Deprecated and Desupported Features in Oracle Database 23c

Every time there is a new database release on the horizon it’s worth looking at the deprecated and desupported features in that release, so you can start planning for the future. Here is the full list from the documentation.

Behavior Changes, Deprecated and Desupported Features for Oracle Database

I’m going to comment on a few things that standout for me. You might find other things more interesting…

Deprecated

DBUA and Manual Upgrade Deprecation : About time! From 21c onward AutoUpgrade is the preferred upgrade approach. Signalling the deprecation of the other approaches is welcome in my opinion. If you’ve never used AutoUpgrade you can see some examples here.

Oracle Persistent Memory Deprecation : Intel killing Optane was the writing on the wall for Oracle Persistent Memory Database (PMEM) and Oracle Memory Speed (OMS) File System. This is not really a surprise.

Deprecation of the mkstore Command-Line Utility : Not a major thing, but I will probably need to revisit a handful of articles to do some small edits. As pointed out by Piotr Wrzosek, the mkstore utility is used for credentials when using a secure external password store. I’m guessing this will be baked into another utility like orapki going forward, but we will see. (see update 2)

DBMS_RESULT_CACHE Function Name Deprecations : I love this move. References to “black lists” are changed to “block lists”. I personally try to use “allow list” and “block list” instead of “white list” and “black list” in conversation. Regardless of any other motivation, I think they are more descriptive.

Desupported

Non-CDB Architecture : This was deprecated in 12.1.0.2 and desupported in 21c. I’m listing it here because 23c is the first long term released where this is desupported. Most people won’t have progressed past 19c, and may have resisted the multitenant architecture. You can’t resist any longer. I’ve written loads about pluggable databases here. Please get up to speed with it.

Original Export Utility (EXP) Desupported : For some reason this feels like a “WOW” moment, but in reality I can’t remember the last time I used imp/exp. The IMP utility is clearly still supported to allow direct upgrades from older releases. Can you believe it’s about 18 years since Data Pump was introduced? 🙂

Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Express (EM Express) Desupported : This feature never really hit home with me, so I’m not sorry to see it gone. For most stuff you can just use SQL Developer which replicates the functionality. Of course, if you have Cloud Control, you wouldn’t be using the express feature anyway.

Transport Layer Security versions 1.0 and 1.1 Desupported : Great! If you do still need to make database callouts to old services that don’t support TLSv1.2 or above, just put a load balancer or reverse proxy in front of them and you are sorted. We usually do that anyway to ease certificate management for database callouts. See here.

Traditional Auditing Desupported : Cool. I prefer unified audit policies anyway, and it’s been the preferred method since 12.1, so it’s hardly a surprise. I mentioned this here.

Desupport of 32-Bit Oracle Database Clients : I can’t remember the last time I used a 32-bit client or server, so this doesn’t phase me.

Remember

Deprecated is not desupported. You can continue to use deprecated features, but you should be looking to move away from them before they are desupported in a future version.

The desupported stuff shouldn’t come as a big surprise as most things have been deprecated for some time. In some cases over many releases.

Make sure you check the full list for yourself, as there might be something important you need to think about.

Cheers

Tim…

Update 1: As mentioned in Mike Dietrich’s blog post (here) the public docs are currently for Oracle Database 23c Free, so the final on-prem release may include some changes. Keep your eyes open. 🙂

Update 2: Martin Bach confirmed by assumption that the credentials functionality would be included in a later version of orapki, as mentioned in this post.

Oracle Documentation : The Redwood Look & Feel

If you take a look at the database documentation you will notice there has been a change. The new “Redwood” look and feel has been applied. I thought I would give my opinion, for what it is worth.

Remember, these are my first impressions.

Change is always bad!

As soon as you change something, people (like me) are going to come out of the woodwork and start criticising it. Within a week everyone will have forgotten what things used to be like, and a new steady state will be achieved.

Everything except My Oracle Support (MOS). I’ve never got used to the “new” interface, which we have probably had for a decade, and I still think it is bad… 😉

Expand (Not) All

The Expand/Collapse button only expands a single level down the hierarchy. That makes finding things in some manuals impossible. I regularly do an expand-all, then search using the browser search (CTRL+F) to find a feature or parameter. This change of behaviour is a complete disaster!

There is no way this was tested by anyone who actually uses the docs for their job. Either that, or their feedback was ignored.

Layout

The basic page is split into three columns, with a margin on each side (see here).

On the left is the index, which is similar to what we had before. The middle panel is the main bit of the text. The panel on the right is another sort-of mini index. I really don’t understand what the right panel is for. If the share links were put on the left index, the right panel could be removed entirely. The two side panels are collapsible, which is good. I get the feeling my first visit will always have an additional click to collapse the right panel.

Responsive?

The layout is responsive, so as you alter the width of the page some of the panels will collapse. Unfortunately the pointless right-hand panel seems to have priority over the useful left-hand panel. You quite often get this sort of look. Also, when you expand the screen again, the useful left-hand panel doesn’t reappear.

This happens to be the default when the docs are viewed on my work laptop. Yuck! You can manually correct it by collapsing the right panel and expanding the left. That’s two extra clicks. Yes. I am really so lazy that this bothers me.

The margins also expand as the page expands. At their biggest they are about 5cm (1.5 inches) on each side. That seems rather wide to me. I’ve read that most people find reading a narrower panel of text easier, but when I read the docs I like to have them wide. As a result the excessive margins annoy me. I’m sure the vast majority of people will not be bothered by them though. Once again, I am the victim of my large monitor. On a normal size screen the margins don’t seem excessive at all.

Text Size

The default text size for the central column is good for me. They’ve resisted the urge to make everything big and bubbly. Technical docs are not the same as normal websites, and I prefer some moderation in text size. If people need bigger text, the browser can zoom.

The left index is possibly a little smaller than I would like on my main monitor, but when I look at it on a “normal person” monitor, or on my work laptop, it looks great. In this case I’m the victim of my excessively sized monitor. 🙂

Accessibility

I’m no expert on accessibility, but suffice to say the docs fail. So does my website, so I’m not in a position to criticise that much, but it does seem odd that a big redesign like this was not done with accessibility in mind.

I imagine the colour contrast on the left and right panels are not great. They are fine for me, but I see these colour contrast issues all the time, including on my own website.

Community Feedback?

In the future, please reach out the the community to get feedback on important issues like this. You have a pool of Oracle ACEs who are under NDA, who are more than willing to help with feedback! The two glaring mistakes would have been picked up really quickly if you had asked for feedback from people who actually use the docs constantly.

Conclusion

The expand-all capability has to be returned to the index ASAP! Some docs, specifically the reference manuals, are unusable without it. This is a massive fail!

The right-hand panel has to go, or be collapsed by default! Its only value is to waste space. Please get rid of it!

As for everything else, it’s all different but the same. Nothing to see here. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 38 and Oracle

Fedora 38 was released recently. Here comes the standard warning.

Here are the usual things I do when a new version of Fedora comes out.

This is not a recommendation. I just like messing about with this stuff, as explained in the first link.

I pushed Vagrant builds to my GitHub.

If you want to try these you will need to build a Fedora 38 box. You can do that using Packer. There is an example of that here.

What’s New?

So what’s new with Fedora 38? You can read about it here.

Cheers

Tim…

VirtualBox 7.0.8

VirtualBox 7.0.8 maintenance release has arrived.

The downloads and changelog are in the usual places.

I’ve installed it on Windows 11 machine with no drama. I’ll be running my Packer builds of all my Vagrant boxes later today, which you can find on Vagrant Cloud here.

I’ll be doing lots of testing over the next few days as I add the latest patches to my Vagrant builds. I’ll update here if I notice anything unusual.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: On my Windows 10 box I had to uninstall VirtualBox 7.0.6, then install VirtualBox 7.0.8 for it to work correctly with Vagrant.

Oracle 23c Free : Why start learning now?

It’s been a couple of weeks since Oracle 23c Free was released. I’ve already put out a getting started post to help people start their journey, but I wanted to say something about why, in my opinion, you should start learning 23c now, rather than waiting.

Learning stuff takes time

I’ve written some tips about learning new things, and one of the posts was about time and repetition. It’s going to take a long time to get used to using 23c. If the latest version you have used is 19c, you’ve got the 21c and 23c new features to catch up on. If you’re using something older than 19c, then you’ve got even more to do. Sure, you can use Oracle 23c like it’s Oracle 7, and for the most part things will be fine, but really you should try and get the most out of the products you are paying for.

The sooner you start, the easier it will be, and the less rushed you will feel when you eventually have to start.

I’ve already put out a lot of 23c posts, but remember I’m on the 23c beta program, so I’ve been writing these posts for over 5 months now. They didn’t happen overnight.

Feeling comfortable with a new release takes me years. There is a difference between writing a post about something, and feeling comfortable using it in my day-to-day life. It will take some time before some of this stuff is a natural part of my toolbox. I want that to happen as quickly as possible, so that means getting stuck in now, so when the full blown 23c goes GA I can hit the ground running.

