Dear All,
Much awaited release of Next Oracle Applications (after 11i) /E-Business Suite has been announced by Oracle. As per Schedule Oracle is releasing Apps R 12 on Jan 31, 2007 / February 1, 2007.
The key Technology changes
On Middle Tier
Application Server version 1.0.2.2.2 will change to 10g Application Server i.e. 10.1.3.X
mod_jserv will be replaced by mod_oc4j
Apache which is part of Application Server mentioned above will be changed from version 1.3.19 to 1.3.34
Biggest change will be in long running Forms & Reports Version 6i (8.0.6) to Forms & Reports Version 10g i.e. 10.1.2.X
Java/ JDK version 1.3.X or 1.4.X will be replaced by JDK 1.5.X
On File System
There will still be three ORACLE_HOME, one for Web Server another for Forms & Reports & third one for Database but with New versions i.e. 10g AS for Web Server, 10g AS for forms & reports, 10g R2 for database.
* There will be new TOP called as Instance TOP
o In Oracle Apps R12, You can see new TOP called INSTANCE_TOP in Application Tier. This TOP will now hold any configuration files (specific to that server), Certificates (If SSL is enabled SSL Certificates & any other certificates specific to that server) and related log files or PID files (for Apache or any other process) and INSTANCE_TOP will be specific to Server.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
R12 APPS DBA BETA EXAM
Oracle EBS R12 Applications DBA Beta Exam Released !!
Oracle Certification on Oracle EBS R12 Applications DBA Beta Exam.
1. Significantly reduced cost! $50 USD (savings of $145 USD)
2. If you pass the beta exam, your record will indicate a passing score and you will receive credit toward certification for this exam. Therefore, you will not need to retake the final released version of the exam.
3. The beta exam is a great way to identify your strengths and weaknesses in the exam content being tested.
Oracle University is pleased to announce the availability of the following new Oracle E-Business Suite (R12) certification exam in beta version:
Oracle EBS R12: Install, Patch and Maintain Applications [1Z0-238]
This new exam is required as part of earning the new Oracle EBS R12 Applications Database Administrator Certified Professional certification.
By participating in this beta exam, you have the opportunity to provide the Oracle Certification program with feedback about exam content which is integral to the process of exam development. We depend on the contributions of experienced professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and maintain the value of Oracle certifications.
There are a limited number of seats available for the beta exam. The beta version of the exam is only available for a limited period as well. Take advantage of this opportunity and book your seat today.
Note: You will be given 3-3.5 hours to complete the beta exam. Please plan accordingly.
Testing is held at Prometric testing centers worldwide, although this exam may not be available in all countries. You must register at least 24 hours prior to taking the exam. Contact your exam provider for seat availability. (Please note: all testing centers will have the capability to offer this exam in its live version.)
Please read the following registration information carefully as schedules vary depending on which testing center you choose:
Oracle Certification on Oracle EBS R12 Applications DBA Beta Exam.
1. Significantly reduced cost! $50 USD (savings of $145 USD)
2. If you pass the beta exam, your record will indicate a passing score and you will receive credit toward certification for this exam. Therefore, you will not need to retake the final released version of the exam.
3. The beta exam is a great way to identify your strengths and weaknesses in the exam content being tested.
Oracle University is pleased to announce the availability of the following new Oracle E-Business Suite (R12) certification exam in beta version:
Oracle EBS R12: Install, Patch and Maintain Applications [1Z0-238]
This new exam is required as part of earning the new Oracle EBS R12 Applications Database Administrator Certified Professional certification.
By participating in this beta exam, you have the opportunity to provide the Oracle Certification program with feedback about exam content which is integral to the process of exam development. We depend on the contributions of experienced professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and maintain the value of Oracle certifications.
There are a limited number of seats available for the beta exam. The beta version of the exam is only available for a limited period as well. Take advantage of this opportunity and book your seat today.
Note: You will be given 3-3.5 hours to complete the beta exam. Please plan accordingly.
Testing is held at Prometric testing centers worldwide, although this exam may not be available in all countries. You must register at least 24 hours prior to taking the exam. Contact your exam provider for seat availability. (Please note: all testing centers will have the capability to offer this exam in its live version.)
