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Oracle E-Business Suite
Release 11i & Release 12
Apps DBA 101
2
Copyright 2013 by Atherio Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without
explicit permission from the authors.
Published by Atherio Inc.
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Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation.
Other trade and service marks are the property of their respective owners.
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PREFACE .......................................................................................................... 7
CHAPTER 1 – THE BASICS ............................................................................... 11
CHAPTER 2 – THE ARCHITECTURES ................................................................. 13
EBS RELEASE 11I AND EBS RELEASE 12 MULTI-TIERED ARCHITECTURES ....................... 13 PLANNED RELEASE 12.2 MULTI-TIERED ARCHITECTURE ............................................. 14
What is WebLogic? .................................................................................... 14 WebLogic Benefits ..................................................................................... 15 Do You Need to be a Guru to Support WebLogic?..................................... 15 Online Patching Features .......................................................................... 15
COMPARISON OF THE ARCHITECTURE TIERS FOR R11I, R12.0/R12.1 AND R12.2 .......... 16 Desktop Tier .............................................................................................. 16 Application (Middle) Tier ........................................................................... 17
Oracle Process Management and Notification (OPMN)................................... 18 Database Tier – Oracle 10gR2 or Oracle 11gR2 ........................................ 19
Oracle 10gR2 Improvements ........................................................................... 19 Oracle 11gR2 Improvements ........................................................................... 19
Multiple Oracle Homes .............................................................................. 21
CHAPTER 3 – LIFETIME SUPPORT ................................................................... 23
APPLICATIONS UNLIMITED .................................................................................... 23 FUSION MIDDLEWARE SUPPORT, INCLUDING DISCOVERER .......................................... 26 ORACLE DATABASE SUPPORT ................................................................................ 27 MANDATORY EXTENDED SUPPORT BASELINE PATCHING ............................................. 27
So What’s the Risk? ................................................................................... 28 Can I Pick and Choose Which Patches I Apply? ......................................... 29 Why are There So Many Patches to Apply? Why is This So Complicated? 29 Can I Unlicense Modules? ......................................................................... 31
CHAPTER 4 – UPGRADING THE DATABASE ..................................................... 33
WHY UPGRADE TO ORACLE 11GR2?...................................................................... 33 SHOULD WE UPGRADE EVERYTHING AT ONCE? ........................................................ 33 MUST WE UPGRADE? ......................................................................................... 34
CHAPTER 5 – UPGRADING THE APPLICATIONS ............................................... 37
SHOULD WE UPGRADE TO RELEASE 12? ................................................................. 37 MUST WE UPGRADE TO RELEASE 12.1? ................................................................. 38 UPGRADE PATHS ................................................................................................ 38 SHOULD YOU WAIT FOR RELEASE 12.2? ................................................................. 39
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UPGRADE BY REQUEST ........................................................................................ 39
CHAPTER 6 - RELEASE 12 ADMINISTRATION AND MAINTENANCE TOOLS: OEM, OAM AND OCM ............................................................................................. 41
E-BUSINESS SUITE ADMINISTRATION AND MAINTENANCE TOOLS ................................ 41 LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT .................................................................................... 42 WHAT IS ORACLE ENTERPRISE MANAGER (OEM)? .................................................. 42 WHAT IS ORACLE APPLICATIONS MANAGER (OAM)? ............................................... 43
Applications Patching with OAM .............................................................. 45 AutoConfig with OAM............................................................................... 46 iSetup with OAM....................................................................................... 47 License Manager with OAM ..................................................................... 48 Oracle eBusiness Suite Diagnostics with OAM ......................................... 49 Other OAM Tools ...................................................................................... 51
WHAT IS ORACLE CONFIGURATION MANAGER (OCM)? ............................................ 51
CHAPTER 7 - HOW DO OEM AND OAM AND THE E-BUSINESS SUITE PLUG-IN/APPLICATION MANAGEMENT SUITE (AMS) WORK TOGETHER? ............... 53
WHAT IS THE E-BUSINESS SUITE PLUG-IN/APPLICATION MANAGEMENT SUITE (AMS)? .. 54 Discovery .................................................................................................. 55 System Management and Concurrent Manager Dashboards .................. 55 Cloning ...................................................................................................... 56 Customization, Patching and Setup Managers ........................................ 57
WHAT CAN YOU DO WITHOUT THE E-BUSINESS SUITE PLUG-IN? ............................... 59 WHAT CAN’T YOU DO WITHOUT THE E-BUSINESS SUITE PLUG-IN? ............................. 60 IS THE E-BUSINESS SUITE PLUG-IN WORTH THE EXTRA MONEY? ................................. 61
CHAPTER 8 - TOOLS STILL RUN FROM THE COMMAND LINE .......................... 63
RAPID INSTALL WIZARD ....................................................................................... 63 ADADMIN ......................................................................................................... 63 DATABASE AND CPU/PSU PATCHING .................................................................... 63 ORACLE’S GET PROACTIVE TOOLS ......................................................................... 64
EBS Workflow Analyzer ............................................................................ 64 EBS CP Analyzer (Concurrent Processing) ................................................. 65
RELEASE 12 APPLICATIONS PATCHING CHANGES ...................................................... 67 Codelines and Codelevels ......................................................................... 67
TYPES OF APPLICATIONS PATCHES ......................................................................... 68 Release Update Pack (RUP) ...................................................................... 68 Critical Patch Update (CPU/PSUs) ............................................................ 70 Oracle Database Vault.............................................................................. 72 Applications Technology Group (ATG) ...................................................... 72
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MORE APPLICATIONS PATCHES .............................................................................. 74 AUTOPATCH (ADPATCH) ..................................................................................... 76 APPLIED PATCHES AND PATCH WIZARD ................................................................... 76 PATCH APPLICATION ASSISTANT (PAA) ................................................................... 78 DATABASE AND CPU/PSU PATCHING .................................................................... 78
CHAPTER 10 - ORACLE INTEGRATION REPOSITORY (IREP) .............................. 81
CHAPTER 11 – HOW FUSION FITS IN .............................................................. 85
TERMINOLOGY ................................................................................................... 85 HOW THE FUSION APPLICATIONS FIT IN .................................................................. 86 THE ROAD TO FUSION - ROADMAP CONCEPTS .......................................................... 87
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 89
LINKS AND MY ORACLE SUPPORT (MOS) NOTES AND DOCUMENTS ............................. 91
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Preface
This guide describes the features, functionality and utilities
available to Applications DBAs with Release 12 of the E-Business
Suite of Applications. We will start by comparing the Release 11i
and Release 12 architectures to lay the foundation for
understanding the wide assortment of tools available to manage
and maintain the Release 12 environment (most are available for
use for Release 11i environments as well).
The tools include Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM), Oracle
Applications Manager (OAM), Oracle Configuration Manager
(OCM), the E-Business Suite Plug-in (aka Oracle EBS Application
Management Suite 4.0), Rapid Install Wizard, Rapid Clone,
AutoConfig, Patch Wizard with the Patch Information Bundle
(PIB), AutoPatch, OPatch and n-apply CPU/PSU patching, Oracle
E-Business Suite Diagnostics, and the Oracle Integration
Repository (iRep).
This guide also discusses the considerations for upgrading your
database to RDBMS Version 11gR2, and the E-Business Suite of
Applications to Release 12, and includes a brief discussion about
Fusion Applications and where they appear to be heading.
9
For more details about E-Business Suite patching, check out our
latest book:
Available at:
http://www.Atherio.com
10
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Chapter 1 – The Basics
We’ll start with a list of things you need to know about the E-
Business Suite of Applications:
Release 12 is also known as R12
Each new point release of R12 is packaged in a RUP (Release
Update Pack)
Current R12 RUPs are 12.0.1, 12.0.2, 12.0.3, 12.0.4, 12.0.5,
12.0.6, 12.1.1 (aka EBS 12.1 RUP 1), 12.1.2 (aka EBS 12.1
RUP 2), and 12.1.3 (aka EBS 12.1 RUP 3)
Release 12.2 is the next RUP for Release 12
RUPs may include new applications, performance
improvements, security fixes and new or enhanced
functionality for existing modules
You should read the Release Content Documents (RCDs) on
My Oracle Support (MOS) to see what changed between RUPs
Release 12 is constantly changing, and it is the Applications
DBA’s job to be constantly vigilant, watching MOS for
changes
You should check MOS often, even if you think you don’t have
any problems!
When you install Release 12, you install all modules, whether
you license specific modules or not (over 220+ modules)
Release 11i had 200,000 objects and Release 12 has over
300,000 objects
You should expect your Release 12 disk space requirements to
go up by a minimum of 20% or more over Release 11i because
of new modules and functionality (even if you don’t plan to use
those new modules or additional functionality)
Certain additional patches should be applied on a regular
schedule (e.g., Quarterly Critical Patch Updates (CPU/PSUs) –
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For simplicity use the PSU Method for Database and
Applications (starting with the January 2010 Quarterly CPU)
Release 12 Upgrade Packs (RUPs) can change, add and remove
functionality along with adding, upgrading or removing
specific technology components – significant testing is
required for every RUP
The Applications Technology (ATG) Group or pseudo product
modules are an integrated set of modules used by all of the
other modules: FND, OAM, OWF, FWK, JTT, JTA, TXK,
XDO, ECX, EC, AK, ALR, UMX, BNE, and FRM
Oracle now has minimum mandatory patching requirements to
ensure Extended Support for both Release 11i and Release
12.0.x
Oracle announced modified support timelines for Release 11i
and Release 12 that allow customers more time to prepare for
Release 12 and more time on Extended Support once they have
upgraded to Release 12. See Steven Chan’s Critical Patch
Updates During EBS 11i Exception to Sustaining Support
Period for more details.
The following chapters fill you in on all of the details for the above
basics.
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Chapter 2 – The Architectures
EBS Release 11i and EBS Release 12 Multi-Tiered Architectures
If you look at Figures 1 and 2, you can see that Release 12 has
changed considerably from Release 11i, specifically within the
Technology Stack, or, more appropriately, the Application Tier:
* JInitiator is no longer supported for the Desktop.
** Oracle 9i comes as part of the install, Oracle 10.2.0.5 and
Oracle 11.2.0.3 are the latest certified database versions.
Figure 1 – Current Release 11i Architecture Components
* RDBMS Versions 10.2.0.5 and 11.2.0.3 are the latest certified
database versions.
Figure 2 – Current Release 12 Architecture Components
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Planned Release 12.2 Multi-Tiered Architecture
Release 12.2 will include significant changes. Release 12.2 will
replace several of the Application Server technology components
with WebLogic components. On the Application Tier, Oracle plans
to replace the OracleAS 10.1.3 ORACLE_HOME with Fusion
Middleware 11g. Fusion Middleware 11g will include Oracle
HTTP Server (OHS) and WebLogic Server (WLS).
The Database Tier will also change, because it will need to use
RDBMS Version 11.2.0.2 or higher to enable Edition Based
Redefinition for hot patching, also called Online Patching. Online
Patching will allow users to continue to use the E- Business Suite
while a DBA applies patches. This will reduce downtime to
minutes instead of hours or days, and will make the downtime
windows very predictable. Patches will be applied while the
Production environment remains online.
Patching will change significantly thanks to an RDBMS Version
11gR2 database feature called Edition Based Redefinition, and
cloning will change by necessity because the cloning scripts will
need to be rewritten to support WebLogic instead of OracleAS
10.1.3.
See Steven Chan’s Webcast Replay Available: Minimizing Oracle
E-Business Suite Maintenance Downtimes for more details about
Release 12.2.
What is WebLogic?
WebLogic is a tool acquired by Oracle when they purchased BEA
in 1998. The E-Business Suite Release 12.2 will replace the 10.1.3
Oracle Home with the Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) and WebLogic
Server (WLS). OC4J will be replaced by WebLogic. The
Application Technology Stack’s 10.1.2 Oracle Home will stay the
same. This will be a major technology change and learning
challenge for Applications DBAs – even those with years of
experience managing and maintaining the E-Business Suite.
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WebLogic Benefits
According to Oracle:
End users will experience “always on” applications and services.
WebLogic includes comprehensive, low-overhead application
monitoring and deep diagnostics. WebLogic will integrate with
Oracle RAC to provide the highest levels of application
availability. WebLogic will enable rapid development of
applications without lost time due to system restarts.
Comprehensive tooling will simplify customization development
and speed new application delivery.
Do You Need to be a Guru to Support WebLogic?
