Oracle E-Business Suite Technology

Premier Support for Oracle Application Server 10g ends December 2010

2010-02-08T18:21:25Z

All E-Business Suite systems administrators should review the Oracle Lifetime Support brochures on the Oracle Lifetime Support website regularly. In particular, EBS sysadmins should monitor changes to the following documents:

Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Technology Products (PDF, 389 K)
Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Fusion Middleware Products (PDF, 315 K)
Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Applications (PDF, 709 K)

As you can see from the second document, Premier Support for Oracle Application Server 10g versions 10gR2 10.1.2 and 10gR3 versions 10.1.3 ends in December 2010. It's important to understand how this will affect support for your E-Business Suite environments.

]]> Implications for E-Business Suite Release 11i environments

You may have integrated your EBS 11i environment with a number of external Oracle Application Server 10g components, including:

Oracle Single Sign-On and Oracle Internet Directory 10g
Oracle Discoverer 10g
Oracle Web Cache 10g
Oracle Portal 10g

Premier Support for these externally-integrated Oracle Application Server 10g components will end in December 2010. You should plan on upgrading these components to their Fusion Middleware 11g equivalents before December 2010.

Implications for E-Business Suite Release 12 environments

There are two different types of considerations for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 environments:

Support implications for internal EBS 12 technology stack components
Support implications for externally-integrated OracleAS 10g components

1. Support implications for internal EBS 12 technology stack components

The Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 technology stack includes Oracle Application Server 10gR2 10.1.2 components for Forms and Oracle Application Server 10gR3 10.1.3 components for OC4J. These components are part of the internal E-Business Suite technology stack, i.e., they are installed by the E-Business Suite Rapid Install. Updates to these internal technology stack components are also delivered by the E-Business Suite division through our regular updates such as E-Business Suite 12.1.1.

Your internal E-Business Suite Release 12 technology stack components built on Oracle Fusion Middleware 10gR2 and 10gR3 will remain supported for the duration of the support lifetime for Oracle E-Business Suite 12. The December 2010 Premier Support end date for Oracle Application Server 10g does not apply to the internal Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 technology stack components.

In other words, you will receive Premier Support for these internal Apps 12 technology stack components as long as the Apps 12 release is covered by Premier Support.

2. Support implications for externally-integrated OracleAS 10g components

You may have integrated your EBS 12 environment with a number of external Oracle Application Server 10g components, including:
Oracle Single Sign-On and Oracle Internet Directory 10g
Oracle Discoverer 10g
Oracle Web Cache 10g
Oracle Portal 10g
Oracle Web Center 10g
Premier Support for these externally-integrated Oracle Application Server 10g components will end in December 2010. You should plan on upgrading these components to their Fusion Middleware 11g equivalents before December 2010.

Which Fusion Middleware 11g components are certified?

You can upgrade your external integrations to the following Fusion Middleware 11 components immediately:

Oracle Internet Directory 11g
Oracle SOA Suite 11g

We're still working on the following Fusion Middleware 11g external certifications:

Oracle Discoverer 11g
Oracle Web Cache 11g
Oracle Portal 11g
Oracle Web Center 11g
Prepackaged Oracle integrations for Oracle BPEL 11g

Oracle's Revenue Recognition rules prohibit us from discussing certification and release dates, but you're welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog for updates, which I'll post as soon as soon as they're available.

Remember, also, that you can find a handy one-page summary of all of our current certifications here. This is extracted from our CERTIFY database on My Oracle Support, which should be consulted for platform-specific certifications.

Related Articles

The following 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.

11gR2 DB 11.2.0.1 Certified on Solaris 10 and E-Business Suite

2010-02-04T16:58:38Z

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 version 11.2.0.1 is now certified with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i (11.5.10.2) and Release 12 (12.0, 12.1) on Solaris 10 on SPARC (64-bit). This announcement includes:

Oracle Database 11gR2 version 11.2.0.1
Real Application Clusters (RAC)
Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) Column Encryption
Advanced Security Option (ASO) / Advanced Networking Option (ANO)
Export/Import Process for E-Business Suite 11i Database Instances

]]>

Export/Import Process for E-Business Suite R12 Database Instances
Database Vault 11.2.0.1 Certification
Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) Tablespace Encryption

As usual, Oracle's Revenue Recognition rules prohibit us from discussing certification and release dates, but you're welcome to monitor or subscribe this blog for updates on these pending certifications.

The operating system version covered by this certification is Solaris 10; there are no plans to certify Solaris 8 and 9.

