Oracle Database 26ai was released for on-premises environments on January 27, 2026, bringing a big wave of new capabilities, over 300 features, especially around AI and developer productivity. It’s definitely an exciting step forward, but like with any new major release, early adoption can still carry some risk in terms of bugs and overall stability. That’s why, for most production systems today, Oracle Database 19c is still the safer and more practical choice, thanks to its proven stability in production systems and extended support through 2029.

This blog post describes a complex Oracle database patching issue encountered. Initially, the plan involved applying the 12.1.0.2 database bundle patch – 34057733; however, conflicts arose with existing one-off patches. A rollback was necessary, which unexpectedly caused all database options/features to show as FALSE, impacting database functionality. After extensive troubleshooting , the issue was resolved by applying a different patch that restored the necessary features and some tricks to make DBMS_SQLPATCH valid again.

This post presents an updated Oracle 19.28 Release Update patching guide based on feedback and practical experiences. The objective remains to simplify patching for easier execution. The use of Ansible is emphasized for its consistency and repeatability in patching processes. The post includes detailed instructions for preparation, execution, Datapatch, and cleanup. Users are encouraged to validate operations and maintain backups, highlighting the importance of testing in non-production environments.

In this post, a critical incident is described that occurred while patching an Oracle 12.1.0.2 database. During the process, the rollback of conflicting patches failed because the .patch_storage directory was missing in the ORACLE_HOME. Since this directory is essential for restoring previous file versions, its absence led to corruption of the Oracle Home. Several recovery options were evaluated, but the only reliable solution was to rebuild a new Oracle Home and ensure that all required files were copied. This experience highlights the importance of verifying the existence of the .patch_storage directory and maintaining healthy Oracle Home backups.

Before upgrading a 12c EBS database to 19c in an ExaCC environment, the DBMS_STATS.GATHER_FIXED_OBJECTS_STATS command resulted in an ORA-00600 error. The issue was resolved by correcting the ORA_NLS10 environment variable to point to the appropriate directory using srvctl setenv database. After restarting the database, the command executed successfully.