You’ll follow the My Oracle Support upgrade documentation to
upgrade to Release 12.2, and that will install WebLogic. You may
want to take training to learn how to configure WebLogic to take
advantage of more advanced features – you may need a WebLogic
Administrator on your staff. Fortunately, there are experts in the
field – WebLogic is widely used in the industry.
Online Patching Features
Online Patching will allow users to continue to use the E- Business
Suite while a DBA applies patches. This will reduce downtime to
minutes instead of hours or days, and will make the downtime
windows very predictable. Patches will be applied while the
Production environment remains online. Online Patching will
allow an application to efficiently store multiple editions of its
Application Definition in the same database. This will provide an
isolation mechanism (The Edition) that allows pre-upgrade and
post-upgrade schemas to co-exist. The client code will choose the
particular “Edition” to connect to.
To use online patching, users will continue to use the Applications
while the Applications DBA creates a Patch Edition, patches it,
and synchronizes any changes between the Run Edition and the
Patch Edition. When patching is done, the Apps DBA will set the
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Patch Edition as the new Run Edition and restart the application
servers so users point to it.
For more details, see Deployment and System Administration of
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2, by Elke Phelps, Senior
Principal Product Manager, Oracle E-Business Suite Applications
Technology, Oracle Corporation.
Comparison of the Architecture Tiers for R11i, R12.0/R12.1 and R12.2
Desktop Tier
On the desktop tier, Release 11i uses a browser and either JInitiator
or the Sun J2SE Plug-In for the user interface, while Release 12
requires Sun’s J2SE Plug-in. There are two types of “forms” that
can be accessed when running the Applications. The first is an
HTML-based form that looks just like a web page. The second is
an Oracle Professional form, and it is accessed using a java applet.
Called the Java desktop client, the JInitiator or the Sun J2SE
Browser Plug-in are automatically downloaded to a user’s PC the
first time they log into an Oracle Professional form within the
Applications.
As Release 11i users prepare for Release 12, there are a number of
reasons to get the migration to Sun J2SE Plug-in out of the way
early in the upgrade process. First, there are the usual desupport
issues: both JInitiator 1.1.8 and JInitiator 1.3 for Release 11i are no
longer supported. Most importantly, JInitiator is a modified version
of Sun’s original java product and has been desupported by Oracle
for quite some time. The Sun J2SE includes all the features that
Oracle enhanced for the JInitiator to support Oracle Forms. Be
aware that J2SE is software and, therefore can have bugs that
affect its functionality – monitor Steven Chan’s blog frequently for
the most up to date information at:
http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/
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If your company is still using JInitiator, it is long past the
time to upgrade to the Sun J2SE Browser Plug-in.
Application (Middle) Tier
The Application Tier hosts the many different services that process
the business logic and manage communication between the
Desktop Tier and the Database Tier. For Release 11i, the
Application Tier contains the Web Services, the Forms Server, the
Report Server, the Concurrent Processing Server and an Admin
Server. Release 11i runs iAS 1.0.2.2.2 (Apache and JServ) for its
web services, and the 8.0.6.3 ORACLE_HOME handles the
admin, concurrent processing, reporting and forms services. The
Release 11i JServ component is a simple Java applications server
that supports Java Server Pages (JSP) and Servlets and little else.
For Release 12.0 and Release 12.1, the Application Tier contains
the Web Services, the Forms Server, the Concurrent Processing
Server and an Admin Server. Components of the Web Services,
which runs the 10.1.3 ORACLE_HOME, include the Web
Listener, OC4J and the Oracle Process Manager and Notification
Server (OPMN). Please note that starting with Release 12.1.2, all
Oracle-seeded reports utilize the XML (BI) publisher.
Release 12.0 and Release 12.1 now use 10gAS Version 10.1.2 for
Forms, which replaces Release 11i’s Version 8.0.6
ORACLE_HOME. Release 12.0 and Release 12.1 use 10gAS
Version 10.1.3 for the Web Server with Oracle Containers for Java
(OC4J), which is the equivalent to Release 11i’s Version 8.1.7
ORACLE_HOME.
Release 12.2 will use Fusion Middleware 11g, which includes the
Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) and WebLogic Server (WLS) in place
of the OracleAS 10.1.3 ORACLE_HOME.
10gAS can run multiple containers of OC4J, not for scalability
(which was why you could configure multiple JServ instances), but
for division of processing. Each instance of OC4J is used as a
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compartment to contain one portion of the OAS 10g functionality.
This allows the individual instances to be tuned for their actual
workload, and helps to prevent them from competing for resources.
10gAS also supports Oracle Identity Management, running Oracle
Internet Directory (OID) for security. With OID, it will be easier to
integrate into corporate security infrastructure for companies that
use LDAP directories. Oracle is now recommending the Oracle
Access Manager (OAM) for Single Sign-on.
A key difference between the Release 11i and Release
12.0/Release 12.1/Release 12.2 Application Tiers is that 10gAS
positions us to take advantage of new Fusion Middleware features,
which in turn prepares us for the Fusion Applications.
Oracle Process Management and Notification (OPMN)
Oracle Process Management and Notification (OPMN) is
automatically installed and configured with every Oracle
Application Server. This tool is essential for running the Oracle
Application Server by providing an integrated way to manage all
Oracle Application Server components, including Discoverer and
OC4J.
OPMN checks to see if a service has terminated and tries to restart
the service automatically (this is called death detection). OPMN
creates a file for each managed process and can rotate log files.
You can customize process management by using Dynamic
Resource Management (DRM). For example, you could modify
OPMN to spawn an additional OC4J process if average response
time exceeds a threshold and if there are less than four processes
already running. Or you could start an additional OC4J process to
run every day at 5pm during peak hours.
The Resource Management Directive (RMD) tells DRM when and
what to do. Directives are configured in the opmn.xml file. You
can see examples of code to do these types of customizations in
section 3 of the manual Oracle Process Manager and Notification
Server Administrator’s Guide 10g Release 3 (10.1.3.).
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Note: If you encounter issues with the Oracle Application Server
10.1.3, check out MOS Doc. ID: 454178.1, Oracle Application
Server Diagnostic Tools and Log Files in Applications Release 12.
This document covers common problem scenarios and Oracle
Application Server Diagnostic tools for OPMN, Java Object
Cache, Forms Servlet and Class Loads and includes where to find
log files for OPMN, the HTTP Server, and J2EE Application
Modules. Another MOS Note, Doc. ID: 373548.1, Using Forms
Trace in Oracle Applications Release 12, describes debugging
tools available for Forms.
Database Tier – Oracle 10gR2 or Oracle 11gR2
The Database Tier for Release 11i runs Oracle 9iR2, but can be
upgraded to Oracle 10gR2 (which moved to Extended Support on
July 31, 2010) or 11gR2. Release 12.0 and Release 12.1 are
certified to run Oracle 10gR2 (in Extended Support) or 11gR1 or
11gR2 (preferred). Release 12.2 will require RDBMS 11gR2 to
support Online Patching.
Oracle 10gR2 Improvements
Oracle 10g offers a number of improvements over Oracle 9i,
including improvements in performance - PL/SQL runs two times
faster; manageability, including tools like the Automatic Workload
Repository (AWR) and Automatic SGA Tuning; and optimizer
improvements. The latest (and terminal release) version of Oracle
10g, Version 10.2.0.5, is certified with Release 11.5.10.2 and
12.0.X, with later releases (12.1.X) not certified as Oracle 10gR2
moved to Extended Support at the end of July 2010.
Oracle 11gR2 Improvements
Oracle’s Database Version 11gR2 offers a number of exciting new
features that specifically benefit the current E-Business Suite
Releases (11i and 12), including Database Replay, SQL
Performance Analyzer, Data Pump improvements, Advanced
Compression, and Active Data Guard.
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Database Replay and SQL Performance Analyzer are two tools
in Oracle’s Real Application Testing database pack:
Database Replay – Allows you to record all database
operations and then replay them, so that you can more
effectively test the effects of a change to your database
environment. See
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/oracle-
database-11g-top-features/11g-replay.html for more details.
SQL Performance Analyzer – Allows you to capture
specific SQL statements and replay them, which can help
with performance tuning.
SQL Plan Management - You can use SQL Plan Management
to control resource consumption more effectively than the way
we used to do this, with hints, stored outlines, or initialization
parameters. With SQL Plan Management, you can create a SQL
Baseline of trusted execution plans and then force the optimizer
to use those trusted plans or take recommendations provided by
the SQL Plan Management feature.
Data Pump Improvements – Oracle has improved the
performance of Data Pump Export and Data Pump Import,
particularly compared to the Export and Import utilities. Data
Pump uses multiple worker processes and parallelism to use all
available resources and maximize throughput. See Oracle
Database Utilities 11g Release 2 (11.2), Part Number E10701-
02 for more details.
Advanced Compression – Delivers compression rates of two to
four times across all types of data and applications. Advanced
Compression improves query performance by reading fewer
blocks from disk. Savings include the database space itself, as
well as improved database and network performance and
backup times. If you’re curious to see how much of a space
savings you might see, check out the Oracle Compression
Advisor.
21
You can run this tool against Oracle 9i to 11g databases to
determine the potential impact of advanced compression on
your specific data.
Active Data Guard – Use Active Data Guard (ADG) to offload
resource intensive activities from a production database to a
synchronized standby database. Active Data Guard also enables
fast incremental backups, high availability and disaster
recovery. For those customers who have considered Active Data
Guard to create a mirror of an E-Business Suite database for
hardware or software failure, it would be really valuable to be
able to use that database for reporting.
For Active Data Guard to work for querying, you would have to
break the mirror. However, Oracle has completed a series of
enhancements to ADG that allows you to run reads against the
real-time copy of the database. This functionality requires either
RDBMS Version 11.1.0.7 or 11gR2 with the Active Data Guard
database option, and EBS Release 12.1.3. The one catch is that
not all E-Business Suite reports will work in this environment;
EBS reports that perform writes against the database are not
supported. For more details, see Steven Chan’s Offloading
(Some) EBS 12 Reporting to Active Data Guard Instances.
Multiple Oracle Homes
These changes in software do not decrease the number of
ORACLE_HOMES that you will support – with Release 12 you’ll
have at least three ORACLE_HOMEs: 10gAS ORACLE_HOME
(10.1.3) on the Application Tier, a 10.1.2 ORACLE_HOME on the
Application tier, and a 10g or 11g ORACLE_HOME on the
database tier. There is now also an “Instance” specific tier for the
database that is using the software. The Instance Top is designated
as $INST_TOP and includes the database SID.
Supporting and maintaining multiple ORACLE_HOMES is here to
stay. In fact, if you use Discoverer, you’ll have a fourth
ORACLE_HOME. Oracle has also renamed the Server Partitioned
22
or Split Configuration terminology that we used to describe for the
8.0.6/8.1.7 relationship. Now it is correct to state that you are
running a “Mixed Platform Architecture”.
23
Chapter 3 – Lifetime Support
You’ll notice that this guide does not talk much about Release 12
functionality. For an Applications DBA, if your end user
community decides they need to upgrade because of functionality
that is included in a higher release, then your decision about
whether to upgrade or not is made for you. The area where you
may need to influence your company’s decision making comes
down to Oracle’s support strategy for the database, technology and
E-Business Suite, called Applications Unlimited, and how much
support your company needs or is willing to pay.
Applications Unlimited
Oracle offers three types of support, Premier, Extended and
Sustaining:
Premier Support includes certification with new third party
products/versions and Oracle products.
Extended Support provides certification with most existing
products instead of new third party products / versions and Oracle
products. Extended Support may not include certification with
some new third-party products/versions. If you’re still running
Oracle 9i and have purchased extended support from Oracle, then
if you find a new problem with an existing certified configuration,
Oracle will help you resolve the problem. Just keep in mind that
Extended Support for Oracle 9i ended in July 2010, and Oracle
RDBMS 10gR2 moved to Extended Support on August 1, 2010.
Extended Support only lasts for three years, so after that if you do
not upgrade, you move to Sustaining Support.
Sustaining Support does not include new updates, fixes, security
alerts, data fixes and Critical Patch Updates (CPU/PSUs); new tax,
legal and regulatory updates; new upgrade scripts; certification
with new third-party products/versions; or certification with new
Oracle products. If you have a question and there’s already an
answer on MOS, Oracle Support will point you to it. If you’re still
24
running Release 11.0.3, you’re on Sustaining Support (which
ended in January 2009).
