This chapter provides information on patching Oracle Business Intelligence. For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Patching Guide.
This chapter includes the following sections:
Section 24.1, "About Patching Oracle Business Intelligence Systems"
Section 24.2, "What Is Patched for the Oracle Business Intelligence Platform?"
Patching involves copying a small collection of files over an existing installation. A patch is normally associated with a particular version of an Oracle product and involves updating from one minor version of the product to a newer minor version of the same product (for example, from version 11.1.1.2.0 to version 11.1.1.3.0). A patch set is a single patch that contains a collection of patches that are designed to be applied at the same time.
Typically you apply a patch that contains one or more bug fixes to an existing production Oracle BI EE system that is distributed across one or more computers. Bug fixes might affect the system components and Java components that are deployed inside the Oracle WebLogic Server. The patch might include new server executables and updated and new Java class files.
You use the Oracle OPatch utility to apply (and to roll back) Oracle BI EE platform patches. You download patches from Oracle Support Services. Consult the following sources:
For complete information about patching in Oracle Fusion Middleware, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Patching Guide. Chapter 2 provides details on obtaining patches.
The patch readme contains all the information necessary to understand what the patch does and the steps that you must perform to apply the patch. You access the Readme documentation from the Patches & Updates screen on the My Oracle Support site when downloading patches.
If a patching conflict occurs, then the process stops. An example of a conflict is when a duplicate patch fixes the same set of bugs fixed by another patch.
For details on resolving patch conflicts, see Oracle OPatch User's Guide. Contact Oracle Support Services for assistance in resolving conflicts.
Oracle Business Intelligence platform patching applies patches for binary files with extensions such as DLL, JAR, and EXE.
Oracle Business Intelligence platform patching does not patch the following:
Configuration Files
If configuration updates are required as part of a patch, then these are detailed in the accompanying README.txt file, and you must manually apply them. No automated mechanism is available for merging customer configuration and patched configuration files.
Schema-based Metadata
Nondesign-time metadata that is stored in database schemas (including schemas for the Scheduler, usage statistics, event polling, repository files, and the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog) is not patched.
Other platform metadata (such as repository files and Oracle BI Presentation Catalog files) that are delivered in the context of an application are patched, but as part of an applications patch and not as part of a platform patch.
OPatch maintains metadata for each patch that is applied to each Oracle home and keeps copies of what it replaces during a patch. Therefore, you can roll back a complete patch.
Note:
To confirm that an Oracle BI EE platform patch is no longer applied after a rollback, you must establish the patch levels before applying the rollback, then repeat the task after rollback. For information, see Section 24.4, "Determining Current Patch Levels."
Each Oracle home must be patched to the same version as OPatch to ensure that Oracle BI EE functions properly. Use the OPatch lsinventory utility to determine the current patch version for any given Oracle home in the system. You can also use the utility to retrieve a full list of patches, with their corresponding IDs, for a given Oracle home.
To determine the current patch levels:
Display a command window and navigate to the location of the OPatch executable:
ORACLE_HOME\ORACLE_INSTANCE\OPatch
For example:
D:\OBI11g\Oracle_BI1\OPatch
Run the lsinventory utility using the following command syntax:
<Path_to_OPatch>/opatch lsinventory [-all] [-detail] [-patch] [-oh (Oracle home location)]
For example:
opatch lsinventory -patch -detail
For information about the lsinventory options, see the user guides in the ORACLE_HOME\ORACLE_INSTANCE\OPatch\docs directory.
To run the lsinventory utility against other Oracle homes, repeat the previous steps for each Oracle home.
For more information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Patching Guide.