Patching has always been one of the many joys (or dreads) of Oracle DBAs. Ever since the initial days of Oracle, patches have been published by Oracle Support, downloaded by DBAs (very early on, via posted floppy disks or CDs), and then applied to the target databasewhether to fix minor database bugs; apply security fixes; or upgrade the database from one patch version to the other, such as from 7.3.2 to 7.3.4, 8.1.5 to 8.1.6, or 9.2.0.4 to 9.2.0.6.
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