Oracle E-Business Suite Technology

E-Business Suite Release and Patch Naming Conventions

"Product Families" Groups of applications modules that are functionally related. For example, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and Chart of Accounts are members of the Financials product family.

Chan,

Thank you very much for invaluable information you are giving to us (oracle user’s community). It is rare from my experience to see that type of consistent and useful information coming from Oracle. I wish oracle would have more employees like you.
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Have got few questions connected to your post, Oracle Apps “Product Families��? and “Product Family Patchsets��?
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Just wonder, is there more or less easy way to identify to which Family particular module belongs?
Or let me as the same question differently: Is there a list of modules for a particular Product family available some there?
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From my Oracle Apps DBA experience I have found difficult for risk analysis purposes to identify impact of “Product Family Patchsets��? installation. From my side it sounds reasonable before installation to identify which modules to which version will upgrade particular PF Patchset. Then compare spotted modules versions with versions we have got in the particular environment and generate a list of modules and versions that would be relevant for a particular environment.
I believe this process would help to plane testing activities that have to be executed during upgrade projects.
Let take “Oracle HRMS Family Pack K��? from readme it isn’t clear which modules this PF patches is upgrading to which versions. The only way I know at the moment is to install PF patchset in technical test environment and run SQL against fnd%install%product tables in upgraded environment and in production.

It would be more then appreciated if you can comment on those questions.
Thank you in advance,
Yury

Yury, thanks for the feedback; please feel free to share the news about this blog with your colleagues if you find it useful.

As far as I'm aware, there is no straightforward means of taking a specific product and traversing "up the tree" to figure out which product family it belongs to.  I agree that this would be useful, and will ask internally whether we have information we can publish on this.

It sounds like you've taken a manual approach to a task that's automated for you by one of our existing tools. 

The best way of performing a risk analysis for a specific patch is to use the Patch Wizard to perform a Patch Impact Analysis.  The Patch Wizard is an enhanced version of the Patch Advisor.  The Patch Impact Analysis will tell you which products are affected by a given patch, as well as the specifics of which files are new, changed, and ignored.  For details about the latest Patch Wizard, see:

Oracle Applications Maintenance Utilities 11.5.10

Regards,
Steven

Patch Wizard ��? it is nice feature, but unfortunately as with all new Oracle products it isn’t ready for use in real world :( . I wish I have chance to discuss with somebody from Oracle Development what is missing there to allow us - Oracle Apps DBA to use it.
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So far we manual risk analysis is only way to go (We are on 11.5.10.2 ;)
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Thank you for that you are doing,
Yury

If you post your thoughts here about how Patch Wizard can be improved to meet your needs, I'd be happy to make sure that the right team gets your feedback.

Regards,
Steven

Problems using Patch Wizard (OAM H/11.5.10.2/About Oracle Applications Manager Version 2.3.1):
-- If patch file already exist in the Staging area, patch wizard downloads it again in spite of the patch already exist. We have ~8 environments (tests, prelive, live etc). It make sense to have the same Staging area for all of them and download patches once and then use those for all environments.

--- Patch Wizard often fails to produce correct prerequisites recommendations. I will provide examples later.

-- Patch Wizard comes with incorrect recommendations. In our example “Patch Wizard��? recommended to install patches which have been included in the Maintenance Packs already installed in our system.

--- Impact analysis doesn’t say THIS module version is 11i.GL.H and a patch will bring you up to 11i.GL.J, there 2 versions between those versions (be careful).

--- It would be absolutely fantastic in the “Patch Impact Analysis��? “Applications Patched��? screen to exclude modules which are “Inactive��? in our system. It doesn’t make sense to analyze unsused modules.

--- “Patch Impact Analysis��? “Applications Patched��? in general there is lock of efficient navigation. For example if you would like to know what is the impact on GL module I need to look through all modules by 15 a time and look for the GL module manually, instead of put the module name in search field (there is no any) and navigate to GL straight away.

--- Lack of ability to export analysis results (for sending those to responsible persons).

--- Would be good to group modules by family packs. So that responsible person could look only on modules that applicable to area of responsibilities (FIN, HRMS, CRM etc).

---If analyzed patch already installed Oracle doesn’t reflects any results (no row appears on the “Patch Wizard : <ENV>��? screen). Instead of that it would be more useful to come with statement “All files already installed in you environment. You do not need to install anything��?.

-- “Recommend/Analyze Patches��? -> “Job Status��? screen. It isn’t clear which CR is responsible for. It would be good to have indication that this CR is analyzing that and that patch or producing that recommendations.

--- After analyzing request have finished a row with results on the “Patch Wizard : <ENV>��? screen appears with time delay (some times doesn’t appears at all). It isn’t clear that triggering the result row to appear on the main screen.

--- “java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError��? errors working with impact results for big patches (3480000)

--- In “Patch Impact Analysis��? modules list screen, would be great to have ability to see whole list not just 15 modules at the time.

Two Recommendations:
- Describe better that is behind ideas of “Patch Wizard��? functionality. I would say describe HOW DBA (an all involved key users) suppose to use it to make efficient and competed impact analysis. There is lock of official recommendations from Oracle how to make enormously complicated impact analysis process.
- Invite at least one real Oracle Apps DBA and get feed back from him constituently. Person has to be responsible for patching in real live and have to be interested.

I am enormously glad that there is Steven in Oracle who is ready to work with end users of Oracle software.