NEW! Extended Sustaining Support (ESS) for Release 11.5.10.2
was announced at Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) 2012. ESS is an
exception to Oracle’s support policies covering the first 13 months
of Sustaining Support on Oracle EBS Release 11.5.10 from
December 1, 2012 to December 31, 2014.
For more details, see Steven Chan’s EBS 11i and 12.1 Support
Timeline Changes. ESS includes three components:
1. New fixes for Severity 1 production issues
2. United States Form 1099 2013 year-end updates
3. Payroll regulatory updates for the United States, Canada,
United Kingdom, and Australia for fiscal years ending in 2014
Note, however, an important caveat – to receive Severity 1
support, you must be on the Release 11i Extended Support
Minimum Baseline, covered in MOS Doc. ID: 883202.1, Patch
Requirements for Extended Support of Oracle E-Business Suite
Release 11.5.10. If you are not on the minimum baseline, patching
current is a significant effort that requires careful planning and
testing.
You might wonder why support levels are important to you, the
DBA. The answer is that if your company hits a technical or
functional show-stopping issue and you do not have Premier
Support or Extended Support or Extended Sustaining Support from
Oracle in resolving it (Oracle cannot reproduce the same error in
their support environments), you might find yourself having to
patch or perform an upgrade in a big hurry – and, since patches and
upgrades require so much testing, this is certainly not a good
position for any customer to find themselves.
You can track E-Business Suite support in the Oracle Lifetime
Support Policy document. If you are still running on Release
11.0.3, the fact that even Sustaining Support has an end date –
January 2009 – should be particularly important/alarming to you. If
25
you are running releases prior to Release 11.5.10.2, you should be
concerned that Oracle does not offer Extended Support.
Current plans are for Release 11.5.10 Extended Support to end in
November, 2013, Release 12 Extended Support ends in January
2015, and Release 12.1 Premium Support ends in May 2014, with
Extended Support ending in December 2018. You should also
review MOS Doc. ID: 1195034.1, EBS Error Correction Support
Policy. Another helpful note about the Error Correction Policy is
Steven Chan’s Important Changes to E-Business Suite Error
Correction Support Policy, which describes the new, more flexible
support policies for Release 12.
From our perspective, the biggest issue with staying on these
earlier releases is that without Premium Support, you may not be
able to stay current on the security patches provided by the
Quarterly Critical Patch Updates (CPU/PSUs). But there’s another
issue – we’ll talk later in the guide about upgrade paths – the
further behind you are, the more complicated your upgrade path
will be.
Premier Support for Oracle E-Business Release 11.5.10.2 ended
November 30, 2010. Most of us still on Release 11.5.10.2 have
moved into the Extended Support window starting December 1,
2010 and can stay on Extended Support for three years (2011, 2012
and 2013) assuming that we apply the minimum technology and
application patches (also referred to as the MANDATORY
minimum patch baseline) as required by Oracle support (MOS
Notes: 883202.1 and 1116887.1). With the recent addition of
“Extended Sustaining Support” for Release 11.5.10.2, we have a
little more time to do the Release 12 upgrade, but still need to be
running the Mandatory Release 11i Extended Support baseline
patches to receive Severity 1 support.
There are a significant number of patches to be applied
especially if you have not maintained your patch levels. For
HRMS customers, there are three additional MOS
documents that you’ll want to closely review:
26
R11.5.10.2 – MOS Doc. ID: 111499.1, Oracle 11i Human
Resources (HRMS) US and Canadian Payroll Mandatory
Patch List,
R12.0.x – MOS Doc. ID: 386434.1, Oracle EBS US and
Canadian Payroll - 12.0.x Mandatory Patches
R12.1.x – MOS Doc. ID: 858794.1, Oracle EBS US and
Canadian Payroll - 12.1.x Mandatory Patches.
You should track MOS Doc. ID: 883202.1 carefully because
Oracle does update it.
The Extended Support window fee waiver for Oracle’s E-Business
Suite Release 11.5.10.2 and Oracle RDBMS Version 10gR2 was
announced two years ago by Oracle at the Oracle Applications
User Group (OAUG) Collaborate conference for the first year of
Extended Support only for Release 11.5.10.2 AND RDBMS
Version 10gR2. Now that Oracle has extended the fee waiver
again, customers can avoid additional fees for Release 11.5.10.2.
If you stay on Release 11.5.10.2 after Extended Support ends on
November 30, 2013 and move to Extended Sustaining Support
(ESS), there are no additional fees for Sustaining Support but you
then have a significant support and maintenance risk that you have
to accept. While Extended Sustaining Support offers customers a
much-needed lifeline, customers should begin planning their
upgrades to R12.1.3 immediately. This applies to the RDBMS
10gR2 database support as well; customers should be planning
their upgrade to RDBMS 11gR2 now.
Fusion Middleware Support, Including Discoverer
If you use Discoverer, another area that you should track for your
environment is the Oracle BI Discoverer Support Policies.
Discoverer Support is covered under Oracle’s Fusion Middleware
Policy.
27
According to the Oracle Fusion Middleware document of the
Oracle Lifetime Support Policy, Oracle will not provide Extended
Support for Oracle 10g, and Premium Support ended in December
2011. Discoverer users should consider upgrading to Discoverer
11g as soon as feasible.
Premier Support for Discoverer 10g ended on November 30,
2011. There will be no Extended Support. Upgrade to
Discoverer 11g or continue with Sustaining Support.
Oracle Database Support
Premier Support for the 10gR2 database ended on July 31, 2010.
We have moved into the Extended Support window that started
August 1, 2010, and we can stay on Extended Support for three
years (2011, 2012 and 2013). However, a fair number of
customers will have moved back to the Premier Support window
for the 11gR2 RDBMS until January 31, 2015 (The 11gR1 Premier
Support window ended on August 31, 2012).
To continue with Oracle 10gR2, you must patch to Version
10.2.0.5, the terminal release for Oracle 10gR2.
Mandatory Extended Support Baseline Patching
There was a time, not so long ago, when customers could hold off
patching their E-Business Suite environments for as long as they
wanted. Those times are gone, not just for Release 11i customers,
but also for Release 12 customers.
You might think this is an unreasonable requirement by Oracle, but
if you’ve ever looked under the hood at your Oracle environment,
then you know how complicated the environment has become.
Patching one module can affect several others. The software
footprint is so large that no DBA can reasonably expect to make
rational decisions about which patches really are necessary without
28
spending countless hours investigating how those patches work
with the existing codeset.
Going forward, these are the rules of patching Oracle’s E-Business
Suite software:
For Release 11i, customers should reference MOS Doc. ID:
883202.1. This document tells us:
To be eligible for Extended Support of 11.5.10, the customer's
system must be patched to the patch levels indicated in the
table under Section 1 below, requirements 1 through
6. Additionally, it is important to note that the patch
requirements indicated at a product level in Section 2 of this
note must also be met.
For Release 12, see Steven Chan’s blog entry Heads-Up:
Preparing for E-Business Suite 12.0 Extended Support, which
states that Release 12.0 transitioned from Premier to Extended
Support in February, 2012. Release 12 customers are cautioned to
apply at least the 12.0.6 Release Update Pack (Note ID 743368.1)
and the Financials CPC July 2009 (Note ID 557869.1) by that date.
The most likely upgrade path is to upgrade to the latest version of
Release 12, currently Release 12.1.3. This too requires a
substantial effort in planning and testing.
These mandatory upgrades for both Release 11i and Release
12.0.X customers mean that we must now plan upgrades in shorter
timeframes than was necessary in the past.
So What’s the Risk?
Well, if you don’t have any issues, then you’re fine. But what if
you’re in the middle of year end close and you run into a problem
that requires a substantial patch? Say, a Family Pack upgrade? Or,
worse, how about if you find out you need to upgrade to RUP 7 to
solve your problem? That’s the risk that the business has accepted
because of the decision you made not to apply the minimum
patches.
29
Realistically, we have to tell you about one more risk. Have you
ever applied a patch and had it create problems, rather than fix
them all? Your users will have to test your patched environment as
thoroughly as they would an upgrade, and it is possible that they’ll
find new bugs when they do so.
Can I Pick and Choose Which Patches I Apply?
Can you? Well of course you can! Should you? Well, that’s
another question entirely. Everything with choosing to selectively
patch comes down to risk and your ability to move quickly if you
hit an issue. Oracle does offer one “out” in MOS Doc. ID:
883202.1:
Extended Support is available on a product family by product
family basis. What this means is, a Customer can choose to
patch one Applications Product Family area, but not another.
This allows a Customer to leave areas of code that might be
extensively customized at their current levels, but gives that
same Customer the option to receive Extended Support on
other modules that are eligible.
Why are There So Many Patches to Apply? Why is This So Complicated?
Here are some more rules: You must apply patches for all
Installed, Shared and Pseudo modules. If you run patchsets.sh for
your Release 11i environment, you can see the list of products at
the top that Oracle thinks you have licensed. In all likelihood, if
you’ve been running the E-Business Suite for several years, then
the list has more products that your company is actually using.
To understand why there are so many patches, particularly in
Section 2 of MOS Doc. ID: 883202.1, let’s start with a short
history lesson about the origins of the Oracle Applications. In the
early days of the Oracle Applications, customers only installed the
modules they used. As more modules were released, supporting
unique configurations where every customer could have a different
30
set of software installed became too cumbersome for Oracle. There
were places where data needed to be shared, and it didn’t make
sense to have the same tables associated with each module, so
Oracle introduced Shared Modules. Shared Modules may have
data, like customer information, that many other modules need to
access. This issue is not unique to Oracle – any vendor who offers
a suite of functionality will have to deal with this problem.
Nowadays, customers install every module, whether used or not.
You install everything, but you license only the modules that you
have purchased from Oracle. Unfortunately, in the early days of
the Oracle Applications, the License Manager often had groupings
of modules, in addition to individual modules that could be
selected. The groupings were likely bundles that reflected some
aspect of Oracle’s sales process. The License Manager interface
was confusing, and it was very easy for a customer to inadvertently
over-install modules. And, at the time, there weren’t that many
modules, so over-installing didn’t seem like a big deal.
Years later, many of Oracle’s customers have a long list of over-
installed modules. And since the database sees them as Installed,
Shared or Pseudo modules, those modules have to be patched.
You might ask, “Can I just patch the ones we use?” That’s where
risk is introduced – how can you tell for sure that there isn’t some
code or data that is part of what you consider an over-installed
module that is necessary for you to run the Applications? It would
be nice if Oracle could help you out here, and we’ve noticed that
users are logging SRs asking if they need to patch specific
modules. It can’t hurt to ask, but if you have dozens of modules, it
may take Oracle a while to come up with an answer, and you may
not be satisfied with what they tell you. The standard response is, if
you installed it, you must patch it.
You might wonder just how many patches we’re talking about
here. We’ve actually gone through the exercise for Release 11i for
the worst case scenario, where you patch every module listed in
MOS Doc. ID: 883202.1 for a Release 11i Vision instance, and we
came up with more than 400 patches, though that included pre-
31
requisite and post patches. Most customers have dozens of patches
to apply, rather than hundreds, but the research (yes, you’ll have to
read every Readme as you search for pre-requisites and post
patches and superseded patches) is tedious and time consuming.
Can I Unlicense Modules?
Oracle does not provide that functionality. And, in terms of risk,
you’d be taking on quite a big risk. What if you’re wrong? What if
there’s something in a module that really is used by your other
modules?
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Chapter 4 – Upgrading the Database
Why Upgrade to Oracle 11gR2?
In addition to the new features available with 11gR2, one of the
most compelling reasons for upgrading to Oracle 11gR2 is that it is
in Premier Support until January 2015, while Extended Support for
Oracle 9i ended in July 2010, and Oracle Premium Support for
Oracle 10gR2 ended in July 2010. Additional good news is that
Oracle 11gR2 appears very stable.
Should We Upgrade Everything at Once?
You could argue that upgrading everything at once – your database
as well as your Applications - comes down to two issues: timing
and risk. You absolutely can upgrade the database and applications
at the same time. The only way you’ll know if you can do so
within your company’s downtime window is to try it out. The
biggest issue, once you’ve ensured that you can complete all the
tasks within that timeframe, is the potential underlying risk that
something may go wrong and you may not be able to isolate if the
issue is a database upgrade or an applications upgrade issue.
