Oracle FMW 14 Installation – ORA-00439: feature not enabled: Fine-grained access control

This short blog is to share with you an issue we faced at a customer during Oracle Fusion Middleware 14 installation.

Introduction and Symptoms

An important step in the installation process is the Oracle Fusion Middleware Metadata repository creation using the RCU (Repository Creation Utility) which creates the necessary schemas for the components.

But when running the Repository Creation Utility (RCU) to load schemas on Oracle Database, schema creation fails with the below errors:

In fact, the problem is seen as RCU tries to set up VPD stripes. In another world, RCU relies on fine-grained access control (FGAC) to manage schema creation and access within the Oracle database.

The ORA-00439 error “feature not enabled: Fine-grained access control” in Oracle RCU (Repository Creation Utility) indicates that the database being used for RCU schema creation does not have the fine-grained access control feature enabled. This feature is only part of the Enterprise Edition of Oracle Database and is not available in Standard Edition!

Let’s check 😉

So, no way to do it with Standard Edition? No worries, there is a solution 😉

Solution

Oracle here is a patch to workaround this issue, so the steps will be:

• Download the patch
• Apply the patch
• Run the RCU to load the schemas
• Continue with Domain configuration

Download the patch

Go to Patch 37506854 and download it, then move it to your working folder on the server.

Apply the patch

Nothing really special here, apply the patch as any patch 🙂

Unzip the patch downloaded, go inside the folder 37506854, and apply the patch:

[oracle@fmwserver working]$ cd 37506854
[oracle@fmwserver 37506854]$ opatch apply
Oracle Interim Patch Installer version 13.9.4.2.17
Copyright (c) 2025, Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.


Oracle Home       : /u01/app/oracle/product/midw
Central Inventory : /u01/app/oracle/oraInventory
   from           : /u01/app/oracle/product/midw//oraInst.loc
OPatch version    : 13.9.4.2.17
OUI version       : 13.9.4.0.0
Log file location : /u01/app/oracle/product/midw/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2025-07-10_11-22-38AM_1.log


OPatch detects the Middleware Home as "/u01/app/oracle/product/midw"

Verifying environment and performing prerequisite checks...
OPatch continues with these patches:   37506854

Do you want to proceed? [y|n]
y
User Responded with: Y
All checks passed.

Please shutdown Oracle instances running out of this ORACLE_HOME on the local system.
(Oracle Home = '/u01/app/oracle/product/midw')


Is the local system ready for patching? [y|n]
y
User Responded with: Y
Backing up files...
Applying interim patch '37506854' to OH '/u01/app/oracle/product/midw'

Patching component oracle.rcu.mds, 14.1.2.0.0...

Patching component oracle.rcu.mds, 14.1.2.0.0...
Patch 37506854 successfully applied.
Log file location: /u01/app/oracle/product/midw/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2025-07-10_11-22-38AM_1.log

OPatch succeeded.

Retry the failed step

Now, the RCU should work fine and the domain creation could be done without issue.

Have a look on all FMW blogs, more blogs to come about FMW 14 to highlight new features!

If you have any questions don’t hesitate, please ask 😉

Happy to share,

David