RE: OT: Oracle Critical Patch Article
- From: "Taylor, Chris David" <Chris.Taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Paul Drake" <bdbafh@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:17:54 -0600
Very interesting analysis.
Chris Taylor
Sr. Oracle DBA
Ingram Barge Company
Nashville, TN 37205
Office: 615-517-3355
Cell: 615-354-4799
Email: chris.taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
________________________________
From: Paul Drake [mailto:bdbafh@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 11:12 AM
To: Taylor, Chris David
Cc: oracle-l
Subject: Re: OT: Oracle Critical Patch Article
On Jan 15, 2008 10:42 AM, Taylor, Chris David
<Chris.Taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How many of you guys have seen this?
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&;
articleId=9057226&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8
What are your thoughts? I know our organization falls into that
category but primarily because we aren't exposed to the outside world.
We don't have external applications so most times I believe that
critical patch updates can be applied during a normal maintenance
period.
chris
Chris,
The press release is located here:
http://www.sentrigo.com/press_releases-newsid-39.htm
and Pete Finnigan wrote about it here:
http://www.petefinnigan.com/weblog/archives/00001141.htm
Clearly, the company providing the figures has a self interest in having
a market for its products and services (which is disclaimed at the
bottom of the press release page).
"When asked: "Have you installed the latest Oracle CPU?" - Just 31
people, or ten percent of the 305 respondents, reported that they
applied the most recently issued Oracle CPU."
I just downloaded "the latest" critical patch update this morning, as
that is when it was released. I plan to apply it in a testing
environment later this afternoon.
Perhaps semantics matter here just a bit.
Only 35 people in the survey replied yes to one of the questions. That's
a fairly small sample, statistically speaking. If a dba only gathered
(estimated) stats with a sample size of 32 blocks out of a table with
say 32K blocks, I doubt that the stats would be very accurate.
Would developers be inclined to apply critical patch updates to
development servers (where there is no formal dba position)? I would
think not.
Are critical patch updates available for Oracle XE databases? No.
Are some applications running on database versions or patchsets that do
not have critical patch updates made available? Yes. (8.1.7.4 and
10.1.0.4 spring to mind.)
Would a dba be concerned about remote vulnerabilities for databases that
support only connections from application servers that are secured?
Probably not.
I'm skeptical that the results are representative and are useful for
anything other than stirring discussion (and marketing).
Paul
Other related posts:
