patches

[Boivin, Patrice J]

Title: Pro*C for Oracle 817 on Win2000?

I am wondering how your sites handle patching production servers.   I just did a search in MetaLink, since 8174 was released there have been 48 patches (if I just select RDBMS).   If I select other items in my search, I get upwards of 70 additional bug fixes.   How do high reliability sites handle patching?  I assume they would rather fix potential problems (testing the patches on a testbed of course) rather than just apply bug fixes as problems are encountered on production servers.   regards, Patrice Boivin Systems Analyst (Oracle Certified DBA)