An argument in favor of splitting up your upgrade and completing
the database upgrade first is that it will allow your technical staff to
work with the new database version and try out some of the new
features that we’ve described, separately from the applications
upgrade. This is the time for your DBAs to take 11gR2 training, to
experiment with test instances, and to consider modifications to
your current database environment – perhaps fine tuning backups,
for example, and practicing cloning and recovery. DBAs might
find that by implementing Advanced Compression and Active Data
Guard in advance of the applications upgrade, and using Data
Pump as part of the applications upgrade for data that needs to be
migrated separately, the upgrade performance time could be
improved and the downtime window reduced.
If you add the performance improvements that Oracle’s new tools
provide to their recommendation to preserve as much information
34
about performance as you can before the upgrade, you may be able
to avoid an issue that Oracle says affects many customers after the
upgrade: “90% of highly visible problems attributed to an upgrade
do not occur while upgrading but appear as unanticipated
performance degradations days or weeks after the upgrade”
(Upgrading to 11g Best Practices, by Ashish Agrawal, Oracle
Corporation).
If your DBA gathered information about current performance, they
could then use Database Replay and SQL Performance Analyzer to
quickly respond to those unanticipated performance issues that
appear after the upgrade.
Note, however, that if you separate the database upgrade from the
applications upgrade, your users will have to test both upgrades.
With a single database/applications upgrade, the business users test
only once. Testing for the database upgrade, though, is
considerably different for users than testing for the applications
upgrade. For the database upgrade, rather than worrying about
functionality issues within the applications, users will focus
primarily on performance issues. And wouldn’t it be nice to get
some of those issues out of the way ahead of time?
Must We Upgrade?
The Database Tier for Oracle E-Business Applications Release 11i
installs Oracle Database Version 9iR2, but should be upgraded to
Oracle Database Version 10gR2 or, preferably, 11gR2. Oracle E-
Business Applications Release 12 is certified to run Oracle
Database Version 10gR2, 11gR1 and 11gR2. All of these database
versions are stable, so in theory, if you aren’t experiencing
technical problems, you don’t have to upgrade. However, you must
keep in mind that your database represents the inner workings of
your company. Eventually, Oracle must move their attention and
support to newer releases of the database, so eventually Oracle
stops supporting earlier releases. Oracle’s support plans are
detailed in their Lifetime Support Policy at:
35
http://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/lifetime-support-
technology-069183.pdf
Knowing what is included with Oracle’s Extended Support and
Sustaining Support, and at what price, is important for customers
to understand. With Extended Support, you can still log a P1
problem - but there's no guarantee that the resolution will come
quickly - it might take months. Even within Premier Support,
Oracle supports only the current and previous database releases for
12 months after the current database has been released. That's a
subtle point that could cause big issues for customers - if you are
running Oracle Database Version 10.2.0.5, you were supported
with Premier Support until July 2010 now that database Version
11gR2 is generally available. If you are running Oracle Database
Version 10.2.0.3, thinking you are supported based on what you
read on the support page, you aren't - that support stopped in
February, 2009. These policies override the E-Business Suite
support agreements.
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Chapter 5 – Upgrading the Applications
Should We Upgrade to Release 12?
The E-Business Suite Release 11.5.10 software was released in
2004. There are no plans to add another CU (Consolidated Update
#3), so the only way to stay current is to apply Family Packs and
additional patches to Release 11i. E-Business Suite Release
11.5.10 Premier Support lasted six years from November 2004.
That means at the end of November, 2010, Premier Support ended
and all customers still on Release 11i (11.5.10.2) moved to
Extended Support. To stay supported on Oracle’s E-Business
Release 11.5.10.2 after that, you would normally have to pay an
additional fee for support to run in "Extended Support," but Oracle
waived the fees.
Oracle strongly recommends not running production in Extended
Support mode unless you have no other choice.
There is also a “Minimum Patch Baseline” for the software that
must be met for Extended Support. You should review MOS Doc.
ID: 883202.1 and 1116887.1 to make sure that you are staying at
the minimum patch baseline. Also, Oracle updates these
documents, so you should recheck them periodically.
In terms of functionality, Release 12 includes new and improved
modules. In fact, the biggest difference for Release 12 is on the
functional side; much more so than on the technical side. Release
12 uses a new user interface called the Swan Interface.
If you are planning an upgrade, you should consider upgrading to
Release 12.1. You’ll be positioned to upgrade to the Fusion
Applications when an upgrade path is provided, and you’ll be
ready for Release 12.2 when it is released. If the software is stable,
always upgrade to the latest release if you need the new features
and functionality. Release 12.1 is stable!
38
Must We Upgrade to Release 12.1?
Oh for the days when we could linger on an E-Business Suite
release for years and years! Those days are over, mostly because
Oracle is constantly changing the Applications, as much to add
new functionality as to correct issues with existing functionality.
With the need to apply security patches added into the mix, your
company will need to consider what your overall patching strategy
will be, and then plan to follow that strategy. Decisions about how
long to wait to upgrade can affect the cost for Oracle’s support, as
well as how difficult the upgrade will be. Stragglers on releases
earlier than Release 11.5.7, for example, will have to follow a
much more complex upgrade path than those who have stayed
more current with patching.
Upgrade Paths
There are two upgrade paths for upgrading to Release 12.1; the two
phased and single phased upgrades.
Two Phase - Unfortunately, if you are running a release prior to
Release 11.5.7, you must first upgrade to Release 11.5.10.2 and
then upgrade to Release 12.1. If you are not already running Oracle
10g or Oracle 11g, then you must upgrade the database before
upgrading to Release 12.1. This upgrade path is called a dual phase
upgrade. The good news is, the two phases do not have to occur
during the same critical downtime.
As part of this upgrade, if you haven’t already converted to the
Oracle Applications Tablespace Model (OATM), you’ll need to
convert your data at some point in the near future. Although it is
not a requirement as part of the upgrade, all of the new product
modules are in the OATM format. OATM features include
automatic restart of the generation and execution of migration
commands, configurable default extent size and a new “Tools”
tablespace for products such as Oracle Portal, Oracle Discoverer,
Oracle Internet Directory and Oracle Application Server Single
Sign-On.
39
Single Phase - If you are running Release 11.5.7 or later, you’ll
need to upgrade to Oracle 10g or Oracle 11g and Release 12.1
during the same critical downtime.
For both upgrades, we recommend that you upgrade to the latest
certified version of Oracle 11g (currently 11gR2), and that you
upgrade to the latest certified version of Release 12 (currently
12.1.3).
Should You Wait for Release 12.2?
The new technical features of Release 12.2 are exciting and will
have a significant impact on patching downtime, but Oracle does
not recommend that you wait. Upgrade to 12.1.3, and when
Release 12.2 is released, consider the timing and training
requirements and plan accordingly.
Upgrade by Request
Upgrade by Request is an option that allows you to limit how
much data you upgrade during the Release 12.1 upgrade downtime
window. The default is about six months of a fiscal year’s data.
You can come back to the remaining data and upgrade it later. If
you have a narrow upgrade window, Upgrade by Request can help
you reduce the scope of the upgrade and then process less essential
historical data later, after the upgrade is complete.
Currently, Upgrade by Request covers historical data within
financials and procurement, projects, supply chain management,
and CRM. The upgrade depends on which module you are
upgrading. For some products, only SLA data is upgraded, while
for others, both transactions and accounting data will be upgraded.
To use Upgrade by Request, you’ll choose the range of periods of
historical data you want to upgrade before you run the Release 12
upgrade, and you’ll run a pre-upgrade concurrent program. After
you’ve finished your upgrade, you’ll run an SLA post upgrade
concurrent program to complete the processing for the rest of your
data.
40
The details for Upgrade by Request are covered in Appendix G of
the Release 12 Upgrade Manual.
41
Chapter 6 - Release 12 Administration and Maintenance Tools: OEM, OAM and OCM
E-Business Suite Administration and Maintenance Tools
Oracle offers a number of tools to manage the E-Business Suite
environment, including Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM), Oracle
Applications Manager (OAM), Oracle Configuration Manager
(OCM), the E-Business Suite Plug-in, Patch Wizard, AutoConfig,
AutoPatch, iSetup, OPatch, and napply CPU/PSU, Diagnostics,
and Oracle Integration Repository (iRep).
Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM), Oracle Application Manager
(OAM) and Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM) are included
with the database and Applications software. Oracle Applications
Manager integrates with several tools that are also provided at no
extra cost, including AutoConfig, AutoPatch, iSetup, Diagnostics
and Oracle Integration Repository.
There are a few tools that are still run from the command line,
including adadmin, OPatch and napply CPU/PSU. And, finally,
there is the Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in 4.0 for OEM 11g or
Release 12.1.0.1 for OEM 12c, which used to be two separate
additional cost Management Packs, the Application Management
Pack (AMP) and the Application Change Management Pack
(ACMP). The E-Business Suite Plug-in integrates with Oracle
Enterprise Manager and Oracle Applications Manager to add
additional functionality.
This chapter focuses on the features, functionality and utilities
provided by Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Applications
Manager, and Oracle Configuration Manager. The next chapter
will describe how the e-Business Suite Plug-in fits into the picture.
And the chapter after that will cover the tools that are still run from
the command line.
42
Lifecycle Management
Let’s start by discussing the reason you might need all these tools.
Lifecycle Management is Oracle’s term for how we install,
maintain, monitor, manage and upgrade our E-Business Suite
Applications. Because the Applications are so complex, they
require a number of different tools.
Over the years, many of us have written our own sets of scripts and
procedures to deal with the different tasks necessary for managing
the Applications. Third party vendors have also offered products to
simplify certain tasks. And Oracle provides a number of tools to
help. Some of the tools, like OEM and OAM, are included with the
Applications licenses. Others, called Management Pack Plug-ins,
like the E-Business Suite Plug-in, cost extra.
To understand whether the E-Business Suite Plug-in is necessary
for your environment, we need as a foundation to understand how
the different tools work together, what you can do without the E-
Business Suite Plug-in, and what you can’t do unless you have
licensed the E-Business Suite Plug-in.
What is Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM)?
Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) 10g, 11g and 12c Grid Control
allow you to monitor E-Business Suite performance, availability
and configuration changes. You can monitor multiple E-Business
systems and drill down into Oracle Applications Manager (OAM).
OEM features described in The Oracle Enterprise Manager
Concept manual for 10g Release 5 (10.2.0.5), Part Number
B31949-10 include enhanced management and monitoring support,
including ADDM for RAC, Real-time SQL Monitoring, Partition
Advisor, Automatic SQL Tuning, Database Replay, Cloning,
Enhanced Data Masking, High Availability features and security
features.
Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control includes additional
features, including My Oracle Support integration, the Oracle
Virtual Manager (VM) Pack, and the ability to discover and
43
monitor WebLogic domains. See Oracle® Enterprise Manager
Concepts 11g Release 11.1.0.1, Part Number E11982-03, for more
details about Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control new features.
Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Grid Control adds even more
features, including updates to the Enterprise Manager for Oracle
Cloud, Oracle Database, Oracla Exadata HealthCheck, Oracle
Virtualization and My Oracle Support plug-ins, as well as new
plug-ins for Big Data Appliance and Storage Management. See
Oracle® Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Basic Installation
Guide 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2), Part Number E22624-19 for more
details.
In addition to all these features, OEM is also integrated with the E-
Business Suite Plug-in that we will describe later. If you choose to
implement the E-Business Suite Plug-in, you’ll have an integrated
suite of tools that provide end-to-end monitoring and management
for your entire E-Business Suite environment.
What is Oracle Applications Manager (OAM)?
Oracle Applications Manager (OAM) is a tool included with the E-
Business Suite that extends your Applications management
capabilities. To run OAM, log onto the applications as the System
Administrator responsibility and then choose from the list of
Oracle Application Manager options:
44
Figure 3
Figure 4 - Choose "Dashboard" from the list under Oracle Applications
Manager
If you’re an old hand at managing the E-Business Suite
Applications, then you probably know the commands to run
several of these tools from the command line. OAM provides a
framework to make it simpler to manage your Applications. Notice
45
that OAM is focused on managing one instance. While it does have
some summary reporting capabilities, it does not have features for
comparing instances, or for applying changes to multiple instances
at the same time.
Applications Patching with OAM
Applications patching is Oracle’s way of releasing code fixes,
functionality enhancements or new functionality. Patches can
update or create new file system objects like forms, reports and sql
scripts. Patches can also execute code within the database to
change seeded data.