References

Interoperability Notes - Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0) (Note 1058763.1)
Interoperability Notes - Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0) (Note 881505.1)
Database Initialization Parameters for Oracle Applications Release 12 (Note 396009.1)
Database Initialization Parameters for Oracle Applications Release 11i (Note 216205.1)
Using Oracle 11g Release 2 Real Application Clusters with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 823587.1)
Using Oracle 11g Release 2 Real Application Clusters with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i (Note 823586.1)
Using Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) Column Encryption with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 732764.1)
Using Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) Column Encryption with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i (Note 403294.1)
Export/Import Process for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i Database Instances Using Oracle Database 11g Release 1 or 11g Release 2 (Note 557738.1)

Related Articles

What Are Your Plans for Retiring Internet Explorer or IE6?

2010-02-03T17:12:21Z

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001. Microsoft's Dean Hachamovitch has indicated that IE6 will continue to receive Extended Support for the lifetime of Windows XP, which is currently planned to continue until August 4, 2014.

As a nine-year old technology, it's not surprising to hear that cyber-attacks may be targetted at potentially-serious security issues with this browser. Microsoft has recently issued Security Advisory 979352 to address certain browser security issues.

France's Computer Emergency Response Team and Germany's Federal Office for Security in Information Technology have recently issued official bulletins that advise users to switch from Internet Explorer to an alternative browser.

]]> Supporting Internet Explorer and IE6 with Oracle E-Business Suite

Our plans are to continue supporting IE6 with the E-Business Suite as long as Microsoft supports that browser. We also plan to continue to certify updates to Internet Explorer with the E-Business Suite.

Our challenge, though, is that there are over thirty different desktop client x browser x JRE release combinations that could be certified with every new E-Business Suite patch or update. We do not have the resources to test every possible permutation comprehensively with every Apps patch, so we are forced to select a subset of combinations to rotate through our certification process.

What Are Your Plans?

This is where your feedback can make a lot of difference in helping us prioritize combinations to test with the E-Business Suite. I'm particularly interested in your answers to the following questions:

What browsers are primarily used in your organization?
Are you reassessing your desktop deployment standards in response to the latest news about IE?
If yes, what are your plans for retiring either Internet Explorer, generally, or IE6, specifically?

Please feel free to comment here or drop me a private email with your organization's current perspectives on this.

Related Articles

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.

Migrating E-Business Suite Application Tier Servers to Linux

2010-02-02T02:31:22Z

If your E-Business Suite environment is hitting the ceiling for performance, you should first tune and optimize it to squeeze the most of your existing hardware. At some point, you may decide to scale up your application tier with multiple nodes behind a load-balancer. As part of that process, you might begin considering replacing large SMP servers on your application tier with a pool of servers running Linux on commodity hardware.

Indeed, this is the architecture that we use to run Oracle's own global E-Business Suite Release 12 implementation. We have four large Sun database servers fronted by almost 40 application tier servers running Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL):

]]>

Migrating to Linux with Oracle Applications Release 11i (Note 238276.1)
Application Tier Platform Migration with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 438086.1)

You can use these Notes to migrate an Oracle application (middle) tier to any platform that is supported with the Rapid Installs for both Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12.

The processes described in those Notes provides a certified way to quickly and easily move an existing Oracle application tier system to a different platform, allowing you to utilize different hardware for the Oracle application tier. The migration utility retains the exact Oracle E-Business Suite patch level so that no APPL_TOP/Database synchronization is necessary; this also allows you to retain many customizations.

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Using Mobile Devices with Oracle E-Business Suite

2010-01-29T21:17:44Z

It's been a wild and crazy week here in EBS Development; my workload seems to have tripled overnight. In a desperate attempt to protect my inbox, here's a quick article that answers some common questions around the use of smartphones and other mobile devices with the E-Business Suite.

Before I go into the details, though, it's very important to note that this particular area is evolving extremely rapidly. If a search engine has brought you to this article long after its initial publication, you should check this blog and other Oracle sources carefully to confirm our latest position on mobile device support for the E-Business Suite.

Support for iPhones and iPads

Apple's seems to have had a good week with their iPad launch. Even before that, interest in using iPhones with the E-Business Suite seems to be extremely high. Oracle offers several official iPhone apps that are related to the E-Business Suite, including:

Apple has indicated that all existing iPhone apps will work transparently on the iPad as well. I'm sure that the Oracle teams who currently produce iPhone apps will be only too-pleased to justify their purchase of iPads to do these certifications.

]]> Using smartphones and mobile devices with EBS self-service apps

Some E-Business Suite products offer web-based screens that can be accessed by standards-compliant browsers. These products have HTML-screens, are built using OA Framework, and are sometimes referred to as "Self-Service Web Applications" (SSWA).