It might make you change the way you do things now

Sometimes, knowing what is coming around the corner will alter the way you approach a problem today. You may use the way Oracle has implemented a new feature as inspiration for how to solve your current problem in an older release. If possible, you may code it such that you can do a straight swap when you upgrade to 23c, throwing away your code and replacing it with built in functionality.

You don’t know what you don’t know

My initial reaction to new releases is often, “there’s nothing there I care about”. Then I start working through the new features and things jump out at me. The more I work with it, the more interesting it gets. I already feel like I can’t live without the IF [NOT] EXISTS DDL clause. On the surface it seems so trivial, but it makes a massive difference. 🙂

The Oracle 23c Free release contains mostly developer focused new features. We won’t see some of the administration features publicly until we get the full release, but there is still a lot to work through.

23c is new to everyone

I say this with each new release, but remember there are no Oracle 23c experts. Even Oracle staff and people in the beta program haven’t got something I would consider as significant production experience. Just remember this when you are reading posts about the 23c new features. We are all noobs! That doesn’t mean there is no value in these posts, but just remember what they represent.

It’s your choice

You are going to have to learn this stuff eventually, so you have two choices.

  • You can wait until the last minute, try to cram, and inevitably make mistakes when you are doing something real in your job.
  • You can start now and coast into the new release, so when you have to do something real with 23c, it’s not a problem.

It’s up to you, but you know what I think you should do. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 23c Free Developer-Release : Getting Started…

You may have noticed the flurry of posts about the new Oracle Database 23c Free Developer-Release.

In summary Oracle 23c Free is the replacement for what would have been Oracle 23c XE, but it is a developer release, so it’s not the final form of Oracle 23c Free. We should get an updated version of 23c Free once the main Oracle Database 23c release becomes GA.

Where do I get it?

If you want to install it from the RPM you can download it from here.

There is a VirtualBox appliance and a Docker image available from Oracle, so you don’t actually have to install it if you don’t want to.

How do I install it?

You have a few options here.

  • Install documentation here.
  • My installation article here.
  • My Vagrant build here.
  • VirtualBox appliance from Oracle here.
  • Docker image from Oracle here.

What about your articles?

I have a 23c page on the website ready to post Oracle 23c articles here.

I’ve written a bunch of articles against the 23c beta 1 release, but I’ve not published any of them yet because of the beta program NDA. I’m going to work through them against the 23c Free developer-release, and anything that I’m allowed to publish I will. Some of the articles will have to be held back until the GA release of 23c, as they are not covered by this release.

Basically, if it is documented in Oracle Database 23c Free, I can write about it. If not, I’m still under NDA, so I will release those articles later.

Documentation

The documentation is available here.

It is not the full 23c documentation set, as this is not the full release of the product.

You will notice it focusses on the application development side of things. There is no RAC and Data Guard stuff, so those subjects are off limits for now.

Bug Reports

There is a community forum for reporting bugs here.

What next?

Have fun! Remember, this is not the final 23c release, so this is meant as a way to get used to some of the new development features in 23c, while we wait for the full release.

Remember, if you see any problems, please shout out about them! You can report bugs here.

Cheers

Tim…

The Oracle ACE Program : My 17 Year Anniversary

It’s April 1st, which means it’s my 17th year anniversary of being an Oracle ACE.

As usual I’ll mention some of the other anniversaries that will happen throughout this year.

  • 28 years working with Oracle technology in August. (August 1995)
  • 23 years doing my website in July. (Original name: 03 July 2000 or current name: 31 August 2001)
  • 18 years blogging in June. (15 June 2005)
  • 17 years on the Oracle ACE Program. (01 April 2006)
  • 8 years doing videos on my YouTube channel, with some breaks of course.

Fingers crossed for next year…

Cheers

Tim…

Update Oracle Database Time Zone Files (Poll Results Discussed)

In case you didn’t know, countries occasionally change their time zones, or alter the way they handle daylight saving time (DST). To let the database know about these changes we have to apply a new database time zone file. The updated files have been shipped with upgrades and patches since 11gR2, but applying them to the database has always been a manual operation.

With the recent switch over to daylight savings time in the UK I decided to post this question on Twitter yesterday.

How often do you update your Oracle database time zone files?

We get less than 6% of people updating their time zone files on a regular schedule. Nearly 45% who only do the updates after a database upgrade, and nearly 50% of people who never do it at all.

