How to import Outlook Contact Groups into Thunderbird Mailing Lists

Importing Outlook contacts into the Thunderbird address book is quick and easy, but if you also want to transfer your contact groups into TB's mailing lists, there are some extra steps required. But if you have Contact Groups with thousands of entries, re-creating them im TB is probably not an option.

Start with any given Contact Group. Click File|Save As, choose Text Only (*.txt) as type and save that file to a location of your choice.

Start Excel and click Open|Browse

Open the exported file

In the import wizard, make sure to pick the correct character set. Scroll in the Preview region to check that the national character set is chosen correctly. For the rest we can go with the defaults, so just click Finish.

Double check, that everything has been imported correctly. Then mark all the header lines and delete them.

Click File|Save As, choose CSV UTF8 as output format and Save the file.

Move over to Thunderbird/Betterbird and on the Address Book tab click Import.

Go with the default .csv and Continue

Select your exported .csv and Open it.

Uncheck First row contains field names. In my case, the defaults for the address book fields are OK, but you might need to adjust the choice, then Continue.

I recommend to create a new directory. If something goes wrong, this is the easiest option to correct. Continue, Start Import and Finish. 

Now we have the Outlook Contact Group as new Address Book in Thunderbird.

To get a Thunderbird Mailing List from these contacts, mark all and click New List.

Fill out the fields if you like, the location for that Mailing List could also be your usual address book.

Here we are, your Outlook Contact Group imported as a Thunderbird Mailing List.

Running the Oracle 23ai Autonomous Database Free Container Image

 With the Oracle Database 23ai comes a new deployment option, the free Autonomous Database Free Container Image. It gives developers the option to develop with an Autonomous Database even when not connected to the internet, eg. when travelling. This post shows how to set it up on Oracle Linux 9.4, in my case it is running in a VirtualBox VM on my Windows desktop PC. For details, see the official documentation, this is only meant as a quick runthrough.

Following the documentation, start with

podman machine init 
podman machine set --cpus 4 --memory 8192 
podman machine start 

Maybe it is just my system, but when running podman machine init I get the error qemu-system-x86_64: executable file not found in $PATH. A post on forums.oracle.com described the following solution, which worked on my system:

sudo ln -s /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64

The podman command should run now, so follow the steps from the documentation.

podman pull container-registry.oracle.com/database/adb-free:latest-23ai
podman images container-registry.oracle.com/database/adb-free:latest-23ai

That image should show up on your system:

It is important to choose a password which is compliant with the images policy "The ADMIN_PASSWORD must be between 12 and 30 characters long and must include at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, and one numeric".

Choosing a too simple password results in a runtime error, check with podman logs adb-free.

Then start a container with that image, in my case an ATP instance. 

podman run -d \
-p 1521:1522 \
-p 1522:1522 \
-p 8443:8443 \
-p 27017:27017 \
-e WORKLOAD_TYPE='ATP' \
-e WALLET_PASSWORD=*** \
-e ADMIN_PASSWORD=*** \
--cap-add SYS_ADMIN \
--device /dev/fuse \
--name adb-free \
container-registry.oracle.com/database/adb-free:latest-23ai

If nothing went wrong, you should see the container running.

So let's try some stuff. First open Database Actions by browsing https://localhost:8443/ords/sql-developer (and accept the self signed certificate), login with admin and your super secure password from above.

Also APEX works ootb, just login again with your password from above.

To access the ADB from outside with your favorite tooling, copy the wallet from to image to a folder. For SQLDeveloper, we need it as a zip.

podman cp adb-free:/u01/app/oracle/wallets/tls_wallet ~/tls_wallet
zip adb-free-wallet.zip tls_wallet/*

Use that wallet zip file in your tool of choice, in my case VSCodium with the Oracle SQL Developer Extension for VSCode.

Welcome to the Oracle 23ai Autonomous Database Free Container Image.

As long as your podman is ready to run and you respect the password compliancy, this is setup within minutes.