We officially certify and support these web-based products in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12 with:

Various Windows desktop clients running Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8
Various Windows desktop clients running Firefox 3
Mac OS X desktop clients running Safari 3

We do not conduct any formal certification tests of the latest smartphone or mobile device browsers with the E-Business Suite. To be explicit about this, we do not currently test the E-Business Suite with:

Mobile Safari running on iPhones
Internet Explorer Mobile (formerly Pocket Internet Explorer)
Opera Mobile
Firefox Mobile
BlackBerry Browser
Other mobile device browsers

If a mobile browser is standards-compliant (e.g. passes the latest Acid test), it might work with the E-Business Suite's self-service HTML screens. However, if you experience any issues with a mobile browser that cannot be reproduced on a certified desktop browser, our recommendation would be to use a desktop browser instead.

Using smartphones and mobile devices with EBS Forms-based apps

Some E-Business Suite products run in Oracle Forms. These Forms-based products require the use of Sun's Java Runtime Engine (JRE) to run. We test the Sun JRE with Windows-based desktop clients. We do not test any mobile Java clients with E-Business Suite Forms-based products, and I would be rather nonplussed if I received any reports of this configuration actually working.

If you encounter any issues with mobile-based Java clients that cannot be reproduced on a Windows-based desktop client, our recommendation would be to use the latter client, instead.

Using standards-compliant mail clients to approve Workflow notifications

Oracle Workflow is a key part of the E-Business Suite's technology stack. It can be configured to send emails (via SMTP) that notify E-Business Suite users that certain EBS transactions are awaiting their approval. E-Business Suite end-users can respond to those notification emails by clicking on a link in those emails, or responding with an email containing certain keywords in the body of a reply.

We test Workflow and E-Business Suite notifications using Windows desktop based email clients such as Microsoft Outlook. We do not currently perform any tests of Workflow notification emails with mobile devices such as iPhone Mail app or BlackBerry Email.

We would expect standards-compliant email clients to be able to handle Workflow notification emails properly, including email clients on mobile devices. Some mobile email clients are unable to handle standards-based emails, and other email clients may truncate long Workflow notification emails. These issues may prevent certain email clients on mobile devices from handling Workflow notifications properly.

If you encounter issues with Workflow email notifications on smartphones or mobile devices that can't be reproduced on a conventional Windows desktop-based email client, our recommendation would be to process Workflow notifications on the latter.

On a side note: technically-inclined readers might be interested to hear that we're aware of at least one web-based email client that does not comply with RFC 2368 in its handling of new line characters in mailto URL encoding. Web-based email clients with issues like that will be unable to handle Workflow notifications properly. If you encounter issues with web-based email clients that cannot be reproduced on a conventional Windows desktop-based email client, our recommendation would be to process Workflow notifications on the latter.

Your feedback is welcome

As I mentioned above, it's very important to note that this particular area is evolving extremely rapidly. This article represents a snapshot of our current certification and support position, but this position reflects the relatively small demand for mobile device support today (at least when compared to desktop-based users).

We're always monitoring demand for new requirements, so your feedback has the potential to influence our priorities for mobile device support. You would be amazed at how important decisions about product strategy can be influenced by a small amount of direct customer feedback.

If your organization plans to support the use of smartphones or other mobile devices with the E-Business Suite, we'd be very interested in hearing from you. Post a comment here, or drop me a private email with details about:

E-Business Suite release and products in production (e.g. "Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1, running iExpenses, HRMS, and Financials")
Who will be using mobile devices with EBS, and in what scenarios? (e.g. web-based EBS products, Workflow email notifications)
Numbers and types of mobile devices to be deployed
Deployment schedule

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Live Migration of EBS Services Using Oracle VM

2010-01-27T22:06:52Z

[Editor: This is the fifth of a five-part series on virtualization and cloud topics from Ivo Dujmovic, an architect in our Applications Technology Integration group.]

Breaking news: you can now achieve live migration of E-Business Suite instances on Oracle VM (OVM). This is the High Availability and Fault Tolerance Holy Grail. In an environment configured to support live migration, end-user sessions running on one node in a virtual machine server can be migrated transparently to a different node on a different virtual machine server. You have asked for this functionality for more than a dozen years and many Oracle partners offer solutions to achieve this. After all these years, Oracle can provide you a solution for E-Business Suite environments using Oracle VM.

Why was this so hard for Oracle E-Business Suite? Well, the short answer is that we have hundreds of products using many different technologies as part of the E-Business Suite, and many of them had complicated session state handling (some in the database, some on the middle-tier), caches that needed to be kept synchronized, and so on. While all technical problems are soluble, this one was just not feasible to solve within E-Business Suite itself.

]]> Virtualization Changes Things

In an conventional (non-virtualized) architecture, the failure of a specific application tier node would force a logout of all end-users with sessions on that particular node. Any transactions that were mid-stream on that application tier node would have been lost. On a virtualized platform, end-user sessions can be migrated from one machine to another without the end-user noticing.

OVM's live migration feature has some requirements, including the need to have look-alike machines on same subnet. These requirements are discussed in detail in:

Oracle E-Business Suite High Availability on Oracle VM (Note 986690.1)

Oracle VM also currently restarts the VM if the Virtual Machine Server fails, which would mean the end-user session does need to be restarted. We expect that these behaviors should improve over time.