I can’t say I’m surprised by the results. In terms of the reasoning for these responses, I’ll reference some of the comments on Twitter.

Regular Schedule

“Every ru patch, also thanks to 19.18 it is included now and with out of place upgrade and autoupgrade, i dont do it anymore 🙂 all automatic.”

Mustafa KALAYCI

If you are using AutoUpgrade to patch to a new Oracle Home, then applying updated time zone files is really easy. Before 19.18 it’s just a single entry “timezone_upg=yes” in the AutoUpgrade config file. From 19.18 onward the update of the time zone file is the default action (see here).

So interestingly, there may be some people who don’t know they are applying an update of their time zone file, who actually are now…

After Upgrades

This feels like the natural time to do it for me, and it seems many other people feel the same.

As mentioned previously, AutoUpgrade makes it simple. From 21c onward AutoUpgrade is the main upgrade approach, even for those that have resisted using it for previous versions, so this question goes away from an upgrade perspective.

We can specifically tell it not to perform the action using “timezone_upg=no”, but I’m guessing most people will just go with the default action.

Never

“NEVER. As an American-only company with very little need for time-specific data, quite unnecessary. Horrible design with no rollbacks and headaches w/data pump. Just not worth it if possible to avoid”

Taylor

I totally understand this response. Many of us work with systems that are limited to our own country. Assuming our country doesn’t alter its own daylight savings time rules, then using an old time zone file is unlikely to cause an issue.

When you consider the number of people that run *very old* versions of Oracle, you can see that using old versions of the time zone file doesn’t present a major issue in these circumstances.

With reference to the data pump issue, I’ve experienced this, and it was also picked up in the comments.

“My hypothesis: Most do it when datapump tells they need to do it to get the import file they just received to load”

Connor McDonald

Offline/Online Operation

The point about this being an offline operation was raised.

“Well it is an offline operation, so pretty exceptional thing to do. Only in a rare case where some feature requires the upgrade – like DataPump failing or query over dblink failing.”

Ilmar Kerm

Downtime is never welcome, but it was also pointed out it can be an online operation in 21c.

“Offline will be a thing of the past…

https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/21/refrn/TIMEZONE_VERSION_UPGRADE_ONLINE.html

Connor McDonald

Conclusion

It seems like the time zone file version is not high on the list of priorities for most people, providing it is not causing a data pump issue. I totally understand this, and I myself only consider it during database upgrades.

I always like reading these poll results. I know the sample size is small, but it gives you a good idea of how your beliefs compare to the wider audience.

If you are interested to know how to manually upgrade your time zone file, you can read about it here.

Cheers

Tim…

Using ChatGPT to write PL/SQL code…

I’ve been having a play with ChatGPT over the last few weeks, and I wanted to give a little example of using it to try and write some PL/SQL code. Importantly, I wanted to know how close it would get to generating runnable code against an Oracle database.

Calling a web service from PL/SQL

Let’s start by asking it a pretty straight forward question.

Question: Write the code to call a REST web service from PL/SQL using the APEX_WEB_SERVICE package

I think that’s pretty impressive, and not much different to my own example on the website. If someone gave me that answer in an interview question I would think they had done a reasonable job, but does it work? Not without some additional stuff.

What about the network ACL?

The first issue is it doesn’t mention we need to create a network ACL to allow us to make a callout from the database.

Does ChatGPT understand we need an ACL? Let’s see. I ask it about the ACL, and it gives me an explanation of using an ACL.

Question: Do I need a network ACL?

It’s using the pre-12c syntax, but let’s create it with the correct values.

conn sys/SysPassword1@//localhost:1521/pdb1 as sysdba

BEGIN
    DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.CREATE_ACL(
        acl         => 'jsonplaceholder.typicode.com_acl.xml',
        description => 'Example ACL for REST web service',
        principal   => 'APEX_220200',
        is_grant    => TRUE,
        privilege   => 'connect',
        start_date  => NULL,
        end_date    => NULL
    );
    DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.ADD_PRIVILEGE(
        acl        => 'jsonplaceholder.typicode.com_acl.xml',
        principal  => 'APEX_220200',
        is_grant   => TRUE,
        privilege => 'resolve'
    );
    DBMS_NETWORK_ACL_ADMIN.ASSIGN_ACL(
        acl  => 'jsonplaceholder.typicode.com_acl.xml',
        host => 'jsonplaceholder.typicode.com'
    );
END;
/

I would normally prefer to use the 12c+ syntax, shown below, but we will continue with what ChatGPT suggests rather than using the newer syntax.

conn sys/SysPassword1@//localhost:1521/pdb1 as sysdba

declare
  l_principal varchar2(20) := 'APEX_220200';
begin
  dbms_network_acl_admin.append_host_ace (
    host       => 'jsonplaceholder.typicode.com', 
    lower_port => 443,
    upper_port => 443,
    ace        => xs$ace_type(privilege_list => xs$name_list('http'),
                              principal_name => l_principal,
                              principal_type => xs_acl.ptype_db)); 
end;
/

What about the wallet?