PS The issues listened above is just part that I would like to tell about “Patch Wizard thing��?. If somebody interested I can discuss those things further.
PPS Sorry for my language. I know

Yury

As I promised in my previous post I am providing some examples of inappropriate Patch Wizard analysis results:

A. AT Patch level 11i.ATG_PF.H

We have been requested to apply patch 5108220 in our LIVE environment.
Mentioned patch was released at 22-MAR-2006. We were 100% that we did have it in our environment.
Have submitted Analyze Patche request.
After request had been processed, a new line didn’t appeared in the Results window.
Patch 5108220 README we found that it need patch 4752028 to be applied as prerequisite for that patch.
Patch Wizard –filed complicity to analyze impact of patch 5108220.

B. 11.5.10.2 + RUP 3

In our test environment we have applied

3480000 ORACLE APPLICATIONS RELEASE 11.5.10.2 MAINTENANCE PACK

Straight after that I submitted Recommend Patches request (Bungle date is 18-05-2006).
Patch Wizard comes with recommendations to install 37 patches.
I checked first 10 recommended patches:

-- 6 recommended patches included in 3480000 (and as I sad we just applied it, quite obvious wizard failed to issue correct suggestions)
2474218
2888870
3647675
3303461
2848719
3037775

Seventh recommendation is to install:
3208989 BR1158 : CNUPNCPGP.SQL FAILS WHEN UPGRADING FROM 11.0 TO 11.5.9
Last Updated 28-OCT-2003

As you can see It is old patch dated 2003 and used jut in case of 11.0 update to 11.5.9. We are on 11.5.10.2 version. Obvious Patch Wizard failed again.

Just from fist 10 recommended patches 7 recommendations are incorrect.

It just tow of inappropriate analysis of Patch Wizard functionality.
I would say Oracle far from situation then we can relay on recommendations issued by this tool.

PS It is too early to disable adpatch prereq feature by default.

Hope you will pass this information to the interested person within Oracle.
Yury.

Yury, thanks for the detailed case study.  I appreciate the amount of specific details that you've provided, which gives us something substantive to work with.

I've asked our Patch Wizard team to take a look at this post and comment, if possible.

Regards,
Steven 

Hello Steven,

Just wonder if you have got any feed back from Patch Wizard team?

One additional thing that I just noted regarding submitted "Recommend Patches" request I mentioned previously is that it failed to recommend 3653484 FIN Family Pack G patchset.

To my mind it is quite significant and important bit that Patch Wizard missed.

Best regards,

Yury

Hi, Yury,

Sorry for the delay in responding to this.  Our Patch Wizard team is a bit backlogged right now.  I just chatted with the group's manager, and she'll be taking a look at this thread as soon as possible.  Thanks for your patience.

Regards,
Steven 

>> Sorry for the delay in responding to this.

No problem at all. It isn't you who have no time.

>> Our Patch Wizard team is a bit backlogged right now.

Or by other words there are not enough resources to developer ready for usage module.  It is a shame isn't it? Then one team relaying on "mega module" functionality disabling a prereq option by default, but other have no time to develop the "mega module" in right way :(

Just my 0.02£

PS Steven you can be a good example how to develope a good product for your caliginous in the "Patch Wizard" team.

Hi Steven,

We had similar problems with Patch Wizard making silly suggestions, along with individual patches that insist you apply a specific prerequisite, even if that prerequisite was included in another patchset that you have already applied.

On general question I had in regards to the different types of patches is this: I was always under the impression that a MP Patch (such as 11.5.10.2) includes all the Family Pack patches available at a particular point in time. Now, if I choose to apply those Family Packs seperately, I should functionally have the same system as if it was 11.5.10.2, even though I may still be on 11.5.9.

As an example, start with 11.5.9, then apply ATG_PF.H, followed by the ATF_PF.H.RUP3. That brings the ATG Family Pack up to an 11.5.10.2 equivalent. Then, I apply HRMS Pack K, Financials Pack G, Service Pack K, Projects Pack M. That puts those modules on higher versions than 11.5.10.2.
Following on, Oracle support asks us in a TAR what version of Apps 11i we are using. If we go to "Help -> About Oracle Applications..." in the Navigator screen, it still happily says "11.5.9". This confuses Oracle Support and they end up telling us that certain things are not possible in our environment because "that feature is only included in 11.5.10".

So, the ultimate question...when does the version number actually change? What determines when the version of the core app should be increased to reflect the installed patchsets?

Cheers,

Paul

Hi, Paul,

Here's a response from the Patch Wizard development team:

<snip>

Yes, it does seem like in theory if you applied the same set of Family Packs
that's present in a Maintenance Pack the end result is the same as applying the
Maintenance Pack.  This is mostly true, but not 100% true because MPs tend to
contain fixes to issues found when testing them.

The Maintenance Pack
level (overall version of Oracle Apps) is only changed when you apply an actual
Maintenance Pack.  There is no special logic that recognizes that a certain set
of Family Packs is >= a given Maintenance Pack level and updates the MP
level.

Yes, it can be confusing to describe to Support what version of
Oracle Apps you have.  This is a consequence of the fact that we release
functional updates in Maintenance Packs, Family Packs, Minipacks, and even in
one-off patches.  On the plus side customers can uptake new functionality in
smaller bundles than major releases (Maintenance Packs).  On the minus side it
can be complex to describe what functionality you really have unless you only
apply Maintenance Packs.

</snip>

Regards,
Steven