Please read the following registration information carefully as schedules vary depending on which testing center you choose:
1Z0-048 EXAM
How to prepare for 1Z0-048 - Oracle 10g RAC Certified Expert Exam.
Dear Friends,
1Z0-048 Exam – Oracle Database 10g: RAC Certified Expert, which I have recently taken.
I have passed the 1Z0-048 Exam “Oracle Database 10g: Real Applications Clusters Administrator Certified Expert”
About the 1Z0-048 Exam:
This Exam (1Z0-048) is one of the Certified Expert Programs. The Oracle offers the following list of Certified Expert Exams for Oracle 10g Database.
* Oracle 10g: Managing Oracle on Linux Certified Expert
* Oracle Database 10g: Administering Real Application Clusters Certified Expert
* Oracle Database: SQL Certified Expert
What is Oracle Certified Expert Program?
Click Here to know Oracle Certified Expert Program
Here I’m going to talk about the 1Z0-048 Exam - Oracle Database 10g: Administering Real Application Clusters Certified Expert.
Who is eligible for writing the 1Z0-048 Exam?
Those who are already certified in Oracle Database 10g/11g DBA
Or
Those who are *NOT* certified already,
* They may first need to under go one training i.e. Complete one of the approved instructor-led online or in-class courses for either the Oracle University or from the Oracle Authorized Centers,
* Write the exam 1Z0-048 - Oracle Database 10g R2: RAC for Administrators.
* Submit the Hands On Course Requirement Form
For more information on this, please take a look at the below URL
http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.getpage?page_id=186
To know more on the following
* Recommended Training and Preparation
* Additional Information & Resources
* Exam Topics
Take a look at the below URL.
1Z0-048 Exam Details
The Books and Documents I referred.
I have gone through all the ILT (Instructor Led Training) materials of the course “Oracle Database 10g: RAC for Administrators Release 2” which my friend has done this course from Oracle University. These guides have helped me greatly in passing this exam, as all of the questions came from these materials topics. I would strongly recommend and suggest referring the Oracle Instructor Led Training Books/Student Guides/Course Materials on Oracle 10g RAC and also Oracle Documentations.
What are Student Guides/ILT (Instructor Led Training) Materials?
Student Guides/ILT (Instructor Led Training) Materials
Oracle Documentations on Oracle 10g RAC
* 2 Day + Real Application Clusters Guide
* Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide
List of useful links for Oracle RAC for reference.
Click here for more Useful Links On Oracle RAC
Questions came from the following topics.
• Settings the Load balancing and failover clauses in the TNS entry, and remote logging parameters.
• Configuring ASM Redundancy Levels i.e. High, Normal and External.
• Adding and enable redo log groups on new node of the cluster. (remember the order of steps to perform)
• Undo Tablespaces in RAC.
• In what situations, we migrated from single
• Checking OCR Resource status and checking the relevant logs.
• Storage types which supports FRA (Flash Recovery Area).
• Post steps after the cluster database creation.
• Backing up the OCR and Voting Disks and recovering them (remember the order of steps to perform)
• ASM Instance Parameters.
• Benefits and implication of RAC.
• Utilities to verify Cluster and OCR Disks.
• Different Oracle Homes locations i.e. ORACLE_HOME,ORA_CRS_HOME,ORACLE_BASE
• Tools you use for patching on RAC environments.
• Using crsctl, srvctl, crs_stat with different attributes.
• Moving from non-rac database to RAC instances. (remember the order of steps to perform)
• Debugging CRS, modifying services
• Views to find the interconnect latencies.
• Difference processes of RAC.
• Removing and Adding the node in the cluster (remember the order of steps to perform)
• Location of server callout and notification scripts.
• Enable debugging for CRS, patching and rolling patch on RAC.
Many other Questions from the following things
OCR, Voting Disks,
RAC and Application VIP,
Services, DBCA, ASM
crsctl,srvctl,crs_stat,ocrcheck,
Others discussion on the 1Z0-048 Exam in OTN Forums.
Click here on Discussion of 1Z0-048 Exam
To know more on all the available Oracle Certifications and navigate yourself on the following options.