The next issue is it doesn’t tell us to create a wallet to hold the root certificate for the URL. It’s using a HTTPS address, so I have to use a wallet. I downloaded the root certificate from the site and put it in the “/tmp” location on the database server, then created the wallet as follows.

mkdir -p /u01/wallet
orapki wallet create -wallet /u01/wallet -pwd WalletPasswd123 -auto_login
orapki wallet add -wallet /u01/wallet -trusted_cert -cert "/tmp/Baltimore CyberTrust Root.crt" -pwd WalletPasswd123

Because it didn’t tell me the wallet was needed, it also neglected to tell me the P_WALLET_PATH parameter was necessary in the MAKE_REST_REQUEST call.

Does ChatGPT understand we need a wallet? I ask it about the wallet, and include a typo. 🙂 It didn’t care about the typo, and still gave us an answer. It doesn’t tell us how to create the wallet itself, and it thinks the SET_WALLET procedure is in the APEX_WEB_SERVICE package, but it’s in the UTL_HTTP package.

Question: Do I need a wallet?

I feel like that is a fail. Not only did is get the wrong package name, but we would typically use the P_WALLET_PATH parameter with APEX_WEB_SERVICE. Even so, it might give us a clue about where to look next.

What about the output from the DBMS_OUTPUT package?

Finally, it didn’t tell use to turn on serveroutput to display the output from the DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE call. If this code was called from an IDE that might not matter, but from SQL*Plus or SQLcl it’s important if we want to see the result. I asked ChatGPT why I couldn’t see the output and it produced a lot of text, that kind-of eluded to the issue, but didn’t flat out tell us what to do.

Question: Why can’t I see the output?

Did the final solution work?

With the ACL and wallet in place, adding the P_WALLET_PATH parameter to the MAKE_REST_REQUEST call and turning on serveroutput, the answer is yes.

conn testuser1/testuser1@//localhost:1521/pdb1

set serveroutput on

DECLARE
    l_url       VARCHAR2(4000) := 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/1'; -- Replace with your API endpoint
    l_response  CLOB;
BEGIN
    APEX_WEB_SERVICE.G_REQUEST_HEADERS(1).name := 'Content-Type';
    APEX_WEB_SERVICE.G_REQUEST_HEADERS(1).value := 'application/json'; -- Replace with your desired content type
    l_response := APEX_WEB_SERVICE.MAKE_REST_REQUEST(
        p_url         => l_url,
        p_http_method => 'GET', -- Replace with your desired HTTP method
        p_wallet_path => 'file:/u01/wallet'
    );
    -- Do something with the response, for example print it to the console
    DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(l_response);
END;
/
{
  "userId": 1,
  "id": 1,
  "title": "delectus aut autem",
  "completed": false
}


PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>

Thoughts

Overall it is pretty impressive. Is it perfect? No.

The interesting thing is we can ask subsequent questions, and it understands that these are in the context of what came before, just like when we speak to humans. This process of asking new questions allows us to refine the answer.

Just as we need some “Google-fu” when searching the internet, we also need some “ChatGPT-fu”. We need to ask good questions, and if we know absolutely nothing about a subject, the answers we get may still leave us confused.

We get no references for where the information came from, which makes it hard to fact check. The Bing integration does include references to source material.

Currently ChatGPT is based around a 2021 view of the world. It would be interesting to see what happens when this is repeated with the Bing integration, which does live searches of Bing for the base information.

When we consider this is AI, and we remember this is the worst it is ever going to be, it’s still very impressive.

Cheers

Tim…

VirtualBox 7.0.6

VirtualBox 7.0.6 maintenance release has arrived.

The downloads and changelog are in the usual places.

I’ve installed it on Windows 10 and 11 machines with no drama. I’ve also run Packer builds of all my Vagrant boxes, which you can find on Vagrant Cloud here.

So far so good. I’ve not had any drama.

I’ll be doing lots of testing over the next few days as I add the latest patches to my Vagrant builds. I’ll update here if I notice anything unusual.

Cheers

Tim…