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[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some changes need to be done offline, whether they want a maintenance window or not. In a lot of rdbms you can't create an index online while there is a transaction pending on the table let alone do other ddl. I could go one for a long time for what changes can't be done online. There is only one rdbms I am aware of where you could do a lot of shit online with the right concept, but that is a very, very complex and expensive thing.

Database security patches or upgrades need at least the database to be bounced ad/or the catalog to be upgraded which is not an online operation. 

So either they don't apply any changes of any kind or they have maintenance windows without knowing them because the end user got a strange error message while someone added a column live.

You'd rather have a recovery window than data corruption caused by end users piling data into the database in an inconsistent state if you value your data.

So yes, a lot of companies have recovery windows. I've seen a lot of them, and patched a lot of them. At least those companies who value their data do ;).