Oracle on Windows: out-of-place Patching with Virtual Account

This guide shows a way, how a Gold Image can be created from an Oracle Home on Windows and how that can be used to patch other Oracle Homes. This worked for me, but is not meant to be the only, best or officially recommended Oracle way.

Prepare the image source home

Say we have an unpatched 19.3 installed in c:\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_1 with a database ORCL (non-PDB), installed with the option to use a Virtual Account, which is the default from the Oracle installer.

So the owner for the Oracle software home and datafiles has been created as ORA_OraDB19Home1_SVCACCTS by the installer.

Next we set up a new Oracle home and patch it, to make it the source of our gold image in c:\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_2.

There is no standard oraenv.sh under Windows. As some tasks have to be done from the old and some from the new home, it helps to create two different oraenv scripts, eg. old-oraenv.cmd and new-oraenv.cmd , like in my environment:

old-oraenv.cmd

set ORACLE_BASE=C:\Oracle

set ORACLE_HOME=%ORACLE_BASE%\Product\19.0.0\dbhome_1
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\bin;%PATH%
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\perl\bin;%PATH%
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch\;%PATH%
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\jdk\bin\;%PATH%

new-oraenv.cmd

set ORACLE_BASE=C:\Oracle
set OLDORA_HOME=%ORACLE_BASE%\Product\19.0.0\dbhome_1
set ORACLE_HOME=%ORACLE_BASE%\Product\19.21\dbhome_3
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\bin;%PATH%
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\perl\bin;%PATH%
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch\;%PATH%
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\jdk\bin\;%PATH%

Run your oraenv.cmd, unpack the software (you can use tar xfz under Windows for unzip) and run setup.bat, see the Database Installation Guide 19c for Microsoft Windows. 

C:\app>oraenv.cmd

C:\app>mkdir %ORACLE_HOME%
C:\app>cd %ORACLE_HOME%
C:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_2>tar xfz z:\Install\Windows\WINDOWS.X64_193000_db_home.zip
C:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_2>setup.bat 

We only need to setup the software only and this is a single instance installation. Under Linux, we would just apply the RU and one-offs from the setup, but the options '-applyRU 'and '-applyOneOffs' are not available under Windows (see the comments on https://mikedietrichde.com/2022/05/17/simple-database-installation-with-applyru-and-applyoneoffs/, search for Windows).

Update opatch by following Doc ID 274526.1 from Oracle Support, in this case using opatch 12.2.0.1.41.

For the Gold Image, we will patch the 19.3 dbhome_2 up to 19.21 plus two one-off patches for the JVM. So download and unpack the patches to a given directory, in this example c:\app\oracle\patches. The patch numbers are 35638318, 35648110 and 35681552, these have to be applied manually by running opatch apply in every patch directory, starting with 35681552 which is the Bundle Patch 19.21.

Now the dbhome_2 is on 19.21 with two additional one-off patches and will serve as source for our Gold Image.

Create the Gold Image

Next, from the patched Oracle Home, we create a Gold Image following the documentation.

setup.exe -createGoldImage -destinationLocation c:\oracle\images 

Wait for the installer to finish, then you should have the newly created image in the directory stated by -destinationLocation. The dbhome_2 can be deleted with Oracle's deinstall program.

Out-of-place patching using the Gold Image

We now have an unpatched Oracle 19.3 home in dbhome_1 with the database ORCL and a gold image with version version 19.21 and two one-off patches.

For out-of-place patching, we need to create a new Oracle Home, where we unpack the Gold Image. 