To upgrade an E-Business Suite environment from Release 11i to
Release 12, or to apply a Release 12 RUP, Family Pack, Mini-
Pack, or other applications patch, you’ll use the AutoPatch
(adpatch) tool.
You can use OAM’s Patch Wizard with the Patch Information
Bundle (PIB) file to help decide which patch to apply and to
determine what code or data it will change. The PIB file is updated
nightly by Oracle and a current copy of the file should be
downloaded before any patch impact analysis.
You can also use the Patch Application Assistant to help track and
apply manual patch steps. Oracle has a new manual called Oracle
Applications Patching Procedures that covers the details you’ll
need to know to patch your applications.
OAM’s Patch Wizard helps you determine what patches to
apply, what code the patches will change, and can download
the patches. You then use AutoPatch to apply patches.
Tracking customizations, packaging a customization into
Oracle’s patching format, interfacing with Source Control
Software, and change control are accomplished using the E-
Business Suite Plug-in.
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AutoConfig with OAM
AutoConfig automatically configures an Oracle Applications
Release 12 instance. All the necessary information is saved in the
Applications Context File or the Database Context File. The
Applications Context File is an XML repository in $INST_TOP
that contains the configuration information for the Applications
tier. The Database Context File is an XML repository in the
RDBMS ORACLE_HOME that holds database tier information.
AutoConfig logfiles are stored under $INST_TOP/admin/log
for the Application Tier and
$ORACLE_HOME/appsutil/log/<CONTEXT_NAME> for the
Database Tier. AutoConfig Template files have named tags that are
replaced with instance-specific information located in
<product_top>/admin/template. Note that this file
should not be edited. You can create a custom template file by
copying the template file and then editing it. To do so, create a
directory named “custom” in the same directory as the template
file you are customizing. Copy that customized template file into
the directory you just created and AutoConfig will recognize that it
is a custom template that supersedes the original template file.
When AutoConfig detects a custom template file, it uses it.
AutoConfig comes with a set of scripts that include:
adchkcfg.sh – run this program before running AutoConfig to
review changes. It generates a report showing the differences
between the current and modified AutoConfig file
adtmplrpt.sh – provides information about the location of
AutoConfig templates
restore.sh – use this script to roll back an AutoConfig session
See MOS Doc. ID: 387859.1, Using AutoConfig to Manage System
Configurations in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 for more
details about AutoConfig.
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Changes to AutoConfig configurations can be made through
OAM (highly recommended), or by manually making
changes to files and running scripts.
Figure 5 – Use OAM to make changes to your AutoConfig context files
iSetup with OAM
So – your developers have been working on creating some new
concurrent programs in your test environment. Or perhaps they’ve
got some new request groups, printer setups, new responsibilities
or other customized objects that need to be migrated out of the test
environment and into production. Or perhaps you’d like to add
users to a test environment that are already set up on production. It
turns out you have three options:
1. Manually - Open up a screen pointing to your test environment
and a screen pointing to your production environment, and
manually copy (type) everything you want to move. Uggh –
48
that’s how we did it in the olden days, but it is certainly not how
we want to do it today. Manually making the changes takes too
long, and it’s too easy to make mistakes. A thorough and time-
consuming test of each migration would have to be included in
your project plan.
2. FNDLOAD – Oracle’s command line utility can be used to
download application data from an Oracle Applications instance
into a portable, editable text file (.ldt file). The data in the
FNDLOAD .ldt file can then be uploaded into another Oracle E-
Business Suite instance. With FNDLOAD, you’re working from
a Unix account and have to have a thorough understanding of
the objects that you want to move. You’ll still need to do a
thorough test of the objects that you’ve migrated, but errors are
less likely than if you hand-typed the information.
3. iSetup – iSetup is a module provided within the E-Business
Suite that allows you to easily migrate setups using a user-
friendly interface. You’ll work through E-Business Suite
screens rather than at the Unix level, so you do not have to be a
programmer or DBA to feel comfortable using this tool. iSetup
includes templates that make it easy to move commonly
migrated objects, and, unlike our other two options, iSetup
documents the configuration changes to allow you to compare
changes across instances and timelines.
OAM allows you to use iSetup to make configuration changes.
The E-Business Suite Plug-in supports simultaneous iSetup
changes across multiple E-Business Suite instances.
License Manager with OAM
You can run License Manager from OAM to enable licensed E-
Business Suite modules.
49
Figure 6 - You can run License Manager from OAM
You can use License Manager within OAM, or you can
manually run License Manager scripts from the command
line.
Oracle eBusiness Suite Diagnostics with OAM
The Oracle eBusiness Suite Diagnostics are free utilities. New
diagnostics are delivered in a standard Oracle Patch and are
applied using AutoPatch. The diagnostics don’t alter data or setup,
and the latest patch is included in Release 12.1.3 (Patch 9239092).
While Diagnostics were not initially required, Oracle now expects
you to have the Diagnostics installed and will often ask you to run
a particular Diagnostic to help problem solve a Service Request
(SR). You should stay current on Diagnostic patches, as the
Diagnostic programs are useful in troubleshooting.
To Run Diagnostics:
50
1. Login to the E-Business Suite using an account that has the
“Oracle Diagnostics Tool” responsibility
2. Select the "Oracle Diagnostics Tool" responsibility
3. Choose a diagnostic test from the Test Summary list. You can
see which tests are available for an Application by clicking on
the number under “Registered Tests”:
Figure 7 - Diagnostics
51
4. Enter input parameters if there are any for the test that you have
selected
5. Click on the 'Run Test' button
6. To review the test output, click on the 'Report' icon displayed in
the status line
Access Diagnostics through OAM.
Other OAM Tools
You can also use OAM to administer concurrent managers and
workflow components, including starting and stopping concurrent
managers and controlling workflow services.
OAM includes Diagnostic Wizards for Concurrent Manager
Recovery, Service Infrastructure, GCS and Forms Monitoring, CP
Signature and Dashboard Collection Signature.
The Dashboard Collection Program collects metrics for many
services, web components and other features of an Oracle
Applications instance. OAM includes a Dashboard Setup Wizard
that can be used to enable or disable the monitoring of individual
metrics.
The CP Signature Wizard performs many key Concurrent
Processing related data collections and gathers important
configuration and log files to be saved to the Support cart for more
efficient interaction with Support.
Release 12.1.1 added Advanced Configuration Wizards that
Enable/Disable HTTP load balancing, SSL, and SSL Accelerator
to reduce the SSL traffic and workload off the web servers, and
Forms Socket Mode (R11i) and Servlet Mode (R12).
What is Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM)?
Let’s face it, the Oracle environment is a complicated beast. Now,
imagine how hard it must be for Oracle Support to draw important
information out of a person who has logged a Support Request.
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Does everyone in your company who might log a Support Request
know all the configuration information about your environment?
Do they know your environment’s:
Hardware configuration (CPU, memory, storage, network, etc.)
Operating System patches, kernel parameter settings and
installed packages
Oracle software (databases, middleware and applications)
details such as patches, patch sets, init parameters and
configuration settings
Oracle Application Server details such as patches, patch sets,
components and configuration settings
Oracle WebLogic Server configuration settings such as ports in
use, resource usage settings, deployed applications and JDBC
resources
Probably not. That’s why Oracle includes another toolset that
gathers information about your Oracle configuration; the Oracle
Configuration Manager. This toolset gathers the information, and
when you log a Service Request, you can either automatically or
manually upload the information to Oracle Support. While the tool
isn’t mandatory yet, Oracle Support will often request that you run
it when you log a Service Request, so you might as well make sure
you have the latest version and start using it.
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Chapter 7 - How Do OEM and OAM and the E-Business Suite Plug-in/Application Management
Suite (AMS) Work Together?
OEM Grid Control allows you to monitor multiple Oracle E-
Business Suite systems from a single console. You can drill down
into Oracle Applications Manager (OAM) to control, configure,
troubleshoot, and maintain individual EBS systems.
If you want to have the ability to take a step back and see and
manage all of your instances, you’ll need to consider adding
another product to your toolset – the E-Business Suite Plug-in.
Version 4.0 works with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g and was
formerly called Application Management Pack (AMP) and the
Application Change Management Pack (ACMP). The latest
version is called the Application Management Suite (AMS) for
EBS 12c.
You can read more about Version 4.0 of the Plug-in for E-Business
Suite in MOS Doc. ID: 1224313.1, Getting Started with Oracle E-
Business Suite Plug-in, Release 4.0, and on Steven Chan’s blog,
Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in 4.0 Released for OEM 11g
(11.1.0.1).
The newest version, called the Application Management Suite for
EBS 12c, works with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c - see Steven
Chan’s E-Business Suite Plug-in 12.1.0.1 for Enterprise Manager
12c Now Available, MOS Doc. ID: 1434392.1, Getting Started
with Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-In, Release 12.1.0.1, and
Oracle Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite
Guide Release 12.1.0.1.0, Part No. E28715-03, October 2012, for
more details. The newest version includes improved change
management features and Oracle Real User Experience Insight and
Oracle Configuration & Compliance capabilities. You must have a
license for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control to use
the 12c version of the Plug-in.
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Implementing this set of tools can help lower your maintenance
and administration costs for the highly complex E-Business Suite
environment.
What is the E-Business Suite Plug-in/Application Management Suite (AMS)?
With Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) setting out to show the
big picture in monitoring your Oracle environments, and Oracle
Applications Manager (OAM) giving you a detailed view of each
E-Business Suite instance, it seems only natural for the E-Business
Suite Plug-in to integrate OEM and OAM together to provide a
bird’s eye view of your entire environment.
The E-Business Suite Plug-in extends Oracle Enterprise Grid
Control to help monitor and manage EBS systems and provide a
consolidated end-to-end E-Business Suite management solution
(the earlier release, Version 3.1 of AMP and ACP, works with
Oracle Enterprise 10g Grid Control). It integrates Oracle
Application Manager with Grid Control and provides advanced
features to monitor and manage EBS systems, including Cloning,
Application Service Level Management, Extended Performance
Metrics, Data Scrambling and links from Grid Control to OAM.
The Plug-in has six main features: Discovery, Monitoring,
Cloning, Customization Manager, Patching Manager, and Setup
Manager.
The E-Business Suite Plug-in monitors the Oracle Applications
Service, the Oracle Applications Infrastructure Service, the
Concurrent Processing Service, the Forms Applications Service,
the Concurrent Manager, Workflow, Custom Objects, and Patch
Information. The Plug-in monitors your system for security
problems, usage characteristics, configuration changes and
performance. Its key capabilities include automated cloning,
including cloning of very complex configurations, automatic
discovery of E-Business Suite Systems, configuration
management, service level management, extended performance
metrics, and links from OEM Grid Control to OAM.
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Discovery
The Discovery Wizard dashboard uses OEM Grid Control to
discover/register each database instance. The Discovery Wizard
will by default enable discovery and monitoring of Workflow and
create an Oracle Workflow Service, Forms Service, SSA Service,
Patching Information Object, Custom Objects, and Order
Management Services. The Wizard adds a new Oracle
Applications tab under the Targets tab of Grid Control, and once
you apply the Oracle Applications Enterprise Manager
interoperability patch, you can drill down to OAM. In addition to
applying the interoperability patch, you need to set the Preferences
global link in OAM, or metrics won’t be updated.
The Discovery Wizard locates the Database Context and
Applications Context, and then discovers the Oracle Forms and
JVM Usage for the Applications Context.
System Management and Concurrent Manager Dashboards
The E-Business Suite Plug-in’s monitoring features include the
System Management Dashboard and the Concurrent Processing
Dashboard. The System Management Dashboard can run
diagnostics tests, track performance, administer OAM tasks, and
track system downtime.
Another Plug-in feature is Service Level Monitoring. You can
define Service Models that represent business functions or
applications in your enterprise, and then measure the performance
and availability of critical business functions. You can set up alerts
to notify you when there is a problem, and identify common issues
and diagnose causes of failures. For those companies who provide
internal Service Level Agreements, the Service Level Monitoring
feature can be particularly helpful in determining if you are
meeting those agreements.
The Concurrent Manager Dashboard provides a detailed overview
of the efficiency of Concurrent Managers and Programs. You can
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build a watch list of specific concurrent managers and concurrent
programs. The Plug-in also allows end to end tracing, including the
ability to analyze the E-Business Suite database load. You can also
easily trace top database sessions back to the end user.
