Oracle E-Business Suite Technology

Critical Data Protection + Security in EBS (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

By Steven Chan on November 19, 2009 12:24 AM

Everyone gives lip service to the importance of security, but it's often relegated to the back-burner in actual practice. For example, my anecdotal experience is that when conference attendees are polled about Critical Patch Updates, usually fewer than 50% of the respondents state that they're up-to-date on the latest CPU. One potentially complicating factor is that there are many things that one can do to secure the E-Business Suite, and it may be hard to know where to start. At minimum, all Apps DBAs should be intimately familiar with these documents: * Best Practices for Securing Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i (Note 189367.1) * Best Practices for Securing Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 403537.1) There are many other security-related Oracle products that you can use with your E-Business Suite environment, too. Eric Bing and Robert Armstrong profiled all of the latest security-related tools and options that are relevant to E-Business Suite users in their recent OpenWorld 2009 session: * Critical Data Protection and Security in Oracle E-Business Suite (S307960, PDF, 1 MB)

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E-Business Suite Technology Essentials (OpenWorld 2009 Recap)

By Steven Chan on November 17, 2009 1:20 PM

I'm part of the Applications Technology Integration group within the E-Business Suite Development division. One of this team's responsibilities is to ensure that new Oracle technologies are integrated into -- or work with -- the E-Business Suite. Lisa Parekh leads our team, and every year she manages to pack a survey of the increasingly-broad EBS technology stack landscape at OpenWorld into her session. If you're interested in getting a quick overview of everything that we consider important about the latest EBS technology stack capabilities, download her presentation here:

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Field-Tested Advice for Smooth EBS 11.5.10.2 Upgrades

By Nick Quarmby on September 23, 2009 11:41 PM

Premier Support for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11.5.9 ended in June, 2008. If you are currently running 11.5.9 or earlier and your immediate plans do not involve an upgrade to Release 12, then it's a good idea to move up to the terminal release of Apps 11i: 11.5.10.2. This will ensure you remain supported and can make the most of any technology stack and functional upgrades. A lot of what you do as part of an upgrade to 11.5.10.2 will also ease your transition to Release 12, so this upgrade can be considered as a Release 12 prerequisite exercise, too. Critical patch updates, roll-up patchsets (RUPs) and new technology stack certifications are still being released for Apps 11.5.10.2, and the more up-to-date your system is, the easier it will be to apply these when they come along. This article takes you through some of the most common tips from Oracle Support to ensure a successful upgrade to EBS 11.5.10.2.

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Turbocharging Your EBS 12.0 Techstack Upgrade

By Prasad Akkiraju on August 27, 2009 2:39 PM

All three of the major new technology stack components included in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 are also certified with Release 12.0. You could upgrade each of these R12.0 techstack components individually. But now that Release 12.1.1 is out, why bother with that older time-consuming and labour-intensive approach when there's a better way? You can use the EBS 12.1.1 Rapid Install to upgrade just the application and database tier technology stack components in your existing EBS 12.0 instance. Your technology stack components are upgraded to the same versions delivered with EBS 12.1.1 while leaving your EBS 12.0 product code (e.g. Financials, Supply Chain) untouched.

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Distinguishing Between E-Business Suite 12.1 and 12.0 Patches

By Steven Chan on August 26, 2009 1:10 AM

Sometimes our release processes get ahead of our internal infrastructure. This happened when we released Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1. We discovered post hoc that it was not possible to distinguish between patches intended for Apps 12.1 and those intended for Apps 12.0 in the "Patches & Updates" function in My Oracle Support and Metalink. Whoops -- clearly suboptimal. This issue was resolved in mid-July, when the Patches & Updates function got a brand-new "Compatible With" column:

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OPatch Essentials for Apps Sysadmins

By Prasad Akkiraju on August 25, 2009 1:12 AM

All EBS administrators must become very familiar with the OPatch utility. OPatch is used to patch the ORACLE_HOMEs in EBS Application and Database tiers. Security fixes delivered for these ORACLE_HOMEs through Critical Patch Updates are also applied using OPatch. It updates the central and per-product inventories with the details of each patch applied. Apart from the Oracle Universal Installer (which internally also uses OPatch), this is the only tool authorized to patch ORACLE_HOMEs. Although it once had a reputation for being somewhat arcane, OPatch has evolved over the years into a more user-friendly and better-documented tool. I'll cover the essentials of using OPatch in this article.

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Configuring SSL with a Configuration Wizard in EBS R12

By Prasad Akkiraju on August 21, 2009 10:45 AM

E-Business Suite R12.1.1 provides Advanced Configuration wizards that make it easier to deploy features such as SSL and load-balancing. Apps administrators can use these wizards to make configuration changes online through Oracle Applications Manager (OAM) and then run AutoConfig on the applications tier to make the changes effective. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is one of the most commonly used configurations in EBS. I'll walk through the SSL Advanced Configuration Wizard in this article.

