Interim Update #2: Certifying Windows 7 with Oracle E-Business Suite (Oracle E-Business Suite Technology)

Interim Update #2: Certifying Windows 7 with Oracle E-Business Suite

By Steven Chan on October 22, 2009 10:56 AM

[Dec 16, 2009 Update: Windows 7 is now certified with the E-Business Suite; see this article]

This is the second of a series of regular updates on our Windows 7 certification projects for the E-Business Suite.

Microsoft Windows 7 was officially released today. Here's a recap of our plans for certifying the Oracle E-Business Suite with Microsoft's latest operating system. As always, the answers to these questions may change as we move through the certification cycle. You're welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog for later updates.

Our Progress on Windows 7

We're certifying Windows 7 with the E-Business Suite right now. We've already tested several of the Win7 betas and release candidates, and those tests have gone very smoothly. At this point, E-Business Suite product teams need to complete their certification tests with Windows 7 desktop clients. Once those tests are completed, we'll release our certification.

For the usual reasons that regular readers could have predicted, I can't share any specific schedules or date estimates here. I can provide an interim update on the following Win7 questions:

Which EBS releases will be certified with Windows 7?
Which browsers will be certified?
Will Oracle JInitiator be certified for EBS on Windows 7?
Which Windows 7 editions will be certified?
What about Windows 7E?
What about Windows XP Mode?

1. Which EBS Releases Will Be Certified with Windows 7?

We plan on certifying the following Oracle E-Business Suite release with Windows 7:

EBS 11i version 11.5.10.2
EBS 12.0.4 and and higher

2. Which Browsers Will Be Certified?

We plan on certifying the following browsers with the E-Business Suite on Windows 7:

Internet Explorer 8
Firefox 3.5

3. Will Oracle JInitiator Be Certified for EBS on Windows 7?

No. Oracle JInitiator is no longer supported for E-Business Suite customers.

Oracle JInitiator 1.1.8 was desupported in December 2008, and Oracle JInitiator 1.3 was desupported for EBS customers in July 2009. For more information about JInitiator desupport and switching your EBS end-users from JInitiator to the Sun JRE, see:

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

We plan to certify only the native Sun Java Runtime Engine (JRE) with Windows 7. We have no plans to certify Oracle JInitiator with Windows 7.

4. Which Windows 7 Editions Will Be Certified?

We plan to test E-Business Suite compatibility against Windows 7 Professional Edition with the E-Business Suite. We fully expect that other Win7 editions will work, but we have no current plans to explicitly test the Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, or Enterprise Editions with the E-Business Suite.

5. What About Windows 7E?

Microsoft has changed its plans for Windows 7E since I published our first interim update on this certification. At present, it appears that Microsoft has no plans to release a special version of Windows 7 for Europe. Debate around default browser selection screens for Europe continues, so we'll continue to monitor this.

If Microsoft's plans change, and a European variant is released, our current plans are to certify the generic edition of Windows 7 with the E-Business Suite and the browsers listed above.

6. What About Windows XP Mode?

Microsoft indicates that end-users will be able to run Windows XP in a virtualized environment running via Windows Virtual PC on a Win7 desktop client. This will presumably be functionally-equivalent to running Windows XP natively.

We have no plans to conduct separate EBS certification efforts for WinXP+Virtual PC images running on Win7 clients.

What Are Your Organization's Plans for Windows 7?

Anecdotal reports from some EBS customers seem to suggest that your plans for Windows 7 will parallel that of Windows Vista: namely, that new PCs that arrive with Windows 7 will either stay that way or will be downgraded to WinXP for the short term. I have heard of a few customers with plans to deploy widespread Win7 upgrades across the enterprise, but these customers seem to be in the minority so far.

I'd be very interested in hearing your plans for rolling out Windows 7 in your organization. Feel free to post a comment here or drop me an email with more details about your deployment plans.

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The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decision. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle's products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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Filed under: Desktop Clients , EBS Release 11i , EBS Release 12 • Comments (24) • Share

Comments (24)

Ketan Thanki:

I have Windows7 installed on my laptop since a month and have also been running EBS 11.5.10.2 on it. I use IE8 and so far have had no problems.

