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Is there any difference in setting the Compatible Parameter to 11.2.0.0 vs 11.2.0.4 ? Are there any advantages / dis-advantages ?

user3470294
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  • I believe this post is offtopic because it belongs on dba.stackexchange.com – Appleman1234 Apr 04 '14 at 05:14
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    @Appleman1234 It could go either way, but for these borderline questions I generally prefer them to stay where they started. Although DBAs are typically the ones to set the value I think it will directly affect programmers and what features they can use. For example, I saw an issue the other day with the same code producing different results on different servers - I think it was related to this parameter and deferred segment creation but I'm not sure. – Jon Heller Apr 04 '14 at 06:57

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Yes, there is a difference. There are new features/behaviour changes in the patch-sets which would be only enabled if compatible parameter is bumped up accordingly.

Here is an example: http://blog.grid-it.nl/index.php/2013/06/09/asm-rebalance-power-limit-from-0-1024-starting-from-11-2-0-2/. (ASM power limit range is changed with compatible>=11.2.02).

The changes between patchsets concerning compatible level are usually not many (if any at all).

Regarding advantages/disadvantages: it really depends on the specific context. In general I prefer having compatible up-to-date to match the release version but there may be special cases when this is undesirable: either because of some regressions; or because of compatibility concerns.

Yavor
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The COMPATIBLE initialization parameter enables or disables the use of features. If you try to use any new features that make the database incompatible with the COMPATIBLE initialization parameter, then an error is displayed. However, any new features that do not make incompatible changes on disk are enabled. That's mean that you always will know exactly the need to update this parameter or not. I believe that in most cases you will not be required to define this parameter and may rely on the default that is 11.2.0.0 except the case when you see direct requirement in Oracle release notes.

Yuri Levinsky
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