* Getting Started
* Certification Paths
* Exams
* Already Certified
* Support
Oracle Certification Program
OTN Forums on Certifications
Oracle Certification Forum
Update: Read my other post on "The books, guides, and materials used for my OCA/OCP/OCE Exam Preparation."
"The books, guides, and materials used for my OCA/OCP/OCE Exam Preparation."
.
Dear Friends,
1Z0-048 Exam – Oracle Database 10g: RAC Certified Expert, which I have recently taken.
I have passed the 1Z0-048 Exam “Oracle Database 10g: Real Applications Clusters Administrator Certified Expert”
About the 1Z0-048 Exam:
This Exam (1Z0-048) is one of the Certified Expert Programs. The Oracle offers the following list of Certified Expert Exams for Oracle 10g Database.
* Oracle 10g: Managing Oracle on Linux Certified Expert
* Oracle Database 10g: Administering Real Application Clusters Certified Expert
* Oracle Database: SQL Certified Expert
What is Oracle Certified Expert Program?
Click Here to know Oracle Certified Expert Program
Here I’m going to talk about the 1Z0-048 Exam - Oracle Database 10g: Administering Real Application Clusters Certified Expert.
Who is eligible for writing the 1Z0-048 Exam?
Those who are already certified in Oracle Database 10g/11g DBA
Or
Those who are *NOT* certified already,
* They may first need to under go one training i.e. Complete one of the approved instructor-led online or in-class courses for either the Oracle University or from the Oracle Authorized Centers,
* Write the exam 1Z0-048 - Oracle Database 10g R2: RAC for Administrators.
* Submit the Hands On Course Requirement Form
For more information on this, please take a look at the below URL
http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.getpage?page_id=186
To know more on the following
* Recommended Training and Preparation
* Additional Information & Resources
* Exam Topics
Take a look at the below URL.
1Z0-048 Exam Details
The Books and Documents I referred.
I have gone through all the ILT (Instructor Led Training) materials of the course “Oracle Database 10g: RAC for Administrators Release 2” which my friend has done this course from Oracle University. These guides have helped me greatly in passing this exam, as all of the questions came from these materials topics. I would strongly recommend and suggest referring the Oracle Instructor Led Training Books/Student Guides/Course Materials on Oracle 10g RAC and also Oracle Documentations.
What are Student Guides/ILT (Instructor Led Training) Materials?
Student Guides/ILT (Instructor Led Training) Materials
Oracle Documentations on Oracle 10g RAC
* 2 Day + Real Application Clusters Guide
* Oracle Clusterware and Oracle Real Application Clusters Administration and Deployment Guide
List of useful links for Oracle RAC for reference.
Click here for more Useful Links On Oracle RAC
Questions came from the following topics.
• Settings the Load balancing and failover clauses in the TNS entry, and remote logging parameters.
• Configuring ASM Redundancy Levels i.e. High, Normal and External.
• Adding and enable redo log groups on new node of the cluster. (remember the order of steps to perform)
• Undo Tablespaces in RAC.
• In what situations, we migrated from single
• Checking OCR Resource status and checking the relevant logs.
• Storage types which supports FRA (Flash Recovery Area).
• Post steps after the cluster database creation.
• Backing up the OCR and Voting Disks and recovering them (remember the order of steps to perform)
• ASM Instance Parameters.
• Benefits and implication of RAC.
• Utilities to verify Cluster and OCR Disks.
• Different Oracle Homes locations i.e. ORACLE_HOME,ORA_CRS_HOME,ORACLE_BASE
• Tools you use for patching on RAC environments.
• Using crsctl, srvctl, crs_stat with different attributes.
• Moving from non-rac database to RAC instances. (remember the order of steps to perform)
• Debugging CRS, modifying services
• Views to find the interconnect latencies.
• Difference processes of RAC.
• Removing and Adding the node in the cluster (remember the order of steps to perform)
• Location of server callout and notification scripts.
• Enable debugging for CRS, patching and rolling patch on RAC.
Many other Questions from the following things
OCR, Voting Disks,
RAC and Application VIP,
Services, DBCA, ASM
crsctl,srvctl,crs_stat,ocrcheck,
Others discussion on the 1Z0-048 Exam in OTN Forums.
