Entries from Oracle E-Business Suite Technology tagged with 'best practices'
Field-Tested Advice for Smooth EBS 11.5.10.2 Upgrades
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.
Six Options for Getting Help for E-Business Suite Issues
Some E-Business Suite implementations go smoothly. Some don't. Even battle-scarred veteran Apps sysadmins have to call upon Oracle for help at some point. One of the most-surprising things I hear from customers is that many of you don't know what options exist for you to get help when you need it. Depending on your circumstances, there's a wide range of alternatives that may work for your needs. Taking the wrong approach can waste a lot of time and efforts on all sides. If you need help, here's a list of the best options for ensuring that you get the help that you need:
Recommended Database Parameters Updated for EBS 12
Close on the heels of our recent updates to the recommended EBS 11i Database parameters, our database and applications performance architects have published updates for EBS Release 12. The updated note is now available here: * Database Initialization Parameters for Oracle Applications Release 12 (MOS Document ID 396009.1)
Turbocharging Your EBS 12.0 Techstack Upgrade
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.
Evolutionary Steps for Automated Testing for E-Business Suite
My, how time flies. It's been over two years since I last covered automated regression testing for the E-Business Suite. Our strategy for this area continues to evolve, so it's high time for an update. The E-Business Suite Test Starter Kits consist of sample test scripts from our own E-Business Suite QA group, along with a Starter Guide, Best Practices Guide, and Installation instructions. The test scripts were created against an EBS Vision Demo database displaying American English. You can use these kits as a model for building out your own automated regression tests for your Apps environment. Back in 2006, you could download our Quality Assurance teams' automated WinRunner QA scripts for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i via a Test Starter Kit. A few things have changed since then:
Recommended Database Parameters Updated for EBS 11i
Experienced Apps DBAs know that there are often compelling reasons to tweak the E-Business Suite's database initialization parameters from the defaults. The master source-of-truth for whether certain parameter settings will help or hurt your EBS environment performance is published here: Database Initialization Parameters for Oracle Applications Release 11i (Note 216205.1) Our EBS database architects have just released an updated version of that Note. Recent updates over the last month include a number of important changes and additions to our recommendations
Oracle Universal Installer Inventory Essentials for Apps Sysadmins
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
Is It Safe to Use SANs for EBS R12 Instance Tops?
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:
- Separation of duties and security implications
- Impact of SAN performance on Apache
- Additional troubleshooting complexity
Updated Tips for Debugging Sun JRE + Forms Focus Issues for EBS 11i and 12
Oracle Jinitiator 1.3 will be desupported for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i users at the end of this month, July 31, 2009. If you haven't already begun your conversion from JInitiator to the native Sun Java Runtime Engine (JRE) plug-in, now is the time to start.
The end of this month marks the end of the JInitiator era for Apps 11i. After this point, we will only support the Sun JRE for Forms users connecting to the E-Business Suite. I've summarized everything you need to know about the EBS switch from JInit to the Sun JRE in this roundup article.
Clusters of Common Focus-Related Issues
As more of you make the cutover, we've seen that your reported issues are clustering around some common themes. Based on your feedback and reported issues, we've updated our internal training for all Support engineers who cover Applications Technology area. Our latest diagnostic and debugging techniques for EBS Forms focus-related issues have been refreshed.
Our Support and Development teams published notes for diagnosing Forms focus-related issues with Apps 11i earlier this year. That troubleshooting guide's scope has been broadened to include additional guidance and tips for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 environments, too:
- Diagnosing Forms Mouse Focus Problems Using JRE (Note 760250.1)
Which is Better: Forms Servlet or Socket Mode?
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.
15 New Technology Stack Enhancements in EBS 12.1.1
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!
Whitepaper Update: Database Partitioning for E-Business Suite
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.
Power Tools: Configuring EBS R12 Database Tiers with AutoConfig
[Editor's Note: This is the fourth and last of a series of four articles on new AutoConfig features. These articles are written by members of our AutoConfig Development team. This is your opportunity to interact directly with that team with your feedback on this tool.]
The AutoConfig Build Context utility (adbldxml.pl) has traditionally been used by administrators to rebuild the context file in Oracle E-Business Suite 11i. In Apps 11i, the AutoConfig Build Context utility was introduced to allow customers to migrate to AutoConfig easily. Later on, due to numerous changes in the 11i technology stack, it became hard to keep the utility in sync for the Applications tier. So it was not recommended to customers for discretionary use, but instead only when absolutely needed like in case of cross-platform migrations and database upgrades.
Revived for Apps 12
The AutoConfig Build Context utility has been revived and re-introduced in Oracle E-Business Suite R12 for the database tier. It is essential for enabling AutoConfig on the database tier of an R12 E-Business Suite instance in the following scenarios:
- Cross platform migration of DB tier (Metalink Note 456197.1)
- Upgrade of Oracle Applications database Tier from Release 11i to Release 12 (PDF, 1.6 MB)
- Upgrade of an existing 10.2.0.X database to 11g database (Metalink Note 735276.1)
Power Tools: Previewing AutoConfig Changes on All Tiers
[Editor's Note: This is the third of a series of four articles on new AutoConfig features. These articles are written by members of our AutoConfig Development team. This is your opportunity to interact directly with that team with your feedback on this tool.]