In addition to the great live migration feature, OVM also has cloning functionality, which work seamlessly work if you use our EBS templates or virtualization kit.

Your Feedback is Welcome

This concludes my mini-series on virtualization and the E-Business Suite. We're extremely interested in hearing about your use cases and your experiences with our new templates and virtualization kit. Tell us what you think via our new OVM Templates discussion forum.

References

Oracle VM Server User's Guide Release 2.1 - Chapter 9: High Availability

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Switching to Cumulative Critical Patch Updates for E-Business Suite 11i

2010-01-25T18:44:32Z

[Editor: This article is written by Krishna Kappaganti, a Director in our Applications Technology Integration group. Krishna is part of the team that produces the quarterly Critical Patch Updates for E-Business Suite.]

Historically with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i, you were required to apply individual patches in the order specified in the E-Business suite Critical Patch Updates Knowledge document for that Critical Patch Update (CPU). If you missed one or more Critical Patch Updates, you needed to review E-Business Suite Critical Patch Updates Knowledge documents related to all those missed CPUs and apply all listed patches one-by-one to come up to the latest required prerequisites.

Compare that process to applying Critical Patch Updates to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0 and 12.1), Oracle Database, and Oracle Fusion Middleware: those products' CPUs are cumulative. You can simply apply a single patch that contains all the fixes from previous Oracle security alerts and Critical Patch Updates and be at the latest CPU level.

With the introduction of CPU Cumulative Patches for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i10 CU2, starting with CPUJan2010, things have changed in an important way. E-Business Suite Release 11i sysadmins now have a convenient way of getting up-to-date on the latest Critical Patch Updates with a single patch.

]]> What are CPU Cumulative Patches?

As you might infer from their name, CPU Cumulative Patches include the latest versions of all patches produced for the Oracle E-Business Suite baseline since the beginning of Critical Patch Updates on that baseline. In other words, they include:

Patches contained in prior Critical Patch Updates for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i10 CU2 on the baseline
Patches from previous Oracle security alerts applicable for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i10 CU2 on the baseline
Latest patches needed for the present Critical Patch Update

The CPU Cumulative Patches on the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i10 CU2 baseline are similar to those produced for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0 and 12.1).

How many Baselines do we have?

There are two baselines available for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i10 CU2: ATG RUP 6 and ATG RUP 7.

The CPU Cumulative Patch on Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i10 CU2 ATG RUP 6 can be applied by all Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i10 CU2 customers who have applied ATG RUP 6 to their environments. Similarly the CPU Cumulative Patch on Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i10 CU2 ATG RUP 7 can be applied by all Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i10 CU2 customers who have applied ATG RUP 7 to their environments.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release customers on the 11i10 baseline without Consolidated Update 2 continue to receive individual patches for Critical Patch Updates; no cumulative patch exists for that baseline.

[Editor: as of November 2010, EBS 11.5.10 Consolidated Update 2 will be part of the new minimum prerequisites for Extended Support for Apps 11i. If you're not already running 11.5.10 CU2, you should make plans to apply this patch as soon as possble.]

How to apply the CPU Cumulative Patch

CPU Cumulative Patches can be applied like any other patch. The sequence is:

Review the E-Business Suite CPU Knowledge document for the CPU.
Apply all Database and Fusion Middleware patches applicable following the E-Business Suite CPU Knowledge document instructions and referring the other relevant CPU Knowledge documents.
Identify the applicable Cumulative Patch for your E-Business Suite environment (ATG RUP 6 or ATG RUP 7)
Apply the prerequisite patches following instructions in the README of the CPU Cumulative Patch. Note that the pre-requisite patches may vary depending on the products installed in your E-business Suite environment. It may sometimes be necessary for customers using certain products to move to a minimum supported level for that product.
Apply the CPU Cumulative Patch.
Apply the post-install patches following the instructions in README of the CPU Cumulative Patch. Note that the prerequisite patches may vary depending on the products installed in your E-business Suite environment.

References

Oracle E-Business Suite Releases 11i and 12 Critical Patch Update Knowledge Document (January 2010) (Note 985520.1)

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Latest DSTv13 Timezone Patches Available for E-Business Suite

2010-01-22T19:10:29Z

If your E-Business Suite Release 11i or 12 environment is configured to support Daylight Saving Time (DST) or international time zones, it's important to keep your timezone definition files up-to-date. They were last changed in July 2009 and released as DSTv11. DSTv13 is now available and certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12.

Note that if you've prided yourself on keeping your environment up-to-date, you didn't miss DSTv12. That version was not released externally. DSTv13 is the next release after DSTv11.

Is Your Apps Environment Affected?