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Creating an EBS R12 Instance Using the Express Install Option

By Prasad Akkiraju on August 19, 2009 1:00 PM

The Oracle E-Business Suite Rapid Install provides an easy-to-use Express Install option. This option sets default values for several of the customizable inputs that the Apps DBA must enter in subsequent screens. Express Install is convenient for test instance setup as well as for training purposes. Note that this option is valid only for new installations and cannot be used for upgrades.

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Confused About E-Business Server vs. Desktop Operating System Certifications?

By Steven Chan on August 12, 2009 1:40 PM

The E-Business Suite is designed with a three-tier architecture, with functions running on a client tier, an applicatione server tier (also called a middle tier), and a database tier. I handled a customer question on an internal Oracle mailing list today that confused our certification policies for these tiers. I then realized that I've answered variants of this question many times lately, so it's clearly of broader interest. These two questions are mirror images of each other: * Can I install the E-Business Suite on a desktop operating system like Windows Vista? * Can I run end-user E-Business Suite functions on a server operating system like Oracle Enterprise Linux?

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Oracle Universal Installer Inventory Essentials for Apps Sysadmins

By Nick Quarmby on August 8, 2009 5:25 AM

We see quite a few Service Requests (SRs) where E-Business Suite customers have gotten into difficulty with the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) Inventory.  It's important to note the Oracle Universal Installer Inventory has nothing to do with the Oracle E-Business Suite Inventory product (product code INV).

The Oracle Universal Installer Inventory is a component of the OUI and creates a record of the Oracle homes, products and patches you have installed on a node. Whilst it's not part of the E-Business Suite, as an Applications DBA it's inevitable that sooner or later you will have to look after the Inventory. This article will focus on issues relating to the OUI Inventory specifically within the context of Oracle Applications.

An Overview of the OUI Inventory

The Oracle Universal Installer Inventory comprises three main components:

• The Pointer File
• The Central (Global) Inventory
• The Home (Local) Inventory

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Is It Safe to Use SANs for EBS R12 Instance Tops?

By Ivo Dujmovic on August 4, 2009 3:48 PM

Our documentation about sharing filesystems between multiple Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 application servers recommends that you install the Instance Top (INST_TOP) on a local filesystem. This has prompted an interesting discussion about whether this is really mandatory, or whether it's technically feasible to put the Instance Top on, say, a dedicated fibre-attached SAN. 

Our guidance on the INST_TOP being installed on a local file system is based on three major considerations:

1. Separation of duties and security implications
2. Impact of SAN performance on Apache
3. Additional troubleshooting complexity

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Choosing a Shared File System for Oracle E-Business Suite

By Steven Chan on July 8, 2009 3:18 PM

It's possible to scale up your E-Business Suite environment with multiple application tier servers to improve fault tolerance and performance.  It's also possible to share a single filesystem between them: all application tier files are installed on a single shared disk resource that's mounted from each application tier node.  In Release 12, that would look like this:

This allows you to apply patches once to the central filesystem, rather than maintaining each application tier server node individually.  We recommend this approach; it reduces maintenance overheads for those multiple servers and shortens your patching downtimes. 

Beginning with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, we also allow you to share an applications tier file system between multiple E-Business Suite database instances, too. For more details about this advanced option, see this article.

Customers embarking upon this path inevitably ask, "Which shared filesystem do you recommend?"  The short answer is that we don't recommend any specific filesystem, but there's more to it than just that.

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Comparisons of E-Business Suite Release 12 Rapid Install Techstacks

By Steven Chan on July 3, 2009 1:09 PM

A reader recently asked where she could find a summary of the E-Business Suite Release 12 technology stack components for different R12 releases.  As it turns out, there's a long answer to this deceptively-simple question.  This level of information is spread in a variety of release-specific Notes, making it tricky to compare which components were delivered as part of each Apps 12 Rapid Install. 

Here's a high-level architectural diagram showing an overview of the major techstack components in R12:

It's possible to add on additional database options not shown above, including 11g Advanced Compression, 11g Advanced Security, and others. 

Here's a summary of the versions for the important major techstack components that were included in the Rapid Install footprints for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12:

	EBS Release 12 Rapid Install Version
	12.0.0	12.0.4	12.1.1
Database	10.2.0.2	10.2.0.4	11.1.0.7
OracleAS 10.1.2 Forms & Reports	10.1.2.0.2	10.1.2.2	10.1.2.3
OracleAS 10.1.3 OC4J	10.1.3.0.0	10.1.3.0.0	10.1.3.4
App Tier Java (JDK)	1.5.0_10	1.5.0_13	1.6.0_10
Desktop Client Java (JRE)	1.5.0_10-erdist	1.5.0_13	1.6.0_u10

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Roundup: Oracle JInitiator 1.3 Desupported for EBS Customers in July 2009

By Steven Chan on June 26, 2009 2:50 PM

We've covered the impending demise of JInitiator and the certification of the native Sun Java client in many articles already.  With the sun setting on Oracle Jinitiator next month, this is a good time to summarize the essentials about Windows-based Java clients with the E-Business Suite:

1. Sun's Java Runtime Engine (JRE) is certified with both EBS 11i and 12
2. JInitiator 1.3 will be desupported at the end of July 2009
3. JInitiator 1.1.8 was desupported at the end of December, 2008
4. JInitiator cannot be run on Vista Desktops

If you haven't already started migrating your end-users to the native Sun JRE plug-in, I'd strongly recommend that you begin this process immediately.