C:\app>new-oraenv.cmd
C:\app>mkdir %ORACLE_HOME%
C:\app>cd %ORACLE_HOME%
C:\app\oracle\product\19.21\dbhome_3>tar xfz c:\app\oracle\images\db_home_2024-02-21_05-21-14PM.zip
C:\app\oracle\product\19.21\dbhome_3>setup

Run setup, choose software only and accept the default virtual account. If setup.exe crashes with a Java EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION, follow MOS note 2772729.1.

rem --- Copy spfile and pwdfile to new ORACLE_HOME
copy %OLDORA_HOME%\database\SPFILEORCL.ORA %ORACLE_HOME%\database
copy %OLDORA_HOME%\database\PWDorcl.ora    %ORACLE_HOME%\database

Shutdown the database first, then copy the spfile and pwdfile to the new dbhome_3

The setup has created a new user ORA_OraDB19Home2_SVCACCTS and granted full control for the oradata directory, so the Oracle software from the new dbhome_2 can take over the files from the old dbhome_1.

On Unix/Linux systems, we would already be done, but on Windows we have services which need to be migrated to the new Oracle Home.

In the registry, we see that some services are linked to a given Oracle Home, so these need to be recreated.

set OLDORA_HOME=%ORACLE_BASE%\product\19.0.0\dbhome_1

rem --- use oradim to delete Oracle services ---
oradim -DELETE -SID orcl

For easier scripting, we point OLDORA_HOME to the Oracle home running the old version.

First delete the instance services with oradim, which will remove OracleServiceORCL, OracleVssWriterORCL and OracleJobSchedulerORCL. 

The Oracle Home specific services will remain. These will be deleted, when deleting the dbhome_1. 

rem --- stop remaining Oracle services ---

sc stop OracleOraDB19Home1MTSRecoveryService
sc config OracleOraDB19Home1MTSRecoveryService start= disabled
sc stop OracleOraDB19Home1TNSListener

sc config OracleOraDB19Home1TNSListener start=disabled

But as one advantage of out-of-place patching is, that you can go back to the old version, you probably want to keep them for some time, so we will just disable them.

The remaining services should now be stopped and disabled.

rem --- create new services for new Oracle home

oradim -NEW -SID orcl -STARTMODE auto -SRVCSTART system -SPFILE -PFILE %ORACLE_HOME%\database\SPFILEORCL.ORA

Then use oradim again to create the instance specific services

It recreates the OracleServiceorcl, OracleVssWriterorcl and OracleJobSchedulerorcl for the new Oracle home.

Double checking from the Registry, that we are now running on the patched dbhome_3

Also from SQLPlus, everything looks fine.

rem --- recreate remaining services
%ORACLE_HOME%\bin\oramtsctl -new
%ORACLE_HOME%\bin\lsnrctl start
sc config "OracleOraDB19Home3TNSListener" start= auto

The formerly disabled services from the old home need to be recreated for the new home. Starting the Listener automatically creates a new Service for the new home. That should be configured to start automatically.

Now we have migrated all services to the new Oracle home.

rem --- start the database and run datapatch
rem --- not needed with service auto start --- @echo startup | sqlplus / as sysdba
rem --- @echo alter pluggable database all open | sqlplus / as sysdba
rem --- @echo show pdbs | sqlplus / as sysdba

@echo @?/rdbms/admin/utlrp.sql | sqlplus / as sysdba
%ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch\datapatch

Before running the datapatch, make sure that all pds are open if already running on Mutlitenant architecture. When the open state has been saved by using ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE ... SAVE STATE, that step can be skipped. Here we open all PDB's before running the datapatch 

The database software and data dictionary should now be on the new version.

rem --- apply optimizer fixes for every PDB
@echo @?/rdbms/admin/dbmsoptim.sql | sqlplus / as sysdba
@echo @?/rdbms/admin/prvtoptim.plb | sqlplus / as sysdba
@echo execute dbms_optim_bundle.enable_optim_fixes('ON','BOTH', 'YES'); | sqlplus / as sysdba

Last step is enabling the optimizer fixes for the new version. That's it, we are running on 19.21 after out-of-place patching.

Finally, after some time, you might want to delete the old 19.3 Oracle home dbhome_1. Run %ORACLE_HOME%\deinstall\deinstall.bat to clean up the old installation.

After the deinstallation of the old home, only the patched 19.21 services from dbhome_3 will remain.

The complete scripting can be found on GitLab.