Another unique feature of the Plug-in monitoring is the ability to
view and compare E-Business Suite configurations. You can see
what products are installed, take advantage of new internal system
alerts, review which patches have been applied, see site level
profile options that have changed, and see which context files have
been edited.
Because the Plug-in is integrated with OEM, you can drill down to
the OEM Grid Control host and drill down to OAM as well.
Cloning
You can clone an E-Business Suite instance using RapidClone or
the E-Business Suite Plug-in. RapidClone is the most commonly
used tool for cloning. Oracle continues to refine it and releases new
patches periodically. See MOS Doc. ID: 406982.1, Cloning Oracle
Applications Release 12 with Rapid Clone, to stay current on
available patches. MOS Doc. ID: 603104.1, Troubleshooting
RapidClone issues with Oracle Applications R12 is also highly
recommended.
The intention with the E-Business Suite Plug-in’s cloning feature
is to provide automated cloning that will also support cloning with
data scrambling (data masking). The Plug-in allows the following
methods of cloning:
Clone Source to Target: the source system data is extracted and
applied on to a target system. On completion of the clone
process, the source and target systems will have the same data
and patch set level. The benefit of this procedure is that it
creates an identical copy of the production system.
Clone Source to Image: the source system data is extracted and
stored. The image extracted can be applied to any number of
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target systems. The benefit of this procedure is that it facilitates
periodic backing up of the source system.
Deploy Image to Target: an image is deployed on to a target
system. The benefit of this procedure is that it allows for rapid
deployment of standard pre-configured target systems.
Hot Mode Clone Source to Target, Source to Image and Image
to Target, where the source system does not need to be shut
down.
A Clone Status page shows the status of all clone jobs (In Progress,
Scheduled, Saved, Completed). You can add comments to the
status of any clone job, and the cloning procedure includes a step-
by-step interview process.
With the Plug-in’s Smart Clone capability, you can use a database
target cloned using an external solution (EMC, NetApp FlexClone,
certain IBM tools) as an input to the Plug-in’s cloning procedures.
Smart Clone also supports more complex, advanced E-Business
Suite deployments, including configuring a single instance
database, a RAC database, cloning a single-node applications tier
to a single-node applications tier, creating a scale-down clone of a
multi-tier applications tier with a shared file system node to a
single-node applications tier, and creating a scale-down clone of a
multi-tier applications tier without a shared file system node to a
single-node applications tier.
Customization, Patching and Setup Managers
The E-Business Suite Plug-in provides a feature that has been
sorely needed in the Applications world: a sophisticated tool that
manages changes introduced by customizations, patches and
functional setups during implementation or maintenance activities.
This tool shows that Oracle recognizes that its customers do, in
many cases, have to customize the Applications, and that providing
a framework to help track and manage those changes will make
upgrading to new releases simpler, and easier to accomplish. The
Plug-in also allows DBAs to apply patches simultaneously across
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multiple instances, and includes a Change Approval mechanism so
that both customizations and Oracle-provided patches can be
applied using a rigorous approval process. The Plug-in also uses
iSetup to migrate changes between Applications environments.
The Plug-in includes three toolsets: Customization Manager, Patch
Manager and Setup Manager.
Customization Manager – With Customization Manager, you
can monitor and manage E-Business Suite changes, register new
custom applications, and track and validate existing custom
applications in a standard way. Reporting options include the
ability to report on a single package, compare two packages, or
compare a package against an instance. Customization Manager
integrates with most source control systems, and includes a
change approval framework that provides an audit trail which
can be particularly useful when preparing to upgrade, and
improves user productivity by automating change deployment.
This tool validates customized code against software coding
best practices, and packages changes so they can be applied like
any other Oracle application patch.
Patch Manager automates applying application patches across
multiple instances. Patch Manager recommends application
patches, provides details about what a patch will change, and
shows what patches have modified a specific file. A unique
feature is Prerequisite Patch Impact Analysis, which determines
if there are prerequisites, and allows adding prerequisites to the
patch job if they aren’t already available. Patch Manager also
allows scheduling application patch application, and allows you
to enter comments in the Patch Run Details, including the Patch
Run Name, Description, Justification, Requester, and
Notification E-mails. Patch Manager is integrated with
Customization Manager as well as with My Oracle Support,
which makes downloading patches a simple task.
Setup Manager is the next generation of iSetup. You can extract
and load data from one E-Business Suite instance to another,
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use “Projects” to control the sequence of a load, schedule timing
of a load, and manage simultaneous loads to multiple instances.
Setup Manager also allows Offline Transformation – users can
download setup data into Excel, edit or add to it, and then
upload it.
What Can You Do Without the E-Business Suite Plug-in?
You don’t have to buy the Plug-in. In all likelihood, you’ve
developed your own set of procedures to deal with managing the
E-Business Suite. For example:
Customization – You can continue to follow your company’s
current procedures for how to design, test, and roll out
customizations. If you have a lot of customizations, or if you are
preparing to upgrade and need to migrate your customizations,
you may want to look closer at the Plug-in.
Patching – You can research and apply patches using OAM
with Patch Wizard. If you have multiple E-Business Suite
instances and need to apply changes to those other instances
simultaneously, the Plug-in could be useful. The Plug-in is also
very useful if you’d like to standardize your patch process so
that all patches look the same – just like an Oracle patch. And if
you need a change control process, the Plug-in provides that,
including the ability to have specific users sign off on changes
and be notified when patches are applied.
Setup – Migrate setups using iSetup, FNDLOAD, or other third-
party tools. If you need to migrate setups to multiple instances,
the Plug-in could cut down the time to apply those changes with
its ability to apply setups simultaneously across multiple
instances.
Monitoring – OAM comes with a number of seeded monitoring
metrics for an individual instance, including New Internal
System Alerts, Patches Applied, Patch Wizard, Site Level
Profile Options Changed, and Context Files Edited metrics. The
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Plug-in includes even more monitoring metrics, including
Service Level Agreement monitoring.
Cloning – Oracle has provided cloning procedures (including
Data Scrambling) that are well-tested and continue to be
enhanced. Those procedures are manual, though, and the Plug-
in’s ability to deal with so many different configuration
scenarios is very appealing.
What Can’t You Do Without the E-Business Suite Plug-in?
You can do all the things that the Plug-in supports - Customization,
Patching, Setup, Monitoring, and Cloning – but…
The devil is in the details – it is easy to lose track of where a
customization has been applied or whether a setup has been
correctly cascaded. And going back several years to prepare to
migrate customizations, when it’s time to do an upgrade, can be
a formidable task.
Oracle is providing a supported framework and toolset that
allow you to manage your applications more easily, with an
audit trail, reporting features, and the ability to compare and
contrast multiple E-Business Suite environments more easily in
an automated fashion to reduce overall maintenance costs.
The E-Business Suite Plug-in provides an automated framework
and packaging methodology that eliminate manual work and make
processes more productive and efficient. With the Plug-in’s
automated cloning features, much of the manual effort required by
the DBA when using RapidClone is eliminated.
Outside of the E-Business Suite Plug-in, Metric Collection,
Comparison Reporting, and the ability to see all your environments
from inside Grid Control does not exist, and does not have the
Oracle proprietary information needed to support highly complex
E-Business Suite Applications topologies.
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There are also certain things that you can only do with the E-
Business Suite Plug-in:
Integrated Customization Management
Automated Service Level Management
Automated Cloning using a supported toolset, rather than scripts
or manual procedures
Automated Change Control Notification
Apply your customized patches that look and run just like your
E-Business Suite patches
Note that Oracle does not recommend deploying a custom
application within the E-Business Suite technology stack. Instead,
Oracle suggests either deploying custom applications on a separate
server or in a separate ORACLE_HOME on an EBS server
(though this option isn’t recommended either). See Steven Chan’s
Avoid Mixing Custom Applications with E-Business Suite
Environments for more details.
Is the E-Business Suite Plug-in Worth the Extra Money?
The Applications DBA and Applications System Administrator’s
jobs are very complex and require attention to detail and, often,
managing multiple tedious but necessary tasks. Anything you can
do to automate tasks and leave an audit trail is well worth
considering. With these tools in place, your next DBA or SA will
have a better view of the history of changes and setups and may
not have to recreate or invent tools to handle tasks that should be
automated already.
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Chapter 8 - Tools Still Run From the Command Line
Inside the framework that OEM, OAM, and the E-Business Suite
Plug-in provide are links to several tools that we’ve been using all
along with Release 11i and Release 12, including Rapid Clone,
AutoConfig, AutoPatch, iSetup, and Oracle E-Business Suite
Diagnostics. There are a few tools that haven’t been integrated,
including patchsets.sh, adadmin, OPatch and napply CPU/PSU.
The direction Oracle is heading shows their goal of providing an
end-to-end administration suite that can simplify the management
of Oracle’s many moving parts.
Rapid Install Wizard
You’ll use the Rapid Install Wizard if you are installing a fresh
install of the E-Business Suite. The Rapid Install Wizard installs
the ORACLE_HOMEs and databases, and the APPL_TOP and
COMMON_TOP directories that contain the Applications code. A
new concept for Release 12 is the Instance Home, or $INST_TOP.
Located at $ORACLE_BASE/inst/apps/context_name, where
context_name is the dbsid_host, the Instance Home facilitates
setting up a shared application file system for multi-node
configurations and creates a common location for all objects
specifically related to an instance (logs, some config files,
concurrent manager output, etc.).
adadmin
The adadmin toolset handles tasks required for maintaining and
administering an Oracle E-Business Suite instance. Typical tasks
include generating applications files, maintaining applications
files, compiling and reloading applications database entities, and
enabling or disabling Maintenance Mode.
Database and CPU/PSU Patching
We’ll talk about database and CPU/PSU patching later in the next
chapter.
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Oracle’s Get Proactive Tools
Oracle has introduced a number of tools geared toward helping
customers proactively address potential issues with the E-Business
Suite. Many are SQL scripts. They’re easy to install (download the
latest version from My Oracle Support and run from the command
line, or follow Oracle instructions to add as a Concurrent Program
to your instance) and produce helpful reports that assess the status
of key indicators and point you to MOS documents for more
information. The output includes a button for each of the results
that shows the SQL code that was used, which makes it easy to
write your own customized versions if you want to see the data in a
different way. Best of all, the managers over these tools keep
improving them; they appreciate feedback, so the tools continue to
evolve.
Two that we’ve found particularly useful are the EBS Workflow
Analyzer and the EBS Concurrent Processing Analyzer. Both
programs report on areas that are unusual and then point to
information about what makes them unusual, as well as MOS
documents that provide additional information. The reports don’t
correct problems, but they are very useful for identifying potential
problems and guiding you to learn how to fix them.
EBS Workflow Analyzer
Following are some samples from the EBS Workflow Analyzer
output. You can see where there may be issues with your
Workflow tables or configuration, why they may be problematic,
and which My Oracle Support notes have more information that
may be helpful.
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EBS CP Analyzer (Concurrent Processing)
Like the EBS Workflow Analyzer tool, the Concurrent Processing
Analyzer tool offers pointers about setups and potential issues.
If you click on the SQL Script button from within the EBS
Concurrent Processing Analyzer report, it will show you the code
that was used to generate the output. You can use that code as the
basis for additional querying. For example, in the following
example, instead of sorting based on the number of executions, you
might sort by AVG|MINUTES so that you can find the Concurrent
Programs that run, on average, the longest in your environment.
Tells you if you have a problem, how
many records are affected, why it is a problem, and where to look for more help
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Then you could use the output to decide which programs to focus
on tuning.
Similarly, you could easily modify the code from this query to get
a list of all tables, sorted by Empty Blocks, to help decide which
tables could be reorganized during a quarterly database
reorganization effort. Or, you could change the query to list all
tables and sort by Total Blocks and use that information to search
for large tables that might have purge programs available on My
Oracle Support.
Oracle continues to add more Get Proactive tools, including ones
for the database. You can learn more about them at MOS Doc. ID:
432.1, Oracle Premier Support: Get Proactive! If you find a
problem but aren’t sure how to address it, even after reading the
My Oracle Support notes, you can take your problem to the My
Oracle Support Community and ask for advice, or you can create a
Service Request on My Oracle Support and upload the report
results.
