Interim Patch
An interim patch is a bug fix or set of bug fixes made available to customers who for business reasons cannot wait until the next patch set or new product release to get a fix.
An interim patch is available from OracleMetaLink as an individual patch (it is not included in a patch set).
The version number of the patched product is not updated when an interim patch is applied. Multiple interim patches can be installed for a given version of a product.
There are two types of interim patches:
one-off patches
interim patches installed using OPatch.
One-off patches are older interim patches that were not applied using OPatch. Enterprise Manager does not report or detect installed one-off patches.
Enterprise Manager reports and detects interim patches installed using OPatch.
Interim patches installed using OPatch replace the older one-off patches that were used for previous versions of Oracle products.
See also patchset, OracleMetaLink, one-off patch, and OPatch.