This becomes a real problem when you need to install or upgrade to a specific Release Update (RU), such as Oracle Database 19.27. In my case, I already had the 19.27 Exadata Cloud Service (ExaCS) software image extracted from an existing ExaCS environment during patching, but I needed to install a regular Oracle Database on a standalone Linux server.

The issue?

The ExaCS Oracle Home only contains Exadata-specific DBCA templates, so DBCA doesn’t offer the standard database creation options like General Purpose, Data Warehouse, or Custom Database.

Step 1 – Extract the ExaCS Oracle Home

I extracted the Oracle Database 19.27 ExaCS software image from an existing Exadata Cloud environment during a patching activity. This provided a complete Oracle Home but with only Exadata database templates.

Step 2 – Check the Existing ExaCS Templates

Navigate to the DBCA templates directory.

cd /data1/oracle/product/1927/assistants/dbca/templates

Contents:

exa_database.dbt
exa_seed.ctl
exa_seed.dbc
exa_seed.dfb
exa_seed_pdbseed.dfb
exa_seed_pdbseed.xml

As you can see, only Exadata templates are available.

Step 3 – Copy Standard DBCA Templates

I already had another Oracle Home installed (Oracle 21c) that contained the standard DBCA templates.

Navigate to its templates directory.

cd /data1/oracle/product/21/db/assistants/dbca/templates

Contents:

Data_Warehouse.dbc
General_Purpose.dbc
New_Database.dbt
pdbseed.dfb
pdbseed.xml
Seed_Database.ctl
Seed_Database.dfb

Now simply copy them into the ExaCS Oracle Home.

cp -p * /data1/oracle/product/1927/assistants/dbca/templates/

That’s it.

Launch DBCA

After copying the templates, start DBCA from the ExaCS Oracle Home.

dbca

You’ll now see the familiar database creation templates, including:

• General Purpose or Transaction Processing
• Data Warehouse
• Custom Database
• Exadata templates (still available)

Instead of being limited to only Exadata database creation, DBCA now works like a standard Oracle Database installation.

The screenshot below shows the additional template options becoming available after copying the standard DBCA templates.