When we first launched AutoConfig for E-Business Suite environments, it quickly became clear that your confidence in the tool would depend upon your ability to review its actions before committing to its changes to your environments. The AutoConfig Check Config tool (adchkcfg) is used to identify the potential changes that would take effect on an E-Business Suite instance during the next AutoConfig run.
Until now, that tool has only been reporting expected changes to the file system and the database profile values. The adchkcfg tool has now been enhanced to report information about important non-profile database updates also. The enhanced report will help customers understand potential system configuration changes, thus minimizing custom configuration errors.
What Does the Check Config Report Show?
The Check Config tool generates a report in both HTML and text format. The text report for the database changes can be used for quick reference from the command line.
Here is a screenshot of the new Check Config HTML report (click to enlarge):
Power Tools: Running AutoConfig in Parallel in EBS 12
[Editor's Note: This is the second of a series of four articles on new AutoConfig features. These articles are written by members of our AutoConfig Development team. This is your opportunity to interact directly with that team with your feedback on this tool.]
Our last article discussed ways of tuning your AutoConfig runs via profiling reports that identify bottlenecks during template instantiation. This article discusses another method of speeding up your AutoConfig runs. In an R12 E-Business Suite instance, AutoConfig can now be run simultaneously across multiple nodes. This new feature significantly lowers maintenance downtime for multi-node installations. One beta customer of this feature improved the time it takes them to run AutoConfig across their dozen mid tiers by 45%.
How Does AutoConfig's Parallel Mode Work?
Executing AutoConfig in 'parallel mode' engages a locking mechanism so that processes running on individual nodes are synchronized. This mechanism prevents any conflicting updates to the database or the file system. The following figure illustrates AutoConfig running in parallel across multiple nodes:
Power Tools: Optimizing AutoConfig Performance Through Profiling
[Editor's Note: This is the first of a series of four articles on new AutoConfig features. These articles are written by members of our AutoConfig Development team. This is your chance to get the inside track on these advanced features and provide your feedback directly to our developers.]
Ever wonder what's taking up the time during a given AutoConfig run in your E-Business Suite environment? Want to optimize the performance of your techstack configuration customizations? The AutoConfig Performance Profiler gathers data about an AutoConfig run and generates a consolidated AutoConfig profile report in HTML format. The report lists all product tops processed by AutoConfig along with the total instantiation and execution time of the templates within them. A beta customer of this feature helped us fix an indexing issue to allow AutoConfig to run in one third of the time.
The generated performance report allows you to drill down on each product top and view the following:
- Source and target location of individual templates
- Time consumed to instantiate or execute each template
- Execution report for each template
Here's a screenshot of the first few lines of the report:
Certified Oracle RAC Scenarios for Oracle E-Business Suite Cloning
[Editor's note: EBS cloning can be pretty involved. There are many different cloning scenarios, including cloning a RAC-based environment to an identical RAC environment, cloning from a RAC-based environment to a non-RAC environment, and adding or subtracting RAC nodes while cloning. Our Applications Technology Group has had to make some decisions about the relative priority of these scenarios. Filesystems like ASM, OMF, OCFS2, and NFS add further complexity to the certification matrix. If you would like to share your opinions about these decisions, post a comment below. Your feedback will be sent directly to our ATG Product Management team.]
Cloning an Oracle E-Business Suite system that uses an Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) enabled database involves numerous different technology components and steps, and would therefore be a complex, error-prone process if carried out manually. To speed up, simplify, and enhance the reliability of the process, Oracle offers the following tools for use in cloning RAC-enabled Oracle E-Business Suite systems:
On Apps Tier Patching and Support: A Primer for E-Business Suite Users
The Oracle Server Technologies division 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)
I discussed the implications of the database-related policy updates for E-Business Suite users in this recently-published article. It's time to discuss the implications of these policy updates for E-Business Suite application tier servers and externally-integrated Oracle Application Server instances. This article also discusses the E-Business Suite application tier certification process and the safety of applying interim Fusion Middleware patches to your Apps environments.
If you've read the previous article about database patching implications, parts of this new article will sound very familiar. But stick with us; the implications for E-Business Suite application tier servers are subtly different and it's important that EBS sysadmins get the whole picture for both tiers.
On Database Patching and Support: A Primer for E-Business Suite Users
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.
New Whitepaper: Options for Reducing E-Business Suite Database Sizes
I have yet to encounter a database that ever got smaller. Like waistlines and the US national debt, all databases seem destined to increase in size. The E-Business Suite is no exception: as we add more product capabilities and your business grows, so do your Apps databases.
Oracle-supplied solutions to managing Applications database size fall into two categories: data growth control methods and data management methods.
Growth Control Methods
- Archiving and purging
- Database compression
Data Management Methods
- Database Partitioning
- Oracle Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)
A new Oracle whitepaper discussing these topics is now available:
- Reducing Your Oracle E-Business Suite Data Footprint using Archiving, Purging, and Information Lifecycle Management (Metalink Note 752322.1)
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