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Which is Better: Forms Servlet or Socket Mode?

By Steven Chan on June 17, 2009 2:33 PM

Many products within the Oracle E-Business Suite have screens that are built with Oracle Forms.  Oracle Forms can be run in either servlet mode or socket mode.  Apps 11i is based on Forms 6i and is configured to run in socket mode by default.  Apps 12 is based on Forms 10g and is configured to run in servlet mode by default. What are these modes, and which is better?

What is Forms Servlet Mode?

The Forms Listener Servlet is a Java servlet that delivers the ability to run Oracle Forms applications over HTTP and HTTPS connections. It manages the creation of a Forms Server Runtime process for each client, as well as network communications between the client and its associated Forms Server Runtime process.

The desktop client sends HTTP requests and receives HTTP responses from the web server. The HTTP Listener on the web server acts as the network endpoint for the client, keeping other servers and ports from being exposed at the firewall.

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15 New Technology Stack Enhancements in EBS 12.1.1

By ada.constanzo-muller on May 27, 2009 1:05 AM

Now that our latest Applications Release 12.1.1 is available, here's a list of new technology stack configuration features you might be interested in learning about.  While you're reviewing new R12.1.1 content, please do not miss our newly revamped and user-friendly AutoConfig guide:

• Using AutoConfig to Manage System Configurations in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Metalink Note 387859.1)

This updated AutoConfig guide has been restructured to present you more in-depth and practical information to get you get started quickly with AutoConfig and all its related utilities. Please check it out and let us know what you think about it!

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Whitepaper Update: Database Partitioning for E-Business Suite

By Steven Chan on April 22, 2009 1:00 AM

Maintaining your existing service level agreements (SLA) with your users becomes increasingly challenging as your E-Business Suite database grows.  The knee-jerk reaction to a performance problem is often to throw more hardware at it. If you have a large E-Business Suite environment where the growth rate of your historical transactional data is starting to affect performance, there's another alternative to scaling up your hardware. It's possible that you could use database partitioning to squeeze some additional performance out of your existing environment without the added expense of new hardware.

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Products and Families and Versions - Oh, My!

By Steven Chan on April 17, 2009 1:19 PM

[Apr 15, 2009 Update: Added EBS version names and numbers, database version names and numbers, latest version numbers of other components, and new definitions for Applications Unlimited, Consolidated Updates, Critical Patch Collections, Release Update Packs, and the ever-confusing "RUP".  Added link to one-page summary of EBS Certifications]

I spend a depressing amount of time explaining the relationships between Oracle marketing brands, products, product families, versions, and patchsets to customers as well as internal Oracle staff.  You're confused too?  Don't worry, you're not alone.  Here's a cheatsheet for the things I spend the most time explaining:

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On Database Patching and Support: A Primer for E-Business Suite Users

By Steven Chan on February 20, 2009 11:30 AM

The Oracle Server Technologies division has issued some important updates to their support policies in the following document:

• Database, FMW, EM Grid Control, and OCS Software Error Correction Support Policy (Metalink Note 209768.1)

These changes affect support policies for the database, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Fusion Middleware, and Collaboration Suite.  These changes are important enough to warrant an in-depth discussion about the implications of the database-related updates for E-Business Suite customers.  This article also discusses the E-Business Suite database certification process and the safety of applying interim patches to your Apps environments.  I'll cover the Apps-specific implications for the other technology products in a future article.

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Oracle Configuration Manager Natively Supported With EBS 12

By srinivas.chaganti on December 11, 2008 11:37 AM

Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM) is a tool that automatically gathers configuration information from Oracle product installs and upload this information onto Oracle’s Support systems.  Customer support engineers can use this data to improve resolution times for your Service Requests.  Joshua Solomin, the OCM Product Manager, discusses the tool's benefits and the data that it collects in this article:

• My Oracle Support and Oracle Configuration Manager

Oracle Configuration Manager is now natively supported with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12. Starting with OCM 10.2.7, OCM provides native support for shared ORACLE_HOMEs. This makes possible to configure the latest version of OCM with E-Business Suite instances.  EBS 12 customers can take advantage of the benefits provided by Oracle Configuration Manager without worrying about whether their Application Server and Database Oracle Homes are part of an E-Business Suite Instance. There are no EBS-specific configurations requirements with OCM 10.2.7 or higher.

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