Click here on Discussion of 1Z0-048 Exam
To know more on all the available Oracle Certifications and navigate yourself on the following options.
* Getting Started
* Certification Paths
* Exams
* Already Certified
* Support
Oracle Certification Program
OTN Forums on Certifications
Oracle Certification Forum
Update: Read my other post on "The books, guides, and materials used for my OCA/OCP/OCE Exam Preparation."
"The books, guides, and materials used for my OCA/OCP/OCE Exam Preparation."
.
OCP
"How do you prepare for the certification exams?" And "what advice/tips/suggestions do you have for the certification candidates?"
Even if I have answered to those questions many times, this time, I wanted to have my advice/tips/suggestions posted in my blog for the certification candidates.
01) In addition to any available book in the market for OCA/OCP preparation, I would strongly advice and suggest using Oracle Student Guides/Oracle ILT Materials for your OCA/OCP preparation.
02) Most of the theoretical and logical questions in the real exam are asked from these guides/materials concepts or chapters.
03) These student guides are more simplified and very easy to understand, and have very précised and handy information.
04) The information or concepts of Oracle Student Guides/Oracle ILT Materials have been abstracted, prepared, and developed using the bunch of Oracle Documentations.
05) For writing Oracle Certification Exams, it's very hard to prepare the whole repository of Oracle Documentations. That's why; Oracle University prepared the précised and concise Student Guides/ITL Materials.
06) After finishing thoroughly reading these guides, as many times as you can, till you get the concepts from this materials, the next step is preparing the practice exams, before you take up the real exam.
07) In my opinion and my experience in writing OCP Exams, the practice exams of Self Test Software and Transcender are highly recommended for preparing the OCA/OCP/OCE Exams.
08) This will give you the similar look and feel, and the pattern of the real exam, and helps you manage in real exam.
09) All most of all the practice questions from these test engines (Self Test Software and Transcender) are developed and derived from Oracle Student Guides/Oracle ILT Materials Concepts.
10) Never mug up the practice exam questions and answers, instead try understanding the question and the answer, if needed for any syntax or command sort of questions, do the paper work i.e write the question, syntax or command, and answers in the paper to remember and understand.
11) Concisely what I would suggest is, read the Oracle Student Guides/ILT Materials meticulously as much as you can and do more practice the questions of the test engines (Self Test Software and Transcender) for your Oracle Certification Exam Preparation.
Even if I have answered to those questions many times, this time, I wanted to have my advice/tips/suggestions posted in my blog for the certification candidates.
01) In addition to any available book in the market for OCA/OCP preparation, I would strongly advice and suggest using Oracle Student Guides/Oracle ILT Materials for your OCA/OCP preparation.
02) Most of the theoretical and logical questions in the real exam are asked from these guides/materials concepts or chapters.
03) These student guides are more simplified and very easy to understand, and have very précised and handy information.
04) The information or concepts of Oracle Student Guides/Oracle ILT Materials have been abstracted, prepared, and developed using the bunch of Oracle Documentations.
05) For writing Oracle Certification Exams, it's very hard to prepare the whole repository of Oracle Documentations. That's why; Oracle University prepared the précised and concise Student Guides/ITL Materials.
06) After finishing thoroughly reading these guides, as many times as you can, till you get the concepts from this materials, the next step is preparing the practice exams, before you take up the real exam.
07) In my opinion and my experience in writing OCP Exams, the practice exams of Self Test Software and Transcender are highly recommended for preparing the OCA/OCP/OCE Exams.
08) This will give you the similar look and feel, and the pattern of the real exam, and helps you manage in real exam.
09) All most of all the practice questions from these test engines (Self Test Software and Transcender) are developed and derived from Oracle Student Guides/Oracle ILT Materials Concepts.
10) Never mug up the practice exam questions and answers, instead try understanding the question and the answer, if needed for any syntax or command sort of questions, do the paper work i.e write the question, syntax or command, and answers in the paper to remember and understand.
11) Concisely what I would suggest is, read the Oracle Student Guides/ILT Materials meticulously as much as you can and do more practice the questions of the test engines (Self Test Software and Transcender) for your Oracle Certification Exam Preparation.