Oracle on Windows: create 19.21 Gold Image and use it for out-of-place patching

This guide shows a way, how a Gold Image can be created from an Oracle Home on Windows and how that can be used to patch other Oracle Homes. This worked for me, but is not meant to be the only, best or officially recommended Oracle way.

Prepare the image source home

Start with a fresh installed Oracle Home, in this case under D:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_1\.

There is no standard oraenv.sh under Windows, a minimal oraenv.cmd could look like that:

set ORACLE_BASE=C:\app\oracle
set ORACLE_HOME=%ORACLE_BASE%\product\19.0.0\dbhome_1
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\bin;%PATH%
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\perl\bin;%PATH%
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch\;%PATH%   

Run your oraenv.cmd, unpack the software (you can use tar xfz under Windows for unzip) and run setup.bat, see the Database Installation Guide 19c for Microsoft Windows. 

C:\app>mkdir c:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_1
C:\app>oraenv.cmd
C:\app>cd %ORACLE_HOME%
C:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_2>tar xfz z:\Install\Windows\WINDOWS.X64_193000_db_home.zip
C:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_2>setup.bat 

In this example, we use an existing user oracle instead of a virtual account, which would be the default from the oracle installer. This makes directory handling easier for out-of-place-patching. Also we only need to setup the software only and this is a single instance installation. Under Linux, we would just apply the RU and one-offs from the setup, but the options '-applyRU 'and '-applyOneOffs' are not available under Windows (see the comments on https://mikedietrichde.com/2022/05/17/simple-database-installation-with-applyru-and-applyoneoffs/, search for Windows).

Update opatch by following Doc ID 274526.1 from Oracle Support, in this case using opatch 12.2.0.1.41.

For the Gold Image, we will patch the 19.03 dbhome_1 up to 19.21 plus two one-off patches for the JVM. So download and unpack the patches to a given directory, in this example c:\app\oracle\patches. The patch numbers are 35638318, 35648110 and 35681552, these have to be applied manually by running opatch apply in every patch directory, starting with 35681552 which is the Bundle Patch 19.21.

Now the dbhome_1 is on 19.21 with two additional one-off patches and will serve as source for our Gold Image.

Create the Gold Image

Next, from the patched Oracle Home, we create a Gold Image following the documentation.

setup.exe -createGoldImage -destinationLocation c:\app\oracle\images 

Wait for the installer to finish, then you should have the newly created image in the directory stated by -destinationLocation.

Create new Oracle Home and database

Next we create a new Oracle Home and a Database ORCL/ORCLPDB under dbhome_2. Create the new directory, change the ORACLE_HOME variable in oraenv.cmd to point to dbhome_2 and run it. Then unpack the 19.03 software to that directory the same way as dbhome_1 before.

C:\app>mkdir c:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_2
C:\app>oraenv.cmd
C:\app>cd %ORACLE_HOME%
C:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_2>tar xfz z:\Install\Windows\WINDOWS.X64_193000_db_home.zip
C:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_2>setup.bat

Run setup.exe in dbhome_2 and this time also create a database ORCL with a PDB ORCLPDB.

So now we have a patched dbhome_1 as source for the Gold Image and an unpatched dbhome_2 running the database ORCL with the PDB ORCLPDB.

Out-of-place patching using the Gold Image

For out-of-place patching, we need to create a new Oracle Home, where we unpack the Gold Image. Change the ORACLE_HOME in oraenv.cmd to dbhome_3 and run it.

C:\app>oraenv.cmd
C:\app>mkdir c:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_3
C:\app>cd %ORACLE_HOME%
C:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_3>tar xfz c:\app\oracle\images\db_home_2024-02-21_05-21-14PM.zip
C:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_3>setup

Run setup, choose software only and the oracle user instead of a virtual account. If setup.exe crashes with a Java EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION, follow MOS note 2772729.1.

On Unix/Linux systems, we would already be done, but on Windows we have services which need to be migrated to the new Oracle Home.

