[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):
For complete samples of Check Config reports, download this file:
- Sample Check Config and Database Profiles (ZIP, 55 K).
Generating a Check Config Report
The Check Config tool can be run by executing the following command on both the Application tier and the Database tier:
- On UNIX:
sh adchkcfg.sh contextfile=<context_file>
- On Windows:
adchkcfg.cmd contextfile=<context_file>
Downloading the Latest AutoConfig Engine
Customers on Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 can obtain this new feature by installing:
Customers on 11i can get this new AutoConfig feature by installing:
Your Thoughts?
We're still working on improving this tool. For example, we're working on ways to make it easier to ignore false positives by flagging diffs which are neither real or interesting. Please share with us your experience on using this feature. Are there other improvements to this report that you would find useful?
References
- Using AutoConfig to Manage System Configurations with Oracle Applications 11i (Metalink Note 165195.1)
- Using AutoConfig to Manage System Configurations in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Metalink Note 387859.1)
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Comments (3)
Hi Ramya,
Thanks for sharing patch info and report output.
Regards,
Phani.K
Posted by PhaniK | April 7, 2009 5:36 PM
Posted on April 7, 2009 17:36
Using autoconfig in check mode is a must-have feature, but some improvements would be nice to have.
False positives (as mentioned):
Some 'dynamically' generated values never make it to the check output:
%oacore_fwk_nodes%
%trstd_admin_clnt_nodes%
This makes it harder to 'exclude' files from checking.
Also a nice-to-have feature would be a comparison between custom templates and 'base' templates, in order to indentify what the exact custom changes are in the custom templates. This makes it easier to recreate the required custom changes when a new base template is introduced.
On shared APPL_TOP it would be nice to exclude certain files from being generated on the 'slave' tiers.
Example: APPSORA.env or appsweb.cfg (i.e. all files that exist as one file only but being generated on multiple MT). This will also help avoid unnecessary checks.
Posted by Erik Loland | April 13, 2009 11:42 PM
Posted on April 13, 2009 23:42
Hi Erik,
Thanks a lot for your inputs regarding enhancements to the Check Config tool.
We are already looking into the feasibility of reporting changes for dynamically generated values.
We will also evaluate the possibility of reporting diffs between the custom templates and base templates.
Regarding the shared APPL_TOP scenario, files like APPSORA.env are instance-specific. So, they need to be generated on all the mid-tier nodes and it would not be possible to exclude their instantiation based on the node-type.
Thanks,
Ramya
Posted by Ramya Damodaran | April 15, 2009 8:55 AM
Posted on April 15, 2009 08:55