Question: do you relink and bounce or just bounce or non, after your OS patching

We are interested to know, what does the oracle community do when it comes to databases and os patching, especially when there is no kernel patch? The reason is that when there is no kernel patch, most of the times, our database servers doesn't get restarted. That would leave the databases up and running, without a restart. When reading metalink document, Doc ID 1467060.1 "Relinking Oracle HOME FAQ" , oracle recommends manually relinking the OH, after OS patching. Even though most of the times these OS patches had not caused any issue, there are occasions, where some databases have had performance degradations on these scenarios. Those times, just a restart addressed the problems.

To me, at least a restart of the databases after the OS patching will help to reinitialize the process with the new or updated libraries that are dynamically linked. Though I would prefer to relink and restart. But the systems folks think it could be an over kill, as most of the OS patches are quiet stable.

What are your thoughts and justifications on doing the things the way you do?

Thanks in advance to all your responses.

Thanx,
Sam