BECOME ORACLE DBA
“How Important Having UNIX OS Knowledge for Oracle DBA?”
The main reason for discussing this topic is to encourage the novice or junior DBAs to have command on Unix/Linux Operating System as part of Database Administration. Because, when they were asked how comfortable they are working as DBA on Unix/Linux environment, then their responses are as following.
“They are pretty much comfortable working and administrating the databases on Windows Operating System as they were trained on administrating the database on Windows OS during their DBA Training”
“They are not enough confident in using the Unix/Linux OS commands to administer the databases”
“We didn’t get the chance yet to maintain the database on UNIX environment including Solaris, HP-Unix, IBM AIX, etc.”
“Working on windows environment is easier than working on Unix/Linux environment as it’s only required, on Windows OS, to select the files physically/copy/cut & paste from one location to another, or delete the files, and stopping the services by simply clicking, where as in Unix/Linux, one should use commands manually for the same”
…. and so on.
If anyone is with the above impression about administrating databases on Unix/Linux OS, then here are my suggestions as follows.
First of all, it’s not compulsory for DBAs to have operating system administration skills. But, working knowledge, on both the operating systems including Windows and Unix/Linux, is always value added to Oracle DBAs
The majority of the production database administration on Unix/Linux based operating systems is enormous in the globe, i.e. very large and mission critical databases are being maintained on Unix/LinuxOS.
Obviously, all big companies require the database administrator who’s having good UNIX scripting knowledge and working knowledge of UNIX based environments. It means that the Oracle DBAs, having good working knowledge of UNIX, have demand in the IT market.
Even though the DBAs intervention is manual in terms of creating directories, files, setting up environment variables, and starting/stopping the services in Unix environment, it’s very easy as good as maintaining in Windows environment.
Administration and OS commands are more or less similar on any flavor of Unix/Linux Operating system i.e. Solaris, HP-Unix, IBM AIX, Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc., So, start practicing Oracle database administration on Unix/Linux based systems.
Probably, it may be difficult to have Unix OS installed in the personal computer for practical purpose. So, download the free/trail version of Linux (Oracle Unbreakable Linux) from Oracle, install and configure in the PC, and start practicing on Linux. To practice on different Unix/Linux OS flavors, get your pc installed with the VM Ware, where you can set up multiple and different flavors of Unix/Linux OS.
Note: Of course, this post is not for showing the difference between Windows and Unix/Linux Operating Systems as every OS has its own significance, but to encourage the Oracle DBAs to learn the commands of Unix/Linux required administering the databases.
The main reason for discussing this topic is to encourage the novice or junior DBAs to have command on Unix/Linux Operating System as part of Database Administration. Because, when they were asked how comfortable they are working as DBA on Unix/Linux environment, then their responses are as following.
“They are pretty much comfortable working and administrating the databases on Windows Operating System as they were trained on administrating the database on Windows OS during their DBA Training”
“They are not enough confident in using the Unix/Linux OS commands to administer the databases”
“We didn’t get the chance yet to maintain the database on UNIX environment including Solaris, HP-Unix, IBM AIX, etc.”
“Working on windows environment is easier than working on Unix/Linux environment as it’s only required, on Windows OS, to select the files physically/copy/cut & paste from one location to another, or delete the files, and stopping the services by simply clicking, where as in Unix/Linux, one should use commands manually for the same”
…. and so on.
If anyone is with the above impression about administrating databases on Unix/Linux OS, then here are my suggestions as follows.
First of all, it’s not compulsory for DBAs to have operating system administration skills. But, working knowledge, on both the operating systems including Windows and Unix/Linux, is always value added to Oracle DBAs
The majority of the production database administration on Unix/Linux based operating systems is enormous in the globe, i.e. very large and mission critical databases are being maintained on Unix/LinuxOS.
Obviously, all big companies require the database administrator who’s having good UNIX scripting knowledge and working knowledge of UNIX based environments. It means that the Oracle DBAs, having good working knowledge of UNIX, have demand in the IT market.
Even though the DBAs intervention is manual in terms of creating directories, files, setting up environment variables, and starting/stopping the services in Unix environment, it’s very easy as good as maintaining in Windows environment.