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Chapter 9 - Applications Patching
Applications patching is Oracle’s way of releasing code fixes,
functionality enhancements or new functionality. Patches can
update or create new file system objects like forms, reports and sql
scripts. Patches can also execute code within the database to
change seeded data. To upgrade an E-Business Suite environment
from Release 11i to Release 12, or to apply a Release 12 RUP,
Family Pack, Mini-Pack, or other applications patch, you’ll use the
AutoPatch tool. You can use OAM’s Patch Wizard to help decide
which patch to apply and to determine what code or data it will
change. You can also use the Patch Application Assistant to help
track and apply manual patch steps. Oracle has a new manual
called Oracle Applications Patching Procedures.
Release 12 Applications Patching Changes
With Release 12, Oracle keeps major new features and bug fixes
separate. In fact, major new functionality is now reserved for point
releases. Oracle creates a new maintenance branch for each point
release of the Applications. New feature introduction into
maintenance branches is limited and requires executive approval
(by Oracle executives). To provide better change control, Release
12 introduced some new terminology for patching called codelines
and codelevels that should make checking for prerequisites easier.
Codelines and Codelevels
Patches are grouped into codelines. A codeline begins with a point
release and progresses to include all patches required to maintain
that point release. So Release 12.0 would be Codeline A, and
Release 12.1 would be called Codeline B. The unique set of
product features for a point release or a product family are a
codelevel. In Release 11i, patches could require other individual
patches as prerequisites, making it difficult to determine if a new
patch included all the functionality of an older patch. In Release
12, patches can only require a codelevel as a prerequisite. Read
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MOS Doc. ID: 459156.1, Oracle Applications Patching FAQ for
Release 12 to learn more about Release 12’s patching features.
Types of Applications Patches
As the Applications DBA, you will need to be particularly aware
of three types of Applications patches provided for Release 12:
RUPs, CPUs and the ATG.
Release Update Pack (RUP)
Each new point release of Release 12 is packaged in a RUP
(Release Update Pack), and current Release 12 Release Update
Packs are Releases 12.0 and 12.1. Oracle has muddied their list of
acronyms with the Release Update Pack, because for years they
have been releasing Release Update Patches, also called RUPs,
which are an entirely different animal. ATG_PF.H RUP 6 is an
example of a Release 11i Release Update Patch. For Release 12,
the point releases for Release 12.1 are called Release 12.1 RUP 1
(12.1.1), Release 12.1 RUP 2 (Release Update Patch 12.1.2) and
Release 12.1 RUP 3 (Release Update Patch 12.1.3). Confusing?
Just a little.
For those of you who were in the trenches with Releases 11.5.1
through 11.5.4, we’re happy to say that Release 12.1+ is
exponentially more stable.
A Release Update Pack for Release 12 is similar to a Release 11i
CU, or Consolidated Update; it’s a point release. Like the Release
11i CU2, also called Release 11.5.10.2, a Release Update Pack
may include stub applications, performance improvements and
new or enhanced functionality. To get an idea of the changes
between RUPs, read the Release Content Documents (RCDs) on
My Oracle Support. To find the RCDs and other Release 12
documentation, click on the Knowledge Tab at the top of the screen
when you first log into My Oracle Support, then the Tools and
Training tab, toward the bottom left, then E-Business Suite, and
then the release that you are researching (in the example below, we
chose Release 12.1 Info Center.
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Figure 8 - You can access RCDs from My Oracle Support
Figure 9 shows what the screen looks like that has links to the
RCDs:
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Figure 9
Critical Patch Update (CPU/PSUs)
Unlike Release 11i, Release 12 RUPs contain the latest E-Business
Suite portion of the CPU (Critical Patch Update) available at its
release (it does not contain the Opatch portion, so you still need to
research the CPU and determine what additional pieces need to be
applied).
A CPU is Oracle’s answer to the ongoing security issues plaguing
our society. With hackers seeking access to companies’ critical
data, Oracle now releases a set of patches every quarter to fend off
attacks. Since CPUs generally have been implemented at the same
time as the latest RUP, when you apply the latest Release 12 RUP
your environment will also be current on the E-Business Suite
security patches included in the latest CPU. You still have to
check, though – Release 12.1.2, for example, was released the
month before the January 2010 CPU, so the later CPU had to be
applied separately. The Release 12.1.3 RUP was announced in the
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Application Technology Group (ATG) Newsletter – Issue July,
2010 Volume 10 (Doc ID 1158513.1.).
Because Oracle currently has no plans to implement a CU3 for
Release 11i, you need to apply each new CPU as it is released to
remain current on security patches on your Release 11i
environments. Oracle also now releases PSU patches, which
minimize the number of individual patches that need to be applied.
Note that once you start applying PSU patches, you must stay with
that approach indefinitely.
With Oracle’s recent announcement of an EBS Exception to
Sustaining Support, you might wonder if there will be CPUs
released for Release 11i. Elke Phelps notes in Critical Patch
Updates During EBS 11i Exception to Sustaining Support Period
that CPUs will continue to be released:
Oracle will continue to provide CPUs containing critical
security fixes for E-Business Suite 11i.
CPUs will be packaged and released as as cumulative patches
for both ATG RUP 6 and ATG RUP 7.
As always, we try to minimize the number of patches and
dependencies required for uptake of a CPU; however, there
have been quite a few changes to the 11i baseline since its
release. For dependency reasons the 11i CPUs may require a
higher number of files in order to bring them up to a consistent,
stable, and well tested level.
EBS 11i customer will continue to receive CPUs up to and
including the October 2014 CPU.
You might wonder why staying current on CPUs is so critical. If
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance is important to your company, can you
afford to fall behind on security updates? And of course, if you
know there’s a Critical Patch Update, and you know what
vulnerabilities it fixes, so do hackers.
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Oracle Database Vault
While the CPUs are intended to help fend off hackers, Oracle
Database Vault is a tool intended to protect data from insider
attacks by building internal controls to support segregation of
duties and privacy requirements. Oracle Database Vault Version
11.1.0.7 is certified for both Release 11i and Release 12. You can
read more about Oracle Database Vault at Database Vault 11.1.0.7
Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite.
Applications Technology Group (ATG)
For both Release 11i and Release 12, there is a set of modules that
are used by all of the other E-Business Suite modules. These
modules are also called Pseudo Products and are part of the
Applications Technology Group, or ATG. Keeping current on the
latest ATG patch is yet another DBA concern, since these modules
affect every aspect of the E-Business Suite. Release 12 ATG
modules are FND (Application Object Library), OAM (Oracle
Application Manager), OWF (Oracle Workflow), FWK (Oracle
Applications Framework), JTT (Oracle CRM Technology
Foundation), JTA (Oracle Common Application Components),
TXK (Oracle Applications Technology Stack), XDO (Oracle XML
Publisher), ECX (Oracle XML Gateway), EC (Oracle E-
Commerce Gateway), AK (Oracle Common Modules – AK), ALR
(Oracle Alert), UMX (Oracle User Management), BNE (Oracle
Web ADI), and FRM (Oracle Report Manager).
To complicate matters just a little more, Oracle follows strict
compliance with their ATG_PF RUP policy (N-1), which states
that the latest CPU will only support the last two ATG RUPs
(where the ATG RUP in this case is a Release Update Patch). The
January 2011 CPU will only support ATG RUP 6 and RUP 7. So
if you are running Release 11.5.10.2 with ATG RUP 5, you must
upgrade to at least ATG RUP 6 to be able to apply the latest
security patch, the January 2011 CPU. To stay current on security,
you must stay relatively current on ATG RUPs, which means you
must stay relatively current on which release of the Applications
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you are running. We HIGHLY encourage customers move to ATG
RUP 7 as soon as possible.
The introduction of CPU/PSUs is actually one of the most
important drivers for forcing a need to update your E-Business
Suite environment. While you may choose not to upgrade because
you don’t need new functionality or fixes to code, choosing to hold
off on applying a security patch can have devastating
consequences for your business. With Release 12, Oracle would
like you to apply RUPs and CPU/PSUs quarterly and to upgrade to
the latest ATG RUP whenever a new one is released, though you
may find that this is simply too aggressive a schedule to maintain
because of testing considerations. You might think that upgrading
to a higher ATG RUP is only a concern for your technicians, but
because the ATG modules are so deeply integrated within the
Applications, you really must test the entire E-Business Suite every
time you apply a new ATG RUP.
This guide covers patching considerations in much more detail
later on, but you can already see how important staying current on
the E-Business Suite will be for your company. As the DBA, it is
your job to understand and mitigate, if possible, the risks your
company is taking if your management chooses not to stay current.
One of the things we like to say about Release 12 is that it is
constantly changing. As the Applications DBA, we must warn you
that it is your job to be constantly alert for important patches – and
changes to existing patches - that may affect your E-Business Suite
environment. Here are five examples of changes that you might not
have noticed if you weren’t actively watching My Oracle Support:
Oracle released EBS Release 12.1.2 in December 2009, and in
March 2010 announced a mandatory CUP for anyone upgrading
to 12.1.1 (thus, users on the CUP ended up running EBS R12.1
RUP 2 CUP 1!) Users who had already completed the upgrade,
or were upgrading to Release 12.1.2 or higher didn’t need CUP
1.
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Oracle released the January 2010 CPU, then modified the
January 2010 CPU in February with a mandatory change. So if
you applied the January CPU, and it wasn’t the later version,
you needed to apply the February version of the January 2010
CPU. Tracking not only which CPU version you are running,
but also when you downloaded it increases the complexity for
DBAs.
PSUs – Take a look at MOS Doc. ID: 854428.1 and 850471.1.
Oracle has introduced a new patching strategy called a PSU
(Patch Set Update) that allows you to choose only
“recommended” or “proactive” patches, rather than all of the
patches provided in the quarterly Critical Patch Update (CPU).
Oracle released RDBMS 11gR2 in October, 2010, and then
released an updated version in November, 2010 because of a
security issue with MetaLink Authentication.
Oracle released five patches to JRE in 2010 until finally
resolving a functionality issue with JRE 1.6.0_23. Then in 2011,
JRE 1.6.0_24 was released. New JRE versions are released
several times a year, so you should watch for new ones and be
prepared to upgrade several times a year. Also, Oracle has
released JRE 1.7.0_XX, so consider moving off of 1.6.0_XX to
the latest version of JRE 1.7.
Our conclusion? Even if you aren’t planning to upgrade, you still
have to check My Oracle Support periodically to stay on top of
changes like these.
More Applications Patches
We’ve already talked about Release 11i Consolidated Updates
(CUs) and Release 12 Release Update Packs (RUPs). CUs can be
released after a Release 11i point release (like 11.5.10.2), and
Release 12 RUPs can only be applied to an existing Release 12
environment. Following are additional types of patches:
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Maintenance Packs are a collection of the latest product family
patchsets. Release 11.5.10 is the latest Release 11i Maintenance
Pack. Consolidated Updates (CUs) are applied to a maintenance
pack, so the latest CU for Release 11i brings 11.5.10 up to
Release 11.5.10.2.
Technology Layer Updates are patchsets or mini-packs that
change the underlying services. The latest for Release 11i is
11i.ATG_PF.H Rollup 7.
Family Packs or Product Family Release Update Patches
(RUPs) provide patches for a specific, individual product family
for a specific point release.
Product Mini-Packs are bug fixes for a specific applications
module, rather than product family.
One-off Patches/Individual Bug Fixes/Emergency Patches are
rare. A one off patch is one that fixes one issue. An example is
One-off Patch 6812211, which fixes a potential data corruption
issue in Release 12 Oracle Assets.
Pre-upgrade patch – upgrade related, high priority patches
consolidated from all the products within a product family.
Pre-install patch – patches that if applied before the upgrade
will proactively correct issues. If you miss the pre-install patch,
you may not be able to recover and will have to search for
patches that can be applied after the fact.
Steven Chan’s blog article Products and Families and Versions –
Oh, My! describes the different types of patches that you might
need to apply to a Release 12 environment in addition to Release
Update Packs.
As you consider applying patches to your E-Business Suite
environment, it is important that you understand the thoroughness
of Oracle’s testing. Consolidated Updates (CUs) and Release
Update Packs (RUPs) are the most thoroughly tested by Oracle.
Family Packs, on the other hand, are tested only by their product
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teams. Where possible, you may want to wait for a RUP rather
than apply another type of patch between RUPs. If you are staying
current on patching, you should only have to apply a non-RUP
patch in limited situations. If possible, stay current on CPUs and
Technology Layer Updates, even if you can’t stay current on
Release Update Packs.