When a country or region changes DST rules or their time zone definitions, your Oracle E-Business Suite environment will require patching if:

Your Oracle E-Business Suite environment is located in the affected country or region OR
Your Oracle E-Business Suite environment is located outside the affected country or region but you conduct business or have customers or suppliers in the affected country or region

]]> DSTv11 patches on this blog. The latest "DSTv13" timezone definition file is cumulative and includes all DST changes in Olson tzdata 2009s and earlier time zone definitions. DSTv13 includes changes to the following timezones since the DSTv11 release:

Africa/Cairo
America/Argentina/San_Luis
America/Buenos_Aires
America/Cordoba, America/Catamarca
America/Argentina/Tucuman
Antarctica/Casey
Antarctica/Davis
Antarctica/Mawson
Asia/Hong_Kong
Asia/Karachi
Asia/Gaza
Asia/Damascus
Europe/Samara
Indian/Mauritius
Pacific/Fiji
Pacific/Apia
Egypt
America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires
America/Argentina/Cordoba
America/Argentina/Catamarca
Asia/Dhaka, Hongkong
NZ-CHAT
America/Rosario
America/Argentina/ComodRivadavia

What Patches Are Required?

In case you haven't been following our previous time zone or Daylight Saving Time (DST)-related articles, international timezone definitions for E-Business Suite environments are captured in a series of patches for the database and application tier servers in your environment. The actual scope and number of patches that need to be applied depend on whether you've applied previous DST or timezone-related patches. Some sysadmins have remarked to me that it generally takes more time to read the various timezone documents than it takes to apply these patches, but your mileage may vary.

We've published the following Notes which identify the various components in your E-Business Suite environment that may need DST patches:

Complying with Daylight Saving Time (DST) and Time Zone Rule Changes in E-Business Suite 12 (Note 563019.1)
Complying with Daylight Saving Time (DST) and Time Zone Rule Changes in E-Business Suite 11i (Note 458452.1)

What Have Your Experiences Been?

DST patching was a hot topic a few years ago, so much so that we convened some emergency web-based seminars for customers to clarify out the requirements for E-Business Suite environments. Since then, it seems like time zone patching has become more predictable and better-documented, and I haven't heard about any recent customer escalations in this area. I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences lately in keeping your Apps environment up-to-date with time zone patches; feel free to drop me an email or post a comment here with your thoughts.

Firefox 3.6 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

2010-01-21T20:13:08Z

We certified Firefox 3.5 with Oracle E-Business Suite in September, 2009. The Mozilla team released Firefox 3.6 today, and I'm very pleased to announce that Firefox 3.6 is now certified with the E-Business Suite.

If you've already applied all of the prerequisites required for Firefox 3.5, you'll be happy to learn that no additional E-Business Suite patches are needed for Firefox 3.6 compatibility. The same baseline of patches for Firefox 3.5 allow for a painless upgrade to Firefox 3.6.

]]> Firefox 3.6 requires "next generation Java"

Firefox 3.6 is only supported with 'next generation Java' plug-in versions JRE 1.6.0_10 (6u10) or higher. The 'Enable the next-generation Java plug-in' option within the 'Java Control Panel' may still be switched off if required.

Trying to launch Forms-based products with earlier JRE versions (JRE 1.6.0_07 or earlier or JRE 1.5.x) will prompt the user to download and install the latest available plug-in version through the Firefox 'Plugin Finder Service'. Forms will not launch until a 'next generation Java' plug-in version is installed on the desktop client.

Prerequisites for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i

Oracle Applications 11.5.10 plus Maintenance Pack 11.5.10.CU2 or later
Oracle Developer6i patchset 18 (6.0.8.27.x) or later (Note 125767.1)
Oracle Applications Technology 11i.ATG_PF.H Rollup 6 (RUP 6, patch 5903765) or later
Oracle Applications Framework (OAF) Patch 7651759
Oracle Applications Technology Patch 7567782 which removes the use of the jpi-parameter and switches Firefox to a non-static versioning model

Prerequisites for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.0

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.0.x
Oracle Applications Technology R12.ATG_PF.A.delta.6 (patch 7237006) or later
Oracle Applications Framework (OAF) Patch 7602616
Oracle Applications Technology Patch 7567840, which removes the use of the jpi-parameter and switches Firefox to a non-static versioning model

Prerequisites for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1

No additional prerequisites are required

Certified Desktop Operating Systems for Firefox 3.5

Microsoft Windows 7
Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and 2
Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 and 3

References

Recommended Browsers for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i (Note 285218.1)
Recommended Browsers for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 389422.1)
Upgrading Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) with Oracle Applications 11i for Windows Clients (Note 290807.1)
Upgrading JRE Plugin with Oracle Applications R12 (Note 393931.1)

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Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

2010-01-20T19:03:53Z

Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 are certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12. While this isn't a new announcement, per se, a recent surge of Office-related questions suggests that it's worth covering this topic here.

