Upgrade Oracle Apex 5.1.4 to Oracle Apex 21.1.3 in AWS RDS

Its quick story and easy steps too to upgrade Oracle Apex in AWS RDS . But dependent ORDS (Oracle Rest Data Service) in-place upgrade little difficult task , we will solve that in next blog 

Environment Setup ,

1.Oracle RDS launched with 12.1.0 Engine version

C:\Users\datablogs>aws rds describe-db-instances
{
 “DBInstances”: [
 {
 “DBInstanceIdentifier”: “datablogs-db”,
 “DBInstanceClass”: “db.t3.medium”,
 “Engine”: “oracle-se2”,
 “DBInstanceStatus”: “available”,
 “MasterUsername”: “dataadmin”,
 “DBName”: “ORCL”,
 “Endpoint”: {
 “Address”: “datablogs-db.cv33pqc8qgq1.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com”,
 “Port”: 1521,
 “HostedZoneId”: “Z2R2ITUGPM61AM”
 },
.......
.......
"EngineVersion": "12.1.0.2.v25"

2.Create an option group and add APEX option value as 5.1.4 . Attached the option group into oracle 12c RDS 

C:\Users\datablogs>aws rds describe-option-groups --option-group-name oraapex
{
 “OptionGroupsList”: [
 {
 “OptionGroupName”: “oraapex”,
 “OptionGroupDescription”: “oraapex”,
 “EngineName”: “oracle-se2”,
 “MajorEngineVersion”: “12.1”,
 “Options”: [
{
 “OptionName”: “APEX”,
 “OptionDescription”: “Oracle Application Express Runtime Environment”,
 “Persistent”: false,
 “Permanent”: false,
 “OptionVersion”: “5.1.4.v1”,
 “OptionSettings”: [],
 “DBSecurityGroupMemberships”: [],
 “VpcSecurityGroupMemberships”: []
 }
 .......
}

By default , depends on the Apex version oracle RDS will be create the databases name as like version name ( Exp., Oracle Apex 5.1.4 - APEX_050100 . Oracle Apex 21.1.3 - APEX_210100 )

3.Once we launched the Oracle RDS , we can check Apex version using below command ,

Select comp_name,status,version from dba_registry order by comp_name;

Note : We can keep Oracle Apex schemas in the default user ( APEX_050100 ) else we can create separate schema and maintain it . But even if you upgrade major version database schema wont affect in oracle Apex .

4.Assume we are having workspaces and application connected with the current version

In current version 442 tables available , we are going to upgrade to Oracle 19c

5.Repeat Step 2 , Create an option group and add APEX option value as 21.1.3 . Attached the option group into oracle 19c RDS and begin the upgrade in console

5.1.Modify the Oracle instance in AWS RDS Console

5.2.Modify the additional options with new option group

6.Upgraded the Oracle RDS to 19c

C:\Users\datablogs>aws rds describe-db-instances
{
 “DBInstances”: [
 {
 “DBInstanceIdentifier”: “datablogs-db”,
 “DBInstanceClass”: “db.t3.medium”,
 “Engine”: “oracle-se2”,
 “DBInstanceStatus”: “available”,
 “MasterUsername”: “dataadmin”,
 “DBName”: “ORCL”,
 “Endpoint”: {
 “Address”: “datablogs-db.cv33pqc8qgq1.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com”,
 “Port”: 1521,
 “HostedZoneId”: “Z2R2ITUGPM61AM”
 },
.......
.......
"EngineVersion": "19.0.0.0.ru-2021-10.rur-2021-10.r1"

C:\Users\datablogs>aws rds describe-option-groups --option-group-name ora19apex
{
 “OptionGroupsList”: [
 {
 “OptionGroupName”: “oraapex”,
 “OptionGroupDescription”: “oraapex”,
 “EngineName”: “oracle-se2”,
 “MajorEngineVersion”: “12.1”,
 “Options”: [
{
 “OptionName”: “APEX”,
 “OptionDescription”: “Oracle Application Express Runtime Environment”,
 “Persistent”: false,
 “Permanent”: false,
 “OptionVersion”: “21.1.v1”,
 “OptionSettings”: [],
 “DBSecurityGroupMemberships”: [],
 “VpcSecurityGroupMemberships”: []
 }
 .......
}

7.Repeat Step 3 , we have upgraded to Oracle Apex 21.1.3

As we mentioned in previous note in Step 3 , new default schema created for latest version and existing schema tables didn't have any impact

Its easy task in AWS RDS to upgrade Oracle Apex , But in the next blog we will in-place upgrade of ORDS in detail

Thanks for Reading !!!