You might have already seen the blog update on Steven Chan’s site. TXK AutoConfig and Templates Rollup Patch S (6372396) was released on May 5th.

This patch differs from traditional TXK autoconfig template patch releases in that the ATG team decided to include some other important TXK patches also with this release. One of these is TXK Advanced Utilities Rollup Patch C (5011249).

This Advanced Utilities patch brings some import scripts that can be used to implement advanced topologies. The important benefit here is that these scripts can be run from command line. For complete details, refer to Metalink note 277574.1, Running Configuration Wizards from the Command Line in Oracle Applications 11i.

As a side effect of this generous inclusion of import updates, the patch size has increased from 16mb (RUP R) to 65mb (RUP S).

This Rollup Patch has also brought in some new Context variables. These new XML tags in Rollup Patch S are:

1. s_jdbc_connect_descriptor_generation: The value of this variable determines whether the jdbc connect descriptor is regenerated and whether the value of the context variable s_apps_jdbc_connect_descriptor is updated. Acceptable values for this context variable are true (the default) or false. Set this value to false when using a custom apps jdbc connect descriptor
2. s_apcprestart: This variable is used to specify the complete path of the script to be executed before the Apache service is started.
3. s_ccmmaxsyspathlen: (Windows-specific) This context variable is used for setting the maximum length of the Windows System Path.

In my case, the first tag, s_jdbc_connect_descriptor_generation, brings a very important benefit. One of our customers uses a customized jdbc string in the DBC file to control load-balancing on the DB RAC nodes. This context variable is going help us save some time after every autoconfig run, which by default updates the jdbc url in the DBC file

The second variable, s_apcprestart, will help customers who want to automate some of the work done before the startup of Apache, such as cleanup of the jsp cache in $COMMON_TOP/_pages etc.

The third variable, s_ccmmaxsyspathlen, is Windows-specific. It looks as though it is introduced to deal with some length limitations in Windows.

I have another simple tip that can help you identify the new variables being brought in by the TXK rollup patches

The details of all XML tags are in the XML file in APPL_TOP. To put that another way, all context variables in the APPL_TOP context file are documented in $AD_TOP/admin/template/adctxinf.tmp. This file has a lot of good info on each context variable’s significance, such as whether it is editable or not. Here’s an example:

    <oa_doc oa_level="detail" oa_var="s_long_running_jvm" title="Long Running JVM" tooltip="Long Running JVM" description="Sets the parameter 'wrapper.bin.parameters=-DLONG_RUNNING_JVM' in jserv.properties. This JVM property indicates the lifespan of the JVM. Setting it to TRUE enables Distributed caching whereas setting it to FALSE disables distributed caching, which has implications on Oracle Applications E-Business Suite (That is, if an object is invalidated in a specific middle tier, the invalidation event is not propagated to all middle tiers). Please refer to Oracle MetaLink Document 275879.1 for more details on Java Cache Framework." editable="Yes"/>

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