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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
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.
For more details about E-Business Suite patching, check out our
latest book:
Available at:
http://www.Atherio.com
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You should check MOS often, even if you think you dont have
any problems!
When you install Release 12, you install all modules, whether
you license specific modules or not (over 220+ modules)
The following chapters fill you in on all of the details for the above
basics.
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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 Stacks 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.
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.
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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 youre 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 theres already an
answer on MOS, Oracle Support will point you to it. If youre still
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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 theyll
find new bugs when they do so.
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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 wouldnt 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 EBusiness 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 arent experiencing
technical problems, you dont 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. Oracles support plans are
detailed in their Lifetime Support Policy at:
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http://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/lifetime-supporttechnology-069183.pdf
Knowing what is included with Oracles 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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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 havent already converted to the
Oracle Applications Tablespace Model (OATM), youll 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.
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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 years 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, youll choose the range of periods of
historical data you want to upgrade before you run the Release 12
upgrade, and youll run a pre-upgrade concurrent program. After
youve finished your upgrade, youll run an SLA post upgrade
concurrent program to complete the processing for the rest of your
data.
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Lifecycle Management
Lets start by discussing the reason you might need all these tools.
Lifecycle Management is Oracles 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 EBusiness Suite Plug-in, and what you cant do unless you have
licensed the E-Business Suite Plug-in.
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Figure 3
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thats 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 its too easy to make mistakes. A thorough and timeconsuming test of each migration would have to be included in
your project plan.
2. FNDLOAD Oracles 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 EBusiness Suite instance. With FNDLOAD, youre working from
a Unix account and have to have a thorough understanding of
the objects that you want to move. Youll still need to do a
thorough test of the objects that youve 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 userfriendly interface. Youll 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.
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Figure 7 - Diagnostics
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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.
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Chapter 7 - How Do OEM and OAM and the EBusiness Suite Plug-in/Application Management
Suite (AMS) Work Together?
OEM Grid Control allows you to monitor multiple Oracle EBusiness 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, youll 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 EBusiness Suite Plug-in, Release 4.0, and on Steven Chans 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
Chans 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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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 wont 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.
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-ins 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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There are also certain things that you can only do with the EBusiness 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 isnt recommended either). See Steven Chans
Avoid Mixing Custom Applications with E-Business Suite
Environments for more details.
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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.
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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.
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Figure 9 shows what the screen looks like that has links to the
RCDs:
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Figure 9
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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 cant 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 OAMs
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.
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Figure 10
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Figure 12 - iRep
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Terminology
What is Fusion Middleware?
Oracles 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 werent 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,
Oracles hot-pluggable Oracle Content Management will allow
users to continue to use the SharePoint interface that theyve
become accustomed to, while also searching and browsing for
Oracle Universal Content Management files all from within the
SharePoint interface.
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Conclusion
There is no lack of communication on Oracles part as to where the
Applications are going in the next few years. With what you know
about Oracles 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. Were also seeing a tremendous improvement in
the availability of documentation and the ease in locating
documentation on My Oracle Support. In the end, its 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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My Oracle Support Doc. ID: 1495337.1, Announcements: EBusiness Suite 11.5.10 Sustaining Support Exception & 12.1
Extended Support Now to Dec. 2018
Steven Chans blog, Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in 4.0
Released for OEM 11g (11.1.0.1)
Steven Chans 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 Users Guide Release 3.1, Part No. E14597-02
Oracle Application Change Management Pack for Oracle EBusiness Suite Users Guide, Release 3.1, Part No. E14530-02
Oracle Lifetime Support Documents:
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