AWS News Blog

Amazon RDS Updates – Oracle Improvements and a New Minor Version

We’ve made two important updates to Amazon RDS for Oracle Database:

  1. A new minor version (containing some critical security fixes) is now available.
  2. Additional access privileges are now available (via the new minor version) to applications.

New Minor Version
Oracle Database version 11.2.0.2.v3 is now available. Oracle recommends an immediate upgrade to this version due to the critical security fixes that it contains.

Due to the critical nature of the fixes contained in this release we plan to perform an automatic minor version upgrade to all applicable RDS DB Instances in the near future (refer to the RDS Forum announcement for the exact timing). You can also upgrade now by opening the RDS page of the AWS Management Console, choosing the Modify DB Instance option, and selecting the new DB Engine Version:

Select Apply Immediately to make the change right away, or leave it unchecked to defer the update until the next maintenance window for your DB Instance.

Additional Access Privileges
Our customers have been asking for additional access privileges and we are happy to announce that the following privileges are now available in the new minor version (11.2.0.2.v3):

  1. Execute privileges to a number of DBMS packages including DBMS_CRYPTO, DBMS_ALERT, DBMS_LOCK, and DBMS_PIPE are now available, as are privileges to grant DBA, CONNECT, and RESOURCES roles to other users.
  2. The CTXAPP role is now available, and can also be granted to other users.
  3. The system privileges RESTRICTED SESSION and GRANT ANY OBJECT PRIVILEGE are now available.

 — Jeff;

 

Jeff Barr

Jeff Barr

Jeff Barr is Chief Evangelist for AWS. He started this blog in 2004 and has been writing posts just about non-stop ever since.