How does the E-Business Suite work with Microsoft Office?

The Oracle E-Business Suite is comprised of several product families such as Financials, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, and so on. These product families group together collections of individual products. Some of these products may be optionally integrated with one or more Microsoft Office components such as Excel, Word, and Projects.
]]>
Examples of these integrations include:

HRMS Payroll integrations with Microsoft Excel
Supply Chain Management Contracts Core integration with Microsoft Word
Financials General Ledger (GL) integration with Microsoft Excel
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Proposals integration with Microsoft Word

What Does "Certified" Mean?

It's easy enough to state that Oracle E-Business Suite is certified with Microsoft Office. But the E-Business Suite is a collection of multiple products, just like Microsoft Office. So what does the generalized statement of "certified" really mean?

If an E-Business Suite team integrates their product with Microsoft Office, they are responsible for ensuring that these integrations continue to work with all of their new releases and patches. They are also responsible for testing their products with new versions of Microsoft Office, including major Office patches and Service Packs.

When a specific product team completes their testing of their product with a given version of, say, Microsoft Excel 2007, they are permitted to state that their product is certified with that Office version and component.

When all product teams with Office dependencies complete their tests of, say, E-Business Suite 12 with Office 2007, then we consider that E-Business Suite release to be certified with that version of Microsoft Office.

Where are these integrations documented?

Individual product teams are responsible for ensuring that their product documentation describes their integration points and procedures for using Microsoft Office. This documentation is decentralized and distributed today, and I would expect things to continue along those lines.

We understand that it would be helpful to have a central document that acts like a Table of Contents or integration roadmap with pointers to the product-specific Office documentation. We've scheduled this documentation project; watch this blog for more details when that supplemental documentation is released.

How are these integrations supported?

You can log Service Requests against the E-Business Suite product that you're trying to integrate with Microsoft Office.

For example, you might be trying to take advantage of CRM Marketing (AMS) 12.1.2's integration with Excel 2007. To get support, you can log an SR against CRM Marketing directly.

The Support team for that product will help you diagnose and resolve the problem. If the issue is isolated to a Microsoft product, then it may be necessary to log a corresponding support ticket with Microsoft, as well.

What about Microsoft Office 2010?

Microsoft has recently released a beta of Office 2010. Our EBS product teams are evaluating this release now. I'll post more details about our plans for certifying Office 2010 with the E-Business Suite as soon as they're available.

What about StarOffice and OpenOffice variants?

Our existing E-Business Suite integrations with Microsoft are built on a variety of published Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft's Visual Basic (VBA) macro functions and Microsoft document filetypes.

StarOffice, OpenOffice and its many open source variants offer a lot of functionality that is very similar or equivalent to Microsoft Office. However, these open source applications are not drop-in replacements for their Microsoft Office equivalents, given that they do not offer VBA macro compatibility.

If your organisation currently uses Microsoft Office with the E-Business Suite and is considering a large-scale cutover from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice or another open source equivalent, please drop me an email with the following details:

Name of your organisation
EBS Release (e.g. 11.5.10.2, 12.1.2)
EBS+Office integrations that you're using today
Microsoft Office version that you're using today
Number of end-user desktops affected
Windows versions used by those EBS+Office end-users
OpenOffice distribution and versions to be deployed
Will there be a mix of Microsoft Office and OpenOffice deployments?
Migration schedule to OpenOffice or open source equivalent

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BPEL 10.1.3.5 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12 SOA Integrations

2010-01-19T17:21:57Z

A new certification was released simultaneously with the E-Business Suite 12.1.2 Maintenance Pack last month: the use of BPEL 10.1.3.5 with E-Business Suite 12. But before we jump into the details of that certification, it's useful to characterize the two major options for SOA-related integrations for Oracle E-Business Suite:

Custom integrations using the Oracle Application Server (SOA) Adapter for Oracle Applications
Prebuilt SOA integrations for E-Business Suite using BPEL Process Manager

]]> OPTION 1. Custom integrations using the Oracle Application Server (SOA) Adapter for Oracle Applications

If you'd like to use SOA Suite to develop your own custom integrations with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, you can run the latest SOA Suite version: e.g. 10.1.3.5, 11.1.1.1, or higher.

This includes the use of the SOA Suite's SOA Adapter for E-Business Suite. The Fusion Middleware division's documentation is a little inconsistent on this point, but this product is also referred to as the Oracle Fusion Middleware Adapter for Oracle Applications. The Version 11.1.1.1.0 prerequisites for this adapter are:

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i with OWF.G.Rollup 7; or,
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.0
To enable the "Native E-Business Suite Connectivity using J2EE Data Sources" feature:

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i with FND Rollup 6; or,
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 version 12.0.4.

