giggle a little bit when they saw that Oracle delayed its quarterly patch release because it would coincide with the OpenWorld 2009 Oracle conference?  According to Oracle, they didn’t want administrators to have to choose between installing updates in a timely manner and attending the conference.

That’s funny for me because I have NEVER met an Oracle DBA that was excited about pushing patches to their servers in a couple of days (the original release was slated for October 13, and the conference ends on the 15th).  In fact, between Oracle DBAs and z/OS Administrators, I don’t know who wins the prize for yelling the loudest about patching within thirty days.

THIRTY days.

Not two days.  THIRTY days.  OH the screaming that would ensue.  “HOW DARE YOU TELL ME HOW TO PATCH MY SERVERS!!  There is NO way I can do it in thirty days!  I’M SUING EVERYONE!” *stomp* *stomp* *stomp* *stomp* *stomp* *stomp* *SLAM*.

That was a fun day, and I think that gentleman was reassigned shortly after that outburst.

One of my favorite Oracle installs was a database I was assessing a couple of years ago, that had never been patched since it’s original installation sometime in 2005.  In fact, October 2005 was the first quarterly rollup that this particular version would have received, but of course, it was not present on the server.

So while I do applaud Oracle’s decision not to make the two events coincide, I think everyone is giggling a little bit in the background because we all know that nobody (ok maybe 1%) patches their production databases within two days of their release.  Sure, starting the process, but not production.

This post originally appeared on BrandenWilliams.com.

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