A recurring question raised at OpenWorld came from customers debating between applying individual Family Packs or the much larger Consolidated Updates to their E-Business Suite environments. Which is better?
If I Were An IT Manager
I understand your dilemma: maintenance windows grow tighter by the
day. Staffing levels don’t keep pace with rising workloads. Risk-averse stakeholders pressure you to keep the system
unchanged — all the while clamoring for their own
personally-reported bugs to be fixed immediately. Given this climate, anything that looks like it makes your life more complex is going to be summarily rejected.
If I had the choice of applying a random and arbitrary combination of individual family packs (e.g. FWK.H + AD.I + XDO.H) or applying a single Consolidated Update (e.g. 11.5.10.CU2), I’d choose the latter without hesitation. If I had had the choice, Consolidated Updates are unquestionably what I’d choose.
Pulling Back the Curtain
The recommendation to apply a much larger patchset with broader impact might seem irrational, especially given what I just acknowledged is the typical IT environment. But bear with me: this may make more sense if I give you a glimpse into our development and testing processes.
How Consolidated Updates are Tested
Consolidated Updates (CU) are tested by the entire E-Business Suite development division in a central testing environment. In fact, Consolidated Updates are repeatedly tested in multiple iterations of these centralized testing environments, some built for automated regression testing, others for cross-product integration flows (e.g. “Order to Cash”), and even others built for internationalization testing with NLS character sets and localizations.
We also test multiple migration paths to a given Consolidated Update. For example, the 11.5.10.CU2 Consolidated Update was tested on top of the 11.5.9 Rapid Install, 11.5.9.CU2, the 11.5.10 Rapid Install, and 11.5.10.CU1.
On top of all that, Consolidated Updates are tested in a variety of so-called “advanced architectural configurations” that include load-balancers, DMZs, Single Sign-On, Discoverer, SSL, RAC, different JInitiator versions, different native Sun Java (JRE) plug-ins, different desktop platforms (e.g. Windows and Mac OS X), and so on.
And then, just because we have too much free time on our hands, the Consolidated Updates are tested on various operating system platforms, including Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, and so on.
How Individual Family Packs are Tested
Consolidated Updates (CU) are tested by the entire E-Business Suite development division in a central testing environment. In fact, Consolidated Updates are repeatedly tested in multiple iterations of these centralized testing environments, some built for automated regression testing, others for cross-product integration flows (e.g. “Order to Cash”), and even others built for internationalization testing with NLS character sets and localizations.
We also test multiple migration paths to a given Consolidated Update. For example, the 11.5.10.CU2 Consolidated Update was tested on top of the 11.5.9 Rapid Install, 11.5.9.CU2, the 11.5.10 Rapid Install, and 11.5.10.CU1.
On top of all that, Consolidated Updates are tested in a variety of so-called “advanced architectural configurations” that include load-balancers, DMZs, Single Sign-On, Discoverer, SSL, RAC, different JInitiator versions, different native Sun Java (JRE) plug-ins, different desktop platforms (e.g. Windows and Mac OS X), and so on.
And then, just because we have too much free time on our hands, the Consolidated Updates are tested on various operating system platforms, including Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, and so on.
How Individual Family Packs are Tested
Individual Family Packs are tested by their respective product teams. They receive product team manual testing and automated regression testing. Depending on the product, they may receive some additional central testing by multiple product teams or in with advanced configurations, but this is relatively rare.
You can see that there are fundamental and profound differences in the depth and range of Consolidated Updates vs. Family Pack testing. A Consolidated Update receives massive, intensive, coordinated testing across all E-Business Suite products.
A reasonable analogy might be: Family Packs are to Consolidated Updates as emergency one-time patches are to Family Packs.
The Sum of the Parts Does Not Equal the Whole
Here’s something else to consider: let’s say that FIN_PF.G is in 11.5.10.CU2 (this is just an example — I don’t know if this is actually true). Even if you install FIN_PF.G on top of 11.5.9, you aren’t officially on 11.5.10.CU2 since you haven’t applied the actual 11.5.10.CU2 patchset. If you haven’t explicitly applied 11.5.10.CU2 itself, Oracle Support does not consider you to be on that code level, regardless of the sum of the individual Family Packs that you might have applied.
So, when 11.5.9 is desupported, your calls to Oracle Support will prompt the usual discussions about being on a desupported release, even though your individual family packs may be up-to-date to 11.5.10.CU2.
Sometimes “More” is Better
Knowing all that, I always recommend applying the latest Consolidated Update instead of individual Family Packs. This guarantees an end-run around the hassles of possible family pack incompatibilities and desupport issues. In my view, the initial larger overhead of applying a bigger patch is far outweighed by the benefits.
I know that this will be a controversial position for some of you, so I welcome your comments. Let the debate begin…
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