Posted by Ketan Thanki | October 22, 2009 5:46 PM

Posted on October 22, 2009 17:46

Steven Chan

Hi, Ketan,

Thanks for your comment. I'm glad to hear that you've been happy with this configuration.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | October 23, 2009 11:57 AM

Posted on October 23, 2009 11:57

Steven Chan

Hi, Ketan,

Thanks for your comment. I'm glad to hear that this has been working for you.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | October 27, 2009 10:57 AM

Posted on October 27, 2009 10:57

Hana:

Are reports builder 6i and forms builder 6i certified with Windows7?

Posted by Hana | November 11, 2009 6:37 AM

Posted on November 11, 2009 06:37

Steven Chan

Hello, Hana,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this. This has been a surprisingly tricky question to answer.

For the present, the answer is no -- there are no plans to certify these tools on Windows 7. The Forms team has long since stopped active certifications for Forms6i, so certification and support of these developer-class client/server tools on new desktop platforms like Windows 7 is not planned.

If you're building custom Forms6i reports or forms, you'll need to use a currently-supported desktop client running WinXP.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | November 13, 2009 10:18 AM

Posted on November 13, 2009 10:18

Pavan Nagaraju:

Hello Steven,

Can I assume that Developer suite 10g (specifially forms, reports and jDeveloper) and jDeveloper 11g are also being certified on windows 7?

Thanks
Pavan

Posted by Pavan Nagaraju | November 14, 2009 5:27 AM

Posted on November 14, 2009 05:27

pg:

Hi Stephen, love your blog. I noticed that Internet Explorer 7 was purposively left off here and IE 8 is the browser of choice. Should we be concerned if we are running IE7 and Windows 7 together?

Posted by pg | November 15, 2009 8:53 PM

Posted on November 15, 2009 20:53

Steven Chan

Hi, PG,

Thanks for the feedback on our blog.

Windows 7 includes IE 8. Running IE 7 with Windows 7 is not supported by Microsoft. Since this isn't a supported configuration from Microsoft, we can't support it for the E-Business Suite, either.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | November 15, 2009 9:49 PM

Posted on November 15, 2009 21:49

Steven Chan

Hello, Pavan,

I'm part of the E-Business Suite Development division, not the Fusion Middleware division, so I can't speak authoritatively on their behalf about their certification plans.

I can tell you that we're certifying Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 for use with Windows 7 desktop clients. This will include all of the runtime components that are expected to run on an end-user's desktop, including both the HTML and JRE-based content.

Whether the developer-class/build-time Fusion Middleware development tools will run on Windows 7 is a different question, though. Your best bet would be to log a formal Service Request via My Oracle Support (formerly Metalink) against the Fusion Middleware product to get one of those specialists engaged.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | November 16, 2009 2:04 PM

Posted on November 16, 2009 14:04

Rohit:

Hi, Any updates on certification ? Users on Windows 7 are unable to user R12 forms.
FRM-92050 error

Posted by Rohit | November 20, 2009 9:53 AM

Posted on November 20, 2009 09:53

Steven Chan

Hi, Rohit,

We're still working on this certification. It's going well. Please continue to watch this blog for updates; they'll be coming soon.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | November 23, 2009 9:52 AM

Posted on November 23, 2009 09:52

Glen Graffius:

Will you be able to provide any information on the Windows 7 certification for Oracle's OID/SSO/WNA infrastructure? If not, is there a similar blog for this information?

Thanks,
Glen

Posted by Glen Graffius | December 1, 2009 1:09 PM

Posted on December 1, 2009 13:09

Steven Chan

Hi, Glen,

I'm afraid that I don't have much visibility into the Oracle Identity Management team's plans for Windows 7 certification. I think your best bet would be to log a formal Service Request with your question, but if you want to try and get it answered informally, the Oracle Identity Management team's official blog is here:

http://blog.talkingidentity.com/

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | December 1, 2009 1:25 PM

Posted on December 1, 2009 13:25

Glen Graffius:

Thanks Steven.

Currently the Windows 7/IE8 authentication requests get sent to the SSO fallback login page and I haven't been able to find a registry hack that fixes it.

Submitting the service request is the best option.