If you're using the Oracle Fusion Middleware Adapter for Oracle Applications to build your own custom integrations with the E-Business Suite, there are no additional E-Business Suite dependencies. These are custom integrations that you will develop yourself. Your custom integrations will run against the E-Business Suite standard web services published in the Integration Repository.

For more information about using the generic SOA Adapter for Oracle Applications, see:

Oracle Fusion Middleware Adapter for Oracle Applications User's Guide 11g (11.1.1.1.0)

OPTION 2. Using prebuilt E-Business Suite 12 BPEL business processes

Six E-Business Suite Release 12 product teams have developed their own prebuilt BPEL business processes:

Oracle Price Protection (DPP)
Complex Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (CMRO/AHL)
Oracle Transportation Management (WMS, WSH, PO)
Supply Chain Trading Connector (CLN)
Advanced Supply Chain Planning (MSC)
Product Information Management (PIM/EGO)

These prebuilt BPEL processes have been certified with Oracle BPEL Process Manager 10g version 10.1.3.5 (in Oracle SOA Suite 10.1.3.5). These prebuilt BPEL processes are certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 and higher.

For more information about using the prebuilt SOA integrations, see:

Using Oracle BPEL 10g with E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 or higher (Note 755067.1)

Getting Support

If you need support for the Fusion Middleware SOA Adapter for Oracle Applications, you can log Service Requests against the Fusion Middleware product family.

If you need support for the prebuilt EBS 12 BPEL business processes, you can log Service Requests against the Applications Technology Group product family.

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Deploying E-Business Suite on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

2010-01-18T08:10:20Z

[Editor: This is the fourth of a five-part series on virtualization and cloud topics from Ivo Dujmovic, an architect in our Applications Technology Integration group.]

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is the quintessential public cloud. Oracle has partnered extensively with Amazon Web Services (AWS), and in this article I hope to clarify were we currently stand with using E-Business Suite on Amazon EC2.

Public Clouds can introduce uncertified stack additions in the virtualization layer (hypervisor, provisioning tools). They also introduce a lack of control over physical hardware: neither the end-customer nor Oracle has control of the hardware or the virtualization stack below the OS. This is a new factor in the relationship between Oracle and its customers.

]]> Amazon EC2 for non-production EBS environments

For the time being, the novelty of public clouds and the currently-low number of proof points means that we must initially take a prudent and cautious strategy for using Amazon EC2 to host E-Business Suite instances.

Since Amazon EC2 uses a virtualization engine that is not supported by Oracle and has not been certified with E-Business Suite, this environment is not supported for production usage of E-Business Suite. Using Amazon EC2 for hosting E-Business Suite instances may be suitable for non-production instances such as demonstration instances, test environments, and development environments.

For non-production instances, Oracle will provide support for issues that reproduce on standard certified configurations. Users will be directed to Amazon for any virtualization-related issues.

Four Reasons to use Amazon EC2 Features for E-Business Suite environments

Virtual private cloud: VPN-based extension to the customer's intranet
Elastic IPs: allow sticky IP addresses for persistent references between nodes
Large file import service: for DBFs larger than 5 TB, it is better to ship them on 2TB disks to Amazon -- you could have your instance up in 4-5 days
High-memory instance types: EBS needs higher memory-to-CPU ratios, and higher I/O bandwidth

We expect the future to bring more great functionality and even tighter integration between E-Business Suite and Amazon's web services. Stay tuned...

References

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Oracle Internet Directory 11g (11.1.1.2) Certified on Eight New Platforms for EBS

2010-01-15T08:10:13Z

[Jan 19, 2010 Update: Added additional certifications for HP-UX Itanium]

We certified Oracle Internet Directory 11g Version 11.1.1.2 with the E-Business Suite on four platforms a few weeks ago.
Our Applications Platforms Group has just certified eight additional operating system platforms for this configuration, bringing the total set of certified platforms to:

Linux x86 (Oracle Enterprise Linux 4, 5)
Linux x86 (RHEL 4, 5)
Linux x86 (SLES 10)
Linux x86-64 (Oracle Enterprise Linux 4, 5) -- for EBS Releases 12.0 and 12.1 only
Linux x86-64 (RHEL4, 5) -- for EBS Releases 12.0 and 12.1 only
Linux x86-64 (SLES 10) -- for EBS Releases 12.0 and 12.1 only
HP-UX PA-RISC (64-bit) (11.23, 11.31)
HP-UX Itanium (11.23, 11.31) -- for EBS Releases 12.0 and 12.1 only
IBM AIX on Power Systems (64-bit) (5.3, 6.1)
Microsoft Windows Server (32-bit) (2003; 2008 for EBS Release 12.1 only)
Sun Solaris SPARC (64-bit) (9, 10)

]]> What About Oracle Single Sign-On?

