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Welcome to Block 64 Support

Oracle product inventory

Joseph Holland

Block 64's tooling is capable of gathering key Oracle components, but not Oracle's complete catalog of products (which contains 4000+ products - and counting!). The majority of Oracle discoveries are focused on Databases and Options, and the good news is that you can use Block 64's tooling for gathering this data with confidence. However, in scenarios where 'pluggable' databases have been deployed, and in AIX deployments that leverage Logical Partitions (LPARs) we have observed issues, and you may require our assistance in these scenarios.

For discoveries of less common Oracle products,  or products outside of the database / database options catalog, we would recommend the use of Oracle's own scripts for data gathering currently. 

Oracle products are wide-ranging - from Java runtime packages to database servers and everything in between - and each package is unique in how they are discovered during inventory processes.

Privileges required

In order to collect Oracle Database or Oracle Middleware, we use similar processes to those that Oracle use during a software audit. Those processes require us to search a system for any and all potential instances of Oracle-related files and folders, and to have read access to all of those potential locations.

In short, that kind of access is best provisioned by providing an account with administrative rights or, in other words, root access.

Java SE / JRE

  • Java SE / JRE collection requires access on Windows computers to the following registry keys:
    • HKLM\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment
    • HKLM\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Update

Oracle Database

  • Oracle database inventory requires a credential set that can access the following views and tables:
    • V$Version
    • V$Database
    • V$Session
    • V$Parameter
    • V$Option
    • DBA_FEATURE_USAGE_STATISTICS
  • Oracle database inventory first tries to connect via a remote connection over TCP port 1521, then via a local call to sql*plus over an SSH tunnel.

Oracle "middleware"

"Middleware" includes a huge swath of products, including Oracle Application Server, Tuxedo, WebLogic and many more. More info can be found on Oracle's documentation site. We are progressively gathering more and more of the necessary "metadata" to understand your Oracle product footprint. The first step in gathering this data, is that we require access to the following default file locations (or registry keys in the case of Windows):

Note

While these are the default file locations, Oracle instances can be installed in any location on a system, so our tool does need privileges to search for and read any and all related Oracle files and folders, not only the default ones below.

*nix:

  • /etc/oraInst.loc
  • /etc/oratab

Solaris:

  • /var/opt/oracle/oraInst.loc
  • /var/opt/oracle/oratab

Windows:

  • HKLM\Software\Oracle\inst_loc

In those locations is information on where to find various XML or TXT files (including inventory.xml) and other resources that will further give us information about your Oracle installation footprint.

From there, we need to be able to parse those files for further details, including potentially searching deeper for other resources. This is why the note above regarding privileges is relevant.