Administration and OS commands are more or less similar on any flavor of Unix/Linux Operating system i.e. Solaris, HP-Unix, IBM AIX, Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc., So, start practicing Oracle database administration on Unix/Linux based systems.
Probably, it may be difficult to have Unix OS installed in the personal computer for practical purpose. So, download the free/trail version of Linux (Oracle Unbreakable Linux) from Oracle, install and configure in the PC, and start practicing on Linux. To practice on different Unix/Linux OS flavors, get your pc installed with the VM Ware, where you can set up multiple and different flavors of Unix/Linux OS.
Note: Of course, this post is not for showing the difference between Windows and Unix/Linux Operating Systems as every OS has its own significance, but to encourage the Oracle DBAs to learn the commands of Unix/Linux required administering the databases.
performance tunning
Oracle Apps How to do Performance Tuning for Interfacing Programs
Dear Readers,
Most of the times we face Performance issue in the customised concurrent programs,especially apps interface concurrent programs.Since oracle corp does not support customisation in apps ,its the job of the technical consultant and Apps DBA to tune these concurrent programs. Now the question comes as what we can do for concurrent programs and most of us will look into other aspects of tuning inspite of tuning the conc program itself. the best method is to enable the raw trace of such concurrent programs and do a tkprof on it and then according implement the recommendations.To enable the trace in the concurrent program do the following.Open the Define Concurrent Programs Forms and query that concurrent program and tick the checkbox “Enable Trace” and save it.Ensure that the database parameter TIMED STATISTICS is enabled.Now if you run the interface program then it will generate a raw trace in the udump location in the server.and do not forget to disable the Tracing after the trace file is generated.Mostly the bottleneck will be missing index in the interface tables or due to improper coding standards.
Dear Readers,
Most of the times we face Performance issue in the customised concurrent programs,especially apps interface concurrent programs.Since oracle corp does not support customisation in apps ,its the job of the technical consultant and Apps DBA to tune these concurrent programs. Now the question comes as what we can do for concurrent programs and most of us will look into other aspects of tuning inspite of tuning the conc program itself. the best method is to enable the raw trace of such concurrent programs and do a tkprof on it and then according implement the recommendations.To enable the trace in the concurrent program do the following.Open the Define Concurrent Programs Forms and query that concurrent program and tick the checkbox “Enable Trace” and save it.Ensure that the database parameter TIMED STATISTICS is enabled.Now if you run the interface program then it will generate a raw trace in the udump location in the server.and do not forget to disable the Tracing after the trace file is generated.Mostly the bottleneck will be missing index in the interface tables or due to improper coding standards.
EDITING CONTEXT FILE
Editing Context file(xml file) in Oracle apps R12 using Context editor.
It is a mandatory thing that you should not edit the context file or xml file manually .
Context editor should be used for this(This can be used for updating ports or to change any configuration)
of application Tier or database tier.
follow these steps to install context editor in your existing oracle apps R12 system.
Apply patch 2873456 from metalink
after applying you will not be able to invoke the editcontext executable and you will get a error. this is because jre 1.1.8 which is
supplied along with this patch is no longer supported.
So download jre1.5.0_10 from sun.java.com and unpack it inside the path editcontext/jre/Linux/
and rename the old 1.1.8 jre inside that
then go to the bin directory inside the editcontext directory
open the file runWizard.sh
and accordingly replace the jre directory and also replace the jre executable with java in the same file ..
and invoke it from
$RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME/appsutil for editing database context(xml) file.
$COMMON_TOP/util for editing Application context(xml) file.
Syntax is
./editcontext
Before editing shutdown the application tier and after editing run autoconfig.sh to update the configuration files to reflect the new value.
the screen shots are as follows.
dbc file in Apps
what is dbc file in Apps and its Importance
dbc (database connector) file is the key configuration file in oracle applications(E-business suite)
Its Location is $FND_TOP/secure..
It is the main configuration file using which applications connect to the database.
It has the following information also i have given the equivalent parameter in the xml(context) file.