AutoPatch (ADPatch)
AutoPatch applies Applications patches (not database patches,
operating system patches, or CPU/PSUs) and records the patch
details in the OAM Applied Patches Database. OAM includes tools
like Applied Patches, Timing Reports and Patch Wizard to help
determine what patches have already been applied, how long they
may take to apply, and which ones are available. Using OAM’s
Patch Wizard, there is no excuse for not knowing exactly what –
right down to the SQL code – is being changed by a patch. See
MOS Doc. ID: 225165.1, Patching Best Practices and Reducing
Downtime.
You can use AD Merge Patch to group patches together for
application, then apply the merged patch using AutoPatch. You
can also use AutoPatch Non-interactive Mode to automate patch
application. You should use a Shared Application Tier File System
for multi-node systems to apply patches only once. MOS Doc. ID:
181665.1, Release 11i AutoPatch Basics covers patching
strategies.
Applied Patches and Patch Wizard
OAM includes two very useful tools for patch research. First,
there’s Applied Patches, which allows you to query on whether
you’ve applied a patch or not.
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Figure 10
An alternative to check if you have applied a patch is to query the
tables directly:
select * from ad_bugs where bug_number =
‘9860329’;
Second, there’s Patch Wizard, which looks at the patches that
you’ve applied and then compares your list with Oracle’s list of
available high priority patches, and recommends patches that you
can apply. Patch Wizard also allows you to automatically
download patches, which can save time over the traditional method
of searching for a patch on My Oracle Support and then
downloading it. Patch Wizard also lets you create filters or use
existing filters to limit what patches are recommended. To support
the E-Business Suite Release 11i Extended Support Mandatory
Patching exercise, Oracle created a special filter, called Support,
that will limit the patch recommendations to those required for the
mandatory patching.
With Applied Patches, you enter a
Patch number and it will tell you in
the lower section if you’ve already
applied the patch.
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Figure 11 - The "Patch Wizard" option
Patch Application Assistant (PAA)
Oracle Patch Application Assistant (PAA) helps you track and
perform manual steps during patching. For patches with manual
steps, PAA generates a customized set of instructions specific to
your installation and displays the relevant manual steps. For
merged patches, PAA automatically merges the contents of the
individual patch readme files. If you need to use PAA, the patch
readme will ask you to run admsi.pl.
Database and CPU/PSU Patching
You use the OPatch utility to apply patches to the RDBMS.
OPatch is also used to apply patches to the E-Business Suite Plug-
in. Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) and Patch Set Updates (PSUs),
the quarterly security patches that patch the ORACLE_HOMEs,
use n-Apply CPU/PSU (aka n-apply). n-apply uses OPatch, but
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groups security fixes to simplify patch conflict resolution
procedures.
Note: MOS Doc. ID: 466181.1, 10g Upgrade Companion Version
2 documents how to upgrade from Oracle 9i to 10g. MOS Doc. ID:
785351.1, Oracle 11gR2 Upgrade Companion documents how to
upgrade from Oracle 9i to 11gR2.
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Chapter 10 - Oracle Integration Repository (iRep)
You can use the Oracle Integration Repository (iRep) to view all
the interfaces in the E-Business Suite in one place. The iRep
catalog can be searched using keywords and can be navigated by
product family, interface type and integration standard. Interface
types include concurrent requests, java, java service interface,
PL/SQL, Service Data Object, Web Service, XML Gateway Map
and EDI. You need the Integration Repository responsibility to use
iRep. Read more about iRep in MOS Doc. ID: 421170.1, R12
Oracle Service Contracts And Integration Repository Access.
1. Login to the E-Business Suite from an account that has the
“Integration Repository” responsibility
2. Select the "Integration Repository" responsibility
3. Select a Product Family and explore
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Figure 12 - iRep
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Figure 13 - Exploring Product Families with iRep
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Chapter 11 – How Fusion Fits In
Many companies who have purchased best of breed applications
solutions over the years find themselves facing a difficult problem
- should they keep each product as a separate entity, or is there a
way to integrate the products, choosing the best qualities of each
while taking advantage of new features and technology
advancements? The answer, of course, is what we will be
discussing in this chapter. This chapter describes a technical
roadmap that shows how Oracle Fusion Middleware, the E-
Business Suite Release 12, and Oracle’s Fusion Applications will
fit together. By understanding how these three pieces work
together, you can plan your organization’s strategy for dealing with
Fusion.
Terminology
What is Fusion Middleware?
Oracle’s Fusion Middleware offers a full suite of tools for building
a service-oriented architecture. These tools are standards-based and
take advantage of leading edge technology solutions. These
software tools enable different applications to work together, even
if they weren’t originally designed to do so. Fusion Middleware
tools are based on a modular architecture and follow industry
standards.
Oracle calls Fusion Middleware “hot-pluggable”, which means
customers will be able to protect their current investments in
technology and still have long-term flexibility. For example, for
those customers who have invested in Microsoft SharePoint,
Oracle’s hot-pluggable Oracle Content Management will allow
users to continue to use the SharePoint interface that they’ve
become accustomed to, while also searching and browsing for
Oracle Universal Content Management files – all from within the
SharePoint interface.
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What is E-Business Suite Release 12?
Oracle’s E-Business Suite Release 12 is Oracle’s latest version of
their business applications. Not all E-Business Suite customers are
running this latest release – Oracle has customers still using
Releases 10.7/11.0 (though hopefully not many), and a lot of
customers are running on various point releases of Release 11i,
Release 12’s predecessor. Oracle also supports customers running
other business applications, including the JD Edwards, PeopleSoft
and Siebel product lines.
What are the Fusion Applications?
The Fusion Applications will unify best-of-breed capabilities from
all Oracle Applications in a complete suite delivered on Oracle’s
open technology. For those of us who only support the E-Business
Suite of Applications, when Oracle says “all Oracle Applications”,
they mean the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, JD Edwards World,
Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and Siebel product lines.
These new applications focus on end-to-end business processes
like Order2Cash, Procure2Pay, and Hire2Retire. They will provide
more cost effective integration, flexible business processes and
extensibility and they will fuse processes, people, and products to
leverage the best parts of each. The Fusion Applications will
embrace a service-oriented and standards-based information
architecture.
How the Fusion Applications Fit In
You might say that the Fusion Applications will be just another
Applications product line, just like JDE, EBS, PeopleSoft and
Siebel are product lines. Customers can choose an end to end
solution based on one product line, or they can take a best of breed
approach with components for each. For example, a customer
could integrate E-Business Suite Financials with PeopleSoft
Human Resources and Siebel CRM. It is Fusion Middleware that
all customers will use, regardless of the applications product line
they choose.
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The Road to Fusion - Roadmap Concepts
We leave you with the following recommendations for preparing
for Fusion:
Pick Your Fusion Applications “Jump-off Point” – for E-
Business Suite, you must be running Release 12. If you are not
running Release 12 and want to migrate to the Fusion
Applications, you will have to upgrade first.
Upgrade to Your “Jump-off Point” as soon as possible.
Upgrade to Oracle RDBMS Version 11g as soon as possible.
Implement Standard NAS/SAN Utilities for Snapshots
Implement Standard Oracle Utilities like Oracle Enterprise
Manager with the E-Business Suite Plug-in
Stay Current on your “Jump-off Point”. You’ll need to stay
current on the ATG Release Update Pack, year-end patches, and
Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) especially Release 11i customers
(MOS Doc. ID: 883202.1 and MOS Doc. ID: 1116887.1).
Evaluate and document your customizations. Determine what
customizations you have, map them to Applications
functionality and decommission customizations where possible
if the Applications provide the same functionality. You’ll want
to convert customizations to Fusion technology-based solutions
where decommission is not possible. As an example, since we
know that Workflow will be replaced by BPEL for the Fusion
Applications, now is the time to learn BPEL. Any existing
workflow customizations – or new ones – should be written
using BPEL.
Start leveraging available fusion tools. Fusion tools that can
already be used with the E-Business Suite include XML (BI)
Publisher, the SOA Suite and WebCenter, and Business
Intelligence tools like OBIEE or DBI and Discoverer 10g or,
preferably, Discoverer 11g.
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Conclusion
There is no lack of communication on Oracle’s part as to where the
Applications are going in the next few years. With what you know
about Oracle’s Applications Unlimited support offerings, you can
plan your migration to the Fusion Applications today. The Fusion
Middleware tools are already here, so you can begin learning to
use them now, rather than wait until you have no choice.
Oracle has clearly placed a tremendous emphasis on stabilizing
their Release 12 products, and is providing us with a wealth of
tools to help manage our Release 12 environments. In return, they
expect us to patch, and patch often. With Applications Unlimited
support options and the requirement that customers stay within the
current versions or the one prior on the ATG technology upgrades
to be able to apply the latest Critical Patch Update, customers will
need to define an upgrade process and stick to it.
When we log Service Requests to Oracle Support, we can now
expect to be asked to run Oracle Change Management (OCM) and
specific Diagnostics programs to provide better information for
problem solving. We’re also seeing a tremendous improvement in
the availability of documentation and the ease in locating
documentation on My Oracle Support. In the end, it’s a tradeoff –
Oracle is working very hard to provide tools to encourage us to
stay patched current… now all we have to do is learn how to use
them and forge ahead.
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Links and My Oracle Support (MOS) Notes and Documents
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 181665.1, Release 11i AutoPatch
Basics
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 225165.1, Patching Best Practices
and Reducing Downtime
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 373548.1, Using Forms Trace in
Oracle Applications Release 12
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 387859.1, Using AutoConfig to
Manage System Configurations in Oracle E-Business Suite
Release 12
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 406982.1, Oracle Applications
Release 12 with Rapid Clone
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 421170.1, R12 Oracle Service
Contracts And Integration Repository Access
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 454178.1, Oracle Application
Server Diagnostic Tools and Log Files in Applications Release
12.
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 459156.1, Oracle Applications
Patching FAQ for Release 12
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 466181.1, 10g Upgrade
Companion Version 2
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 603104.1, Troubleshooting
RapidClone issues with Oracle Applications R12
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 783188.1, Certified RAC Scenarios
for E-Business Suite Cloning
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 785351.1, Oracle 11gR2 Upgrade
Companion
92
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 787749.1, Oracle Enterprise
Manager Grid Control Release Notes for Solaris (SPARC) 10g
Release 5 (10.2.0.5)
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 812294.1, Troubleshooting Guide
and Known Issues List for the Oracle Application Management
Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite, Release 3.0
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 829450.1, Known Issues with the
Oracle Application Change Management Pack for E-Business
Suite
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 846628.1, Interesting links about
Applications Management Pack and Applications Change
Management Pack for E-Business Suite
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 854428.1, Patch Set Updates for
Oracle Products
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 850471.1, Oracle Announces First
Patch Set Update For Oracle Database Release 10.2
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 883202.1, Minimum Baseline
Patch Requirements for Extended Support on Oracle E-Business
Suite 11.5.10
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 1116887.1, Critical E-Business
Suite11i (11.5.10) Extended Support Information on Minimum
Baseline Patch Requirements
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 1434392.1, Getting Started with
Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-In, Release 12.1.0.1
Oracle Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business
Suite Guide Release 12.1.0.1.0, Part No. E28715-03, October
2012
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 1224313.1: Getting Started with
Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in, Release 4.0
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My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 1495337.1, Announcements: E-
Business Suite 11.5.10 Sustaining Support Exception & 12.1
Extended Support Now to Dec. 2018
Steven Chan’s blog, Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in 4.0
Released for OEM 11g (11.1.0.1)
Steven Chan’s blog, E-Business Suite Plug-in 12.1.0.1 for
Enterprise Manager 12c Now Available
My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 982302.1, Getting Started with
Oracle Application Management Pack and Application Change
Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite Version 3.1
Oracle Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business
Suite User’s Guide Release 3.1, Part No. E14597-02
Oracle Application Change Management Pack for Oracle E-
Business Suite User’s Guide, Release 3.1, Part No. E14530-02
Oracle Lifetime Support Documents:
Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Technology Products
(PDF)
Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Fusion Middleware
Products (PDF)
Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Applications (PDF)
Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Retail Applications (PDF)
Lifetime Support Policy:Oracle Financial Service Products
(PDF)
http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenchan - Steven Chan, Director of
Applications Technology Integration for Oracle – wonderful
articles explaining the nuances of the Applications
www.justadba.com – John Stouffer’s website
www.drhealthchecks.com and www.RedRiverSolutions.com –
E-Business Suite consulting, free E-Business Suite books
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