Posted On: Sep 20, 2016

You can now send email directly from your RDS for Oracle databases by using the UTL_Mail package. To enable UTL_Mail for your DB instance, you need to create a new option group, or copy or modify an existing option group and add the option Oracle UTL_MAIL to it. You then need to associate this option group to your DB instance either by selecting the option while creating a new instance or while modifying an existing instance. Right now, we only support single attachments up to 32KB in size and only ASCII and EBCDIC character encodings. Amazon RDS supports UTL_Mail for the Oracle version 12.1.0.2.v5 and later, 12.1.0.1.v6 and later and 11.2.0.4.v9 and later. These versions include the July 2016 Oracle Patch Set Updates (PSU).  

The Oracle July 2016 Patch Set Updates (PSU) is now available for Amazon RDS for Oracle. To create a new Oracle "11.2.0.4.v9", "12.1.0.1.v6" and "12.1.0.2.v5" DB instance with just a few clicks use the "Launch DB Instance Wizard" in the AWS Management Console and select the appropriate DB engine version. To upgrade an existing database instance, use the "Modify" option in the AWS Management Console and select the appropriate DB engine version. Before you upgrade a production database instance, we recommend that you test the upgrade process on a snapshot restore of your production DB instance to verify the duration of the upgrade process as well as test your application with the new DB engine version.

To learn more about how to use UTL_Mail with Amazon RDS for Oracle, visit the RDS UTL_MAIL documentation. To learn more about Oracle PSUs supported on RDS, visit the RDS patch update documentation.