From 11g onwards Oraclr releasing patches without downtime requirement for some patches.
Opatch command line has now an additional options called query and _is_online_patch which can be used to determine whether the patch can apply online or not.
XXXXXXXX:TEST:UAT $ opatch query -is_online_patch /home/users/oracle/9877980 -invptrloc /u01/in/TEST/oracle/db/11.2.0.2/oraInst.loc Invoking OPatch 11.2.0.1.1
Oracle Interim Patch Installer […]
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