Pythian Group

Another December has started and you know what it means right? It’s the Christmas time? NO! It’s time for UKOUG Technology and e-Business Suite 2011 conference! There are not many things that can make a passionate Apps DBA more excited than that. UKOUG Tech & eBS conferences are the only ones in Europe that have such a rich content for Application DBAs and this year it will not be different. Read the rest of this entry . . .

Hello everyone! After a bit more than 2 months, it’s finally time for my first Pythian blog post. In addition to getting accustomed to the “Pythian way” of doing things and learning as much as I can about my clients, I’ve really been enjoying getting to know the smart group of people that comprise our ERP team. It’s fitting, therefore, that my first post is “crowdsourced,” in that it grew out of several conversations with my teammates. We’ve been talking a lot about Fusion Apps, the upcoming release of E-Business Suite Release 12.2, and what it all means not just for our clients, but for us as Apps DBAs. One of the topics that’s been on our minds recently is:

The clock is ticking down on Apps 11i. What does all the new stuff coming down the line mean for those customers in the next 12-18 months?

Oddly enough, the answer to that question is:

Not very much. At least, not yet.

Read the rest of this entry . . .

This is a short one. Yesterday I was asked to marry an EBS autoconfig feature to an Oracle 11G Cluster infrastructure. In particular the client’s intention was to use srvctl to manage Instances and at the same time keeping DB side Network related configuration managed by autoconfig.

The biggest challenge I faced during that work was how to change default TNS_ADMIN location for DB Network configuration files. The default location is $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/${CONTEXT_NAME}. This makes the location unique on each of the DB hosts. There is no way you can point Oracle 11G Cluster to Network configuration files located in the unique locations per instance.

There are several possible solutions. However, I used the following:

Edit $ORACLE_HOME/appsutil/template/adcvmdb.xml file and change line

      %s_db_oh%%/%network%/%admin%/%%s_contextname%

to

      %s_db_oh%%/%network%/%admin

The is the only way I found (in the given time-frame) to change TNS_ADMIN location to the default location used by Oracle Cluster to manage Listeners and sourcing tns configuration.

I would be glad to hear about any other solutions you guys are using out there.

OTHER:
– This is 11i EBS integrating with 11GR2 Oracle Cluster
– The client wants use a custom listener running under OS user running EBS DB Instances
– The following command could be used to point Oracle Cluster to network configuration files location (common for whole cluster)
srvctl setenv database -d SANDERP -t TNS_ADMIN=
srvctl setenv listener -l LISTENER_SANDERP -t TNS_ADMIN=
– I have considered using official customization approach rutting that file in “custom” directory. However in that particular case it didn’t work. It may be due the fact that it is DB side configuration or 11i issue.
– I tried to change many related CONTEXT_FILE values and didn’t get expected results. Therefore ended up with that customization.

Have a great week :)

Yury

E-Business Suite patching is very broad topic. I’m going to cover just a fraction of this vast theme, one that I believe is often overlooked. I decided to split it into two logical parts.

Part 1) Oracle E-Business Suite patch terminology

• patch type hierarchy
• patch naming convention
• naming differences between 11i and R12

Part 2) Querying patches, patchsets, family packs

• how to check if a patch was applied
• what patchset am I on?
• what family pack am I on?
• is there a newer patchset/family pack?

This blog could also be called “Oracle EBS patch evolution theory.” Like any other theory, it can be challenged and proven wrong. I tried to make it unbiased based purely on my experience and to present it in the way that makes sense in context of general patching activities.

Patch hierarchy in 11i

EBS patch taxonomy consists of a number of species. Here is a list of those which I recognize to be valid in the long-term. The exact naming may vary over the years, but the names used here are as they are commonly understood by Apps DBAs.

Read the rest of this entry . . .