In the registry, we see that the services are linked to a given Oracle Home, so these need to be migrated.

set OLDORA_HOME=%ORACLE_BASE%\product\19.0.0\dbhome_2

rem --- stop all Oracle services first ---
net stop OracleOraDB19Home2MTSRecoveryService
net stop OracleOraDB19Home2TNSListener
net stop OracleServiceORCL
net stop OracleVssWriterORCL

Stop all services from dbhome_2. For easier scripting, we point OLDORA_HOME to the Oracle home running the old version.

rem --- Copy spfile and pwdfile to new ORACLE_HOME
copy %OLDORA_HOME%\database\SPFILEORCL.ORA %ORACLE_HOME%\database
copy %OLDORA_HOME%\database\PWDorcl.ora    %ORACLE_HOME%\database

Copy the spfile and pwdfile to dbhome_3

rem -- Delete old services
%OLDORA_HOME%\bin\oramtsctl -delete
sc delete OracleOraDB19Home2TNSListener

Delete the MTS and Listener services from the old home.

rem --- Point services to new ORACLE_HOME
sc config OracleServiceORCL         binPath="c:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_3\bin\ORACLE.EXE ORCL"
sc config OracleJobSchedulerORCL    binPath="c:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_3\bin\extjob.exe ORCL"
sc config OracleVssWriterORCL       binPath="c:\app\oracle\product\19.0.0\dbhome_3\bin\OraVSSW.exe ORCL"

Migrate the OracleService, JobScheduler and VssWriter from the old to the new home.

rem --- create new services
%ORACLE_HOME%\bin\oramtsctl -new
%ORACLE_HOME%\bin\lsnrctl start
sc config "OracleOraDB19Home3TNSListener" start= auto

The formerly deleted services from the old home need to be recreated for the new home. Starting the Listener automatically creates a new Service for the new home. That one should be configured to start automatically.

rem --- start new services
oradim -EDIT -SID ORCL -STARTMODE auto -SRVCSTART system
net start OracleServiceORCL

Set the Oracle service to be started automatically and to start the database on service start. Then start the OracleService.

rem --- start the database and run datapatch
rem --- not needed with service auto start --- @echo startup | sqlplus / as sysdba
@echo alter pluggable database all open | sqlplus / as sysdba
@echo show pdbs | sqlplus / as sysdba
%ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch\datapatch

Before running the datapatch, make sure that all pds are open. When the open state has been saved by using ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE ... SAVE STATE, that step can be skipped. Here we open all PDB's before running the datapatch 

The database software and data dictionary should now be on the new version.

rem --- apply optimizer fixes for every PDB
@echo @?/rdbms/admin/dbmsoptim.sql | sqlplus / as sysdba
@echo @?/rdbms/admin/prvtoptim.plb | sqlplus / as sysdba
@echo execute dbms_optim_bundle.enable_optim_fixes('ON','BOTH', 'YES'); | sqlplus / as sysdba

Last step is enabling the optimizer fixes for the new version. The complete scripting can be found on GitLab.

Create an APEX Interactive Grid on an ORDS AutoREST service

 If the target database cannot be accessed by a database link, this might be a super easy alternative.

Say you have an HR schema with the EMPLOYEES table. RMB and choose Enable REST Service ...

For this easy example, check Enable object and uncheck Authorization required. Click through the dialog until the end.

Open Database Actions and go to REST > AutoREST to find the EMPLOYEES Service. Click on the Open in new tab icon right of the URL.

That should work ootb, copy the URL

Move over to the APEX App Builder, Shared Components, REST Data Sources and click on Create.

Choose from scratch, give it a name, paste the service URL and change REST Data Source Type to Oracle REST Data Services. Click through the end of the dialog, accepting the defaults.

In your application, create a new page with an Interactive Grid. Point it to the new REST Data Source and check Editing Enabled, if you want to use that.

For editing, it is mandatory to select a primary key column. Click through the end of that dialog.

Run the page, change some data and click Save.

That should work without any extra manual configuration or coding.