Oracle Locator - Amazon Relational Database Service
Supported database releases for Oracle LocatorPrerequisitesBest practicesAdding the OptionUsing Oracle LocatorRemoving the Option

Oracle Locator

Amazon RDS supports Oracle Locator through the use of the LOCATOR option. Oracle Locator provides capabilities that are typically required to support internet and wireless service-based applications and partner-based GIS solutions. Oracle Locator is a limited subset of Oracle Spatial. For more information, see Oracle Locator in the Oracle documentation.

Important

If you use Oracle Locator, Amazon RDS automatically updates your DB instance to the latest Oracle PSU if there are security vulnerabilities with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 9+ or other announced security vulnerabilities.

Supported database releases for Oracle Locator

RDS for Oracle supports Oracle Locator for Oracle Database 19c. Oracle Locator isn't supported for Oracle Database 21c, but its functionality is available in the Oracle Spatial option. Formerly, the Spatial option required additional licenses. Oracle Locator represented a subset of Oracle Spatial features and didn't require additional licenses. In 2019, Oracle announced that all Oracle Spatial features were included in the Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition 2 licenses without additional cost. Consequently, the Oracle Spatial option no longer required additional licensing. For more information, see Machine Learning, Spatial and Graph - No License Required! in the Oracle Database Insider blog.

Prerequisites for Oracle Locator

The following are prerequisites for using Oracle Locator:

  • Your DB instance must be of sufficient class. Oracle Locator is not supported for the db.t3.micro or db.t3.small DB instance classes. For more information, see RDS for Oracle DB instance classes.

  • Your DB instance must have Auto Minor Version Upgrade enabled. This option enables your DB instance to receive minor DB engine version upgrades automatically when they become available and is required for any options that install the Oracle Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Amazon RDS uses this option to update your DB instance to the latest Oracle Patch Set Update (PSU) or Release Update (RU). For more information, see Modifying an Amazon RDS DB instance.

Best practices for Oracle Locator

The following are best practices for using Oracle Locator:

Adding the Oracle Locator option

The following is the general process for adding the LOCATOR option to a DB instance:

  1. Create a new option group, or copy or modify an existing option group.

  2. Add the option to the option group.

  3. Associate the option group with the DB instance.

If Oracle Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is not installed on the DB instance, there is a brief outage while the LOCATOR option is added. There is no outage if Oracle Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is already installed on the DB instance. After you add the option, you don't need to restart your DB instance. As soon as the option group is active, Oracle Locator is available.

Note

During this outage, password verification functions are disabled briefly. You can also expect to see events related to password verification functions during the outage. Password verification functions are enabled again before the Oracle DB instance is available.

To add the LOCATOR option to a DB instance

  1. Determine the option group that you want to use. You can create a new option group or use an existing option group. If you want to use an existing option group, skip to the next step. Otherwise, create a custom DB option group with the following settings:

    1. For Engine, choose the oracle edition for your DB instance.

    2. For Major engine version, choose the version of your DB instance.

    For more information, see Creating an option group.

  2. Add the LOCATOR option to the option group. For more information about adding options, see Adding an option to an option group.

  3. Apply the option group to a new or existing DB instance:

Using Oracle Locator

After you enable the Oracle Locator option, you can begin using it. You should only use Oracle Locator features. Don't use any Oracle Spatial features unless you have a license for Oracle Spatial.

For a list of features that are supported for Oracle Locator, see Features Included with Locator in the Oracle documentation.

For a list of features that are not supported for Oracle Locator, see Features Not Included with Locator in the Oracle documentation.

Removing the Oracle Locator option

After you drop all objects that use data types provided by the LOCATOR option, you can remove the option from a DB instance. If Oracle Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is not installed on the DB instance, there is a brief outage while the LOCATOR option is removed. There is no outage if Oracle Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is already installed on the DB instance. After you remove the LOCATOR option, you don't need to restart your DB instance.

To drop the LOCATOR option

  1. Back up your data.

    Warning

    If the instance uses data types that were enabled as part of the option, and if you remove the LOCATOR option, you can lose data. For more information, see Backing up, restoring, and exporting data.

  2. Check whether any existing objects reference data types or features of the LOCATOR option.

    If LOCATOR options exist, the instance can get stuck when applying the new option group that doesn't have the LOCATOR option. You can identify the objects by using the following queries:

    SELECT OWNER, SEGMENT_NAME, TABLESPACE_NAME, BYTES/1024/1024 mbytes
FROM   DBA_SEGMENTS
WHERE  SEGMENT_TYPE LIKE '%TABLE%'
AND    (OWNER, SEGMENT_NAME) IN
       (SELECT DISTINCT OWNER, TABLE_NAME 
        FROM   DBA_TAB_COLUMNS
        WHERE  DATA_TYPE='SDO_GEOMETRY'
        AND    OWNER <> 'MDSYS')
ORDER BY 1,2,3,4;

SELECT OWNER, TABLE_NAME, COLUMN_NAME
FROM   DBA_TAB_COLUMNS 
WHERE  DATA_TYPE = 'SDO_GEOMETRY' 
AND    OWNER <> 'MDSYS' 
ORDER BY 1,2,3;

  3. Drop any objects that reference data types or features of the LOCATOR option.

  4. Do one of the following:

    • Remove the LOCATOR option from the option group it belongs to. This change affects all DB instances that use the option group. For more information, see Removing an option from an option group.

    • Modify the DB instance and specify a different option group that doesn't include the LOCATOR option. This change affects a single DB instance. You can specify the default (empty) option group, or a different custom option group. For more information, see Modifying an Amazon RDS DB instance.