Context File Parameter Parameter in the DBC File Description
s_guest_user GUEST_USER_PWD Guest Account
s_guest_pass
s_dbhost DB_HOST Database hostname
s_dbport DB_PORT Port number for database listener
s_dbSid DB_NAME Database name
s_fnd_jdbc_buffermin FND_JDBC_BUFFER_MIN Minimum Number of
connections the pool maintains
s_fnd_jdbc_buffermax FND_JDBC_BUFFER_MAX Maximum number of connections
the pool allows
s_fnd_jdbc_buffer_decay_interval FND_JDBC_BUFFER_DECAY_INTERVAL Specifies how often the
connection pool checks buffer size
s_fnd_jdbc_buffer_decay_size FND_JDBC_BUFFER_DECAY_SIZE Maximum number of connections
removed during a cycle.
dbc (database connector) file is the key configuration file in oracle applications(E-business suite)
Its Location is $FND_TOP/secure..
It is the main configuration file using which applications connect to the database.
It has the following information also i have given the equivalent parameter in the xml(context) file.
Context File Parameter Parameter in the DBC File Description
s_guest_user GUEST_USER_PWD Guest Account
s_guest_pass
s_dbhost DB_HOST Database hostname
s_dbport DB_PORT Port number for database listener
s_dbSid DB_NAME Database name
s_fnd_jdbc_buffermin FND_JDBC_BUFFER_MIN Minimum Number of
connections the pool maintains
s_fnd_jdbc_buffermax FND_JDBC_BUFFER_MAX Maximum number of connections
the pool allows
s_fnd_jdbc_buffer_decay_interval FND_JDBC_BUFFER_DECAY_INTERVAL Specifies how often the
connection pool checks buffer size
s_fnd_jdbc_buffer_decay_size FND_JDBC_BUFFER_DECAY_SIZE Maximum number of connections
removed during a cycle.
RECOVER THE APPS CONTEXT FILE
Recover the Applications context file if it is lost or deleted accidentally
To Recover xml file in applications R12 follow these instructions
The Applications context file can be retrieved by running the adclonectx.pl script.
To retrieve the applications tier context file,
Execute the following command on the applications tier.
perl /clone/bin/adclonectx.pl retrieve
select the option of retrieving the applications tier context file that has been lost and retrieve it to the default location specified by the script.
The above command can be used only when the is still intact.
In case the has also been lost accidentally, the applications tier context file may be retrieved as follows:
Execute the following command on the database tier:
perl /appsutil/clone/bin/adclonectx.pl retrieve
On being prompted for the context file to be retrieved, select the option of retrieving the applications tier context file that has been lost.
While confirming the location for the context file, set it to any existing directory with write permission.
Once the context file has been generated in the specified location, move it to the location specified for the context file in the context variable ’s_contextfile’.
To retrieve the database tier context file,
Execute the following command on the database tier:
perl /appsutil/clone/bin/adclonectx.pl retrieve
On being prompted for the context file to be retrieved, select the database tier context file and retrieve it to the default location specified by the script.
To Recover xml file in applications R12 follow these instructions
The Applications context file can be retrieved by running the adclonectx.pl script.
To retrieve the applications tier context file,
Execute the following command on the applications tier.
perl /clone/bin/adclonectx.pl retrieve
select the option of retrieving the applications tier context file that has been lost and retrieve it to the default location specified by the script.
The above command can be used only when the is still intact.
In case the has also been lost accidentally, the applications tier context file may be retrieved as follows:
Execute the following command on the database tier:
perl /appsutil/clone/bin/adclonectx.pl retrieve
On being prompted for the context file to be retrieved, select the option of retrieving the applications tier context file that has been lost.
While confirming the location for the context file, set it to any existing directory with write permission.
Once the context file has been generated in the specified location, move it to the location specified for the context file in the context variable ’s_contextfile’.
To retrieve the database tier context file,
Execute the following command on the database tier:
perl /appsutil/clone/bin/adclonectx.pl retrieve
On being prompted for the context file to be retrieved, select the database tier context file and retrieve it to the default location specified by the script.
CONFIGURACTION MANAGER ON R12
Oracle Configuration Manager Integrates with My Oracle Support (previously metalink) and uploads diagnostic details of the registered instances with oracle support so that the supporting analyst no need to ask too many questions about the environments and can do the troubleshooting to assist SR