How to find Oracle's installed version and release from a program?

If the database homes were installed properly, the central inventory has a list about them. The central inventory on Windows is located at C:\Program Files\Oracle\Inventory. On Linux/UNIX platforms, the location of the central inventory can be found in /etc/oraInst.loc. In the inventory, in ContentsXML\inventory.xml, there is a list of installed homes in XML format, e.g:

<INVENTORY>
<VERSION_INFO>
   <SAVED_WITH>12.1.0.2.0</SAVED_WITH>
   <MINIMUM_VER>2.1.0.6.0</MINIMUM_VER>
</VERSION_INFO>
<HOME_LIST>
<HOME NAME="OraGI12Home1" LOC="/opt/oracle/grid12102" TYPE="O" IDX="1"/>
<HOME NAME="OraDB12Home1" LOC="/opt/oracle/base/product/db12102ee" TYPE="O" IDX="2"/>
<HOME NAME="OraDb11g_home1" LOC="/opt/oracle/base/product/db11204ee" TYPE="O" IDX="3"/>
</HOME_LIST>
</INVENTORY>

You can parse this list, and find detailed information with opatch for example:

/opt/oracle/grid12102/OPatch/opatch lsinventory -oh /opt/oracle/grid12102 -details
/opt/oracle/base/product/db12102ee/OPatch/opatch lsinventory -oh /opt/oracle/base/product/db12102ee -details
/opt/oracle/base/product/db11204ee/OPatch/opatch lsinventory -oh /opt/oracle/base/product/db11204ee -details

A Windows example would be:

C:\oracle\base\product\12.1.0\dbhome_1\OPatch\opatch lsinventory -oh C:\oracle\base\product\12.1.0\dbhome_1 -details

The above needs to be run on the server of course.

This is the best-case scenario, with proper installations. Worst-case scenario is, homes use separate inventories, or use no inventory at all, and you have to search all filesystems on the server for possible Oracle installations.


Another method to display the Oracle version is calling the dbv utility. This works only for database server installations. The version of this tool should always match to the version of the database. You should set the appropriate environment first (PATH; ORACLE_HOME, LD_LIBRARY_PATH), then you will get something like

$ $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbv

DBVERIFY: Release 12.1.0.2.0 - Production on Sun Jan 01 12:00:00 2016

Copyright (c) 1982, 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Keyword     Description                    (Default)
----------------------------------------------------
FILE        File to Verify                 (NONE)
START       Start Block                    (First Block of File)
END         End Block                      (Last Block of File)
BLOCKSIZE   Logical Block Size             (8192)
LOGFILE     Output Log                     (NONE)
FEEDBACK    Display Progress               (0)
PARFILE     Parameter File                 (NONE)
USERID      Username/Password              (NONE)
SEGMENT_ID  Segment ID (tsn.relfile.block) (NONE)
HIGH_SCN    Highest Block SCN To Verify    (NONE)
            (scn_wrap.scn_base OR scn)

The first line contains the release

Tags:

Oracle

Automation

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