Oracle security patch breaking DB connections in Clarity 16.0.2

Products

• Clarity PPM On Premise

Issue/Introduction

After installing Oracle security patch (19.24.0.0.240716) on clarity non-production environments, the application fails to connect to the DB and the applications are down. 

The following error is seen in the logs:
ERROR ... [Config Monitor] persistence. PersistenceController (clarity:none:none:none) Exception due to DB Connection failure
ERROR ..Config Monitor] cache. OptionsCache (clarity:none:none:none) OptionsCache.getFromPersistence:PMD error

The DB can be reached by using Oracle SQL developer successfully, but not from the Clarity application. Nothing was changed from an infrastructure point of view. The Oracle security patch was the last change. 

Environment

Clarity 16.0.x

Cause

Clarity release below 16.0.3 is using clarity driver (Progress DataDirect). The Oracle security patch breaking clarity driver (Progress DataDirect) - "com.ca.clarity.jdbc.oracle.OracleDriver"

Connecting to the database via SQL developer is successful as it was using Oracle native driver.  

Resolution

Options:

• Turning off the Encryption property in the JDBC URL
  Examples of the Oracle native driver-based JDBC URLs can be found in product documentation: Install Clarity with Oracle
  
  KB reference: Clarity database is Unavailable due to mismatched encryption 
  
  
• Moving the clarity DB to an Oracle DB that is running without the Oracle security patch, upgrading the system to 16.0.3 or higher and later moving the DB back to the original Oracle DB system with the security patch
  
  
• Upgrading to Clarity 16.0.3 or above where there is an Oracle JDBC driver change from Progress DataDirect to Oracle native driver, i.e. "com.ca.clarity.jdbc.oracle.OracleDriver" to "oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"
  
  Note: From clarity 16.0.3 onwards the JDBC URLs would change from "jdbc:clarity:oracle" to "jdbc:oracle:thin"

Additional Information