Thanks again,
Glen

Posted by Glen Graffius | December 1, 2009 1:40 PM

Posted on December 1, 2009 13:40

Dominic D'souza:

Please let us know if there are plans to certify the following products on Windows 7:

1- Oracle ADI - 7.2.10.10.10
2- Oracle Discoverer - 4.1.48.08.00

Posted by Dominic D'souza | December 7, 2009 11:56 PM

Posted on December 7, 2009 23:56

Steven Chan

Hi, Dominic,

I'm not responsible for either of those products, but I can share what I've heard for ADI.

The ADI team found compatibility issues with Vista that also reproduce in Windows 7. They tell me that these issues were the result of very deep architectural changes in both operating systems. The ADI team tells me that they have no plans to make the sweeping changes required to accommodate either Vista or Windows 7. Customers are encouraged to upgrade to WebADI if they wish Vista or Windows 7 compatibility.

Premier Support for Discoverer 4i ended in October 2006. I haven't asked the Discoverer team about their Windows 7 plans, but I would be very surprised if they were planning to certify a desupported product on any new operating systems at this point. If you need an authoritative answer on this, I'd recommend logging a formal Service Request against the Discoverer product.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | December 8, 2009 10:07 AM

Posted on December 8, 2009 10:07

Dominic D'souza:

Thank you Steven for your update. I also needed to clarify that if the product is not certified by Oracle, does it also mean that it will not be supported by Oracle.

For eg. your post on November 11, 2009 06:37 mentions that Forms and Reports 6i will not be CERTIFIED on Windows 7. Does this mean that Forms and Reports 6i will not be supported on Windows 7?

Posted by Dominic D'souza | December 9, 2009 1:18 AM

Posted on December 9, 2009 01:18

Steven Chan

Hello, Dominic,

I can't speak for the Forms team, but I would speculate that the lack of certification of Forms6i developer-class tools would also mean that they wouldn't support that platform, either.

In other words, if you report any problems with Forms6i developer-class tools on Windows 7, my guess is that Forms Support would advise you to retry on a client running, say, WinXP.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | December 9, 2009 9:18 AM

Posted on December 9, 2009 09:18

Raj Yadav:

Hi Steven,

Can I install EBS 12.1.1 with Windows-32 bits on Windows XP for personal use?

Regards,
Raj Yadav

Posted by Raj Yadav | December 14, 2009 11:38 PM

Posted on December 14, 2009 23:38

Steven Chan

Hi, Raj,

You can use Windows XP clients to connect to EBS 12.1.1 environments. However, EBS 12.1.1 must be installed on a supported server operating system such as Windows Server 2003.

Good luck with your implementation.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | December 15, 2009 11:01 AM

Posted on December 15, 2009 11:01

Amorsolo:

What kind of Windows 7 we are talking here?
Is it Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate?
What bits 32 bit or 64 bit?

Thanks in advanced,

Posted by Amorsolo | December 30, 2009 4:45 PM

Posted on December 30, 2009 16:45

Steven Chan

Hello, Amosolo,

The article you've commented upon was an interim update prior to our actual certification. Did you see our official certification announcement here?

Microsoft Windows 7 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite -
http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/2009/12/win7_certified_ebs.html

As noted in that official certification announcement, this certification is for 32-bit clients only.

We do our certification tests using Windows 7 Enterprise, but all Windows 7 editions should work.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | December 31, 2009 11:18 AM

Posted on December 31, 2009 11:18

Sushant Lenka:

Discoverer can be installed in windows 7 operating system.

Right click on the setup file and choose compatiblity mode.

It will ask to start the program in compatibility mode. after that follow the next steps in the dailog box to save the settings.

It will install discoverer in the windows 7 OS.

In case of any problem, mail me at sushant@meai-india.com

Regards
Sushanta Lenka

Posted by Sushant Lenka | February 2, 2010 2:24 AM

Posted on February 2, 2010 02:24

Steven Chan

Hi, Sushant,

This is a good workaround. My understanding is that the Fusion Middleware has not certified Discoverer Administrator components on Windows 7. This means that any problems that you report on Win7 must be reproducible on Windows XP (or another supported Windows version) before the Fusion Middleware team can provide a patch for a given bug.

Regards,
Steven

Posted by Steven Chan | February 2, 2010 10:16 AM

Posted on February 2, 2010 10:16

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