When you create a new Oracle home using AutoUpgrade, you can now give it a custom name.

What do I mean by a custom name? Let’s examine the Oracle Inventory:

cat /u01/app/oraInventory/ContentsXML/inventory.xml

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<!-- Copyright (c) 1999, 2025, Oracle and/or its affiliates.
All rights reserved. -->
<!-- Do not modify the contents of this file by hand. -->
<INVENTORY>
<VERSION_INFO>
   <SAVED_WITH>12.2.0.7.0</SAVED_WITH>
   <MINIMUM_VER>2.1.0.6.0</MINIMUM_VER>
</VERSION_INFO>
<HOME_LIST>
<HOME NAME="OraDB19Home1" LOC="/u01/app/oracle/product/19" TYPE="O" IDX="1"/>
<HOME NAME="OraDB21Home1" LOC="/u01/app/oracle/product/21" TYPE="O" IDX="2"/>
<HOME NAME="OraDB23Home1" LOC="/u01/app/oracle/product/23" TYPE="O" IDX="3"/>
</HOME_LIST>
<COMPOSITEHOME_LIST>
</COMPOSITEHOME_LIST>
</INVENTORY>

The Oracle home name is listed in the NAME attribute on the HOME element.

When you install a new Oracle home, the installer automatically generate a name for you, like OraDb19Home1.

In AutoUpgrade, you can decide to use a custom name instead of an auto-generated one.

How To Specify A Custom Oracle Home Name

• I use the latest version of AutoUpgrade

  wget https://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/otn_software/autoupgrade.jar
  

• I create the following config file:

  global.global_log_dir=/home/oracle/autoupgrade-patching/log
  global.keystore=/home/oracle/autoupgrade-patching/keystore
  patch1.source_home=/u01/app/oracle/product/19
  patch1.target_home=/u01/app/oracle/product/19_28
  patch1.home_settings.home_name=DBHOME1928
  patch1.sid=FTEX
  patch1.folder=/home/oracle/patch-repo
  patch1.patch=RU,OCW,DPBP,OJVM,OPATCH
  

  • Notice the home_settings.home_name parameter. This is where I specify the custom name for the new Oracle home.
• I patch the database using AutoUpgrade:

  java -jar autoupgrade.jar -config FTEX.cfg -mode deploy
  

• I check the inventory:

  grep -i "19_28" /u01/app/oraInventory/ContentsXML/inventory.xml
  <HOME NAME="DBHOME1928" LOC="/u01/app/oracle/product/19_28" TYPE="O" IDX="4"/>
  

  • AutoUpgrade created the new Oracle home with the name DBHOME1928.

What Do I Use It For

For a regular Oracle home, it’s used seldom. I’ve seen some customers using certain Oracle home names as part of their corporate standard, but most people don’t care.

However, in a read-only Oracle home, the name is important. It now becomes part of Oracle Base Home which is the location for most of the writable files from the Oracle home.

Do you have a specific use case for the Oracle home name or do you have a corporate standard mandating a certain name? Leave a comment and let me know.

Happy patching!