Sharp-eyed readers might have noticed that Fusion Middleware 11g does not include Oracle Single Sign-On. For more details about this, see:

Statement of Direction for Oracle Single Sign-On 10gR3 (Note 979951.1)

References

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AppsDataSource and Java Authentication and Authorization Service for Oracle E-Business Suite

2010-01-14T09:01:16Z

Oracle Application Object Library recently added new standard Java datasource and Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) features to Oracle E-Business Suite in Patch 8571001. These features are meant for use with Java EE programs deployed in application servers on external nodes; that is, nodes other than those where Oracle E-Business Suite middle tier is installed. These are lightweight implementations that can be used on an external application server without needing to install an entire Oracle E-Business Suite instance on the application server machine.

These features can be used with either Release 11i or Release 12. For details, see:

AppsDataSource, Java Authentication and Authorization Service, and Utilities for Oracle E-Business Suite (Note 974949.1)

AppsDataSource

The AppsDataSource standard data source enables access to the Oracle E-Business Suite APPS database schema from external Java EE environments without sharing the APPS schema password. Since the APPS database password is typically changed frequently, using these data sources insulates such programs from having to change their authentication information. Using these data sources also helps prevent wide exposure of the APPS password.

]]> Using these standard data sources lets you control access to Oracle E-Business Suite data at the APPS schema level. For example, you can use AppsDataSource with BPEL processes and Oracle Service Bus services in Oracle Fusion Middleware. Within Oracle E-Business Suite, the AppsDataSource is used to control APPS database access as part of the integration of Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Access Manager using Oracle E-Business Suite AccessGate.

When using the AppsDataSource feature, access to the APPS database is controlled using a dedicated Oracle E-Business Suite user name and password ("applications user", also known as an "FND user") instead of the APPS password. This allows centralized maintenance of the APPS password and provides additional controls on who can access the APPS account.

Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS)

Oracle E-Business Suite contains a repository of application users (FND users) and their associated roles (authorization for access to certain functional areas of the product). If you are developing a custom or third-party Java EE application to integrate with Oracle E-Business Suite, and you want to use that existing repository of users and roles for authentication and authorization for your Java EE application, you can use the Oracle E-Business Suite implementation of Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS). This feature is intended to secure an HTTP resource or piece of application functionality at the Oracle E-Business Suite user level.

Authenticating a Java application via JAAS

For example, suppose you want to build a Java EE application using Oracle Fusion Middleware to integrate with Oracle E-Business Suite data. You would use both AppsDataSource and JAAS so you can secure who has access to your application functionality based on usernames and roles already in Oracle E-Business Suite.

The following diagram shows the relationship between the AppsDataSource and JAAS features and how users and roles are used in the JAAS and AppsDataSource setups:

There are two different users, A (with Specialist role) and B (with Manager role), accessing a protected custom application (through a URL) on an external application server.
The custom application has a web.xml file that allows access for the Manager role as part of the JAAS setup.
User A does not have the Manager role, so is not allowed access to the custom application.
The external application server has an AppsDataSource set up to allow access to the Oracle E-Business Suite database using the dedicated AppsDataSource user that has the special UMX|APPS_SCHEMA_CONNECT role assigned to the dedicated user.
A repository of users and roles resides inside the Oracle E-Business Suite database.

Knowledge Document Topics

The Knowledge Document 974949.1: "AppsDataSource, Java Authentication and Authorization Service, and Utilities for Oracle E-Business Suite" includes the following topics:

Applying Patch 8571001
Using Oracle E-Business Suite Data Sources
- Configuring AppsDataSource on an OC4J Instance and on an Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS) Instance
- Using AppsDataSource Directly from Java Programs
Oracle E-Business Suite Implementation of Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS)
- JAAS configuration for OC4J and Oracle WebLogic Server
- Global Access for All Authenticated Oracle E-Business Suite Users
Utilities

Lightweight Tools for Java EE Applications

The lightweight implementations of AppsDataSource and JAAS are useful tools for easier integration of custom Java EE applications with Oracle E-Business Suite.

We'll be adding more information to the document about additional Oracle Application Object Library Java features in the coming several months, so check Knowledge Document 974949.1 every so often. Happy coding!

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Critical Patch Update for January 2010 Now Available

2010-01-13T16:36:58Z

The Critical Patch Update (CPU) for January 2010 was released on January 12, 2010. Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes a list of products affected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the security vulnerabilities, and links to other important documents.

Supported Products that are not listed in the "Supported Products and Components Affected" Section of the advisory do not require new patches to be applied.

Also, it is essential to review the Critical Patch Update supporting documentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this is where you can find important pertinent information.

The Critical Patch Update Advisory is available at the following location:

Oracle Technology Network

The next four Critical Patch Update release dates are:

April 13, 2010
July 13, 2010
October 12, 2010
January 18, 2011