Oracle minor version upgrades

In RDS for Oracle, a minor version upgrade is an update to a major DB engine version. In RDS, a minor engine version is either a Release Update (RU) or Spatial Patch Bundle (SPB). For example, if your DB instance runs major version Oracle Database 21c and minor version 21.0.0.0.ru-2024-10.rur-2024-10.r1, you can upgrade your DB engine to minor version 21.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.rur-2025-01.r1. RDS for Oracle doesn't support minor version downgrades.

You can upgrade your DB engine to a minor version manually or automatically. To learn how to upgrade manually, see Manually upgrading the engine version. To learn how to configure automatic upgrades, see Automatically upgrading the minor engine version. Whether you upgrade manually or automatically, a minor version upgrade entails downtime. Consider this downtime when you plan your upgrades.

Release Updates (RUs) and Spatial Patch Bundles (SPBs)

In RDS, a release update (RU) is a quarterly minor engine version that includes security fixes, bug fixes, and new features for Oracle Database. A Spatial Patch Bundle (SPB) is an RU engine version that includes patches designed for the Oracle Spatial option. For example, the SPB named 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.spb-1.r1 includes all patches in the corresponding RU 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.rur-2025-01.r1 plus patches specific to Spatial. SPBs are supported only for Oracle Database 19c.

When your instance is configured for automatic minor version upgrades, RUs and SPBs are on separate upgrade paths. Typically, an SPB is released 2–3 weeks after its corresponding RU. The following table shows sample minor versions for Oracle Database 19c.

If your DB instance is configured for automatic upgrades, your instance is on the upgrade path corresponding to your current version. For example, if your DB instance runs version 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.rur-2025-01.r1, then when 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-04.rur-2025-04.r1 is released, your instance automatically upgrades to this RU. Similarly, if your DB instance runs 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.spb-1.r1, then when 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-04.spb-1.r1 is released, your instance automatically upgrades to this SPB. An instance running 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.rur-2025-01.r1, which is an RU, won't automatically upgrade to 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-04.spb-1.r1, which is an SPB on a separate upgrade path.

You can upgrade your DB instance to SPBs even if your instance doesn't use Spatial, but the Spatial patches apply only to Oracle Spatial. You can upgrade manually from an RU to an SPB at the same engine version or higher. For example, you can upgrade your instance from 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.rur-2025-01.r1 to either of the following engine versions:

You can upgrade your instance from an SPB to an RU only if the RU is a higher engine version. For example, you can upgrade from SPB version 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-04.spb-1.r1 to a higher RU version 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-07.rur-2025-07.r1 but not to the same RU version 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-04.rur-2025-04.r1.

If your DB instance is configured for automatic minor version upgrades, and you manually upgrade from an RU to an SPB or from an SPB to an RU, your automatic upgrade path changes. Suppose that you manually upgrade from RU version 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.rur-2025-01.r1 to SPB version 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.spb-1.r1. Your next automatic minor version upgrade will be to SPB version 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-04.spb-1.r1.

Because SPBs function as RUs, the RDS APIs for upgrading your instance to RUs and SPBs are identical. The following commands demonstrate upgrading to an RU and to an SPB.

aws rds modify-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance \
    --engine-version 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.rur-2025-01.r1

aws rds modify-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance \
    --engine-version 19.0.0.0.ru-2025-01.spb-1.r1

For more information about the Oracle Spatial option, see How Spatial Patch Bundles (SPBs) work. For supported RUs and SPBs for Oracle Database 19c, see Amazon RDS for Oracle Database 19c (19.0.0.0).

Turning on automatic minor version upgrades for Oracle

In an automatic minor version upgrade, RDS applies the latest available minor version to your Oracle database without manual intervention. An Amazon RDS for Oracle DB instance schedules your upgrade during the next maintenance window in the following circumstances:

To learn how to turn on automatic upgrades, see Automatically upgrading the minor engine version.

Advance notice of automatic minor version upgrade scheduling

RDS publishes an advance notice before it begins scheduling automatic upgrades. You can find the notification in the Maintenance & backups tab of the database details page. The message has the following format:

An automatic minor version upgrade to engine version will become available on availability-date and will be applied during a subsequent maintenance window.

The availability-date in the advance notice is the date when RDS starts scheduling upgrades for DB instances in your AWS Region. It is not the date on which the upgrade of your DB instance is scheduled to occur. For example, if the availability-date is March 1, on this date RDS might schedule your upgrade for April 14.

You can also get the upgrade availability date by using the describe-pending-maintenance-actions command in the AWS CLI, as shown in the following example:

aws rds describe-pending-maintenance-actions 

{
    "PendingMaintenanceActions": [
        {
            "ResourceIdentifier": "arn:aws:rds:us-east-1:123456789012:db:orclinst1",
            "PendingMaintenanceActionDetails": [
                {
                    "Action": "db-upgrade",
                    "Description": "Automatic minor version upgrade to 21.0.0.0.ru-2024-07.rur-2024-07.r1",
                    "CurrentApplyDate": "2024-12-02T08:10:00Z",
                    "OptInStatus": "next-maintenance"
                }
            ]
        }, ...

The following table describes your options for each type of pending maintenance action message.

For more information about describe-pending-maintenance-actions, see the AWS CLI Command Reference.

When RDS schedules automatic minor version upgrades for Oracle

When the availability date for automatic upgrades arrives, RDS begins scheduling upgrades. For most AWS Regions, RDS schedules your upgrade to the latest quarterly RU approximately four to six weeks after the availability date. The scheduled date varies depending on the AWS Region and other factors. For more information about RUs and RURs, see Amazon RDS for Oracle Release Notes.

When RDS schedules the upgrade, the following notification appears in the Maintenance & backups tab of the database details page:

Automatic minor version upgrade to engine-version

The preceding message indicates that RDS has scheduled the upgrade of your DB engine in the next maintenance window.

Sometimes a new minor version becomes available before RDS applies a previous minor version. For example, your instance is running minor-version-1 when both minor-version-2 and minor-version-3 are available as upgrade targets. In this situation, to avoid unnecessary downtime for your DB instances, RDS schedules the automatic minor version upgrade to the most recent version, skipping the upgrade to the previous version. In this example, RDS upgrades your instance from minor-version-1 directly to minor-version-3.

To ensure certain frequency of minor version upgrades, you can upgrade your instances manually instead of using the automatic upgrade mechanism. To schedule an upgrade for the next maintenance window, specify --no-apply-immediately when you upgrade to a minor version using modify-db-instance. To upgrade immediately, specify --apply-immediately instead. For more information, see Manually upgrading the engine version.

Managing an automatic minor version upgrade for Oracle

When a new minor version becomes available, you can upgrade your DB instance to this version manually. The following example upgrades the DB instance named orclinst1 immediately:

aws rds apply-pending-maintenance-action \
    --resource-identifier arn:aws:rds:us-east-1:123456789012:db:orclinst1 \
    --apply-action db-upgrade \
    --opt-in-type immediate

To opt out of an automatic minor version upgrade that hasn't been scheduled yet, set --opt-in-type to undo-opt-in, as in the following example:

aws rds apply-pending-maintenance-action \
    --resource-identifier arn:aws:rds:us-east-1:123456789012:db:orclinst1 \
    --apply-action db-upgrade \
    --opt-in-type undo-opt-in

If RDS has already scheduled an upgrade for your DB instance, you can't use apply-pending-maintenance-action to cancel it. But you can modify your DB instance and turn off the automatic minor upgrade feature, which then unschedules the upgrade.

To learn how to turn off automatic minor version upgrades, see Automatically upgrading the minor engine version. For more information about apply-pending-maintenance-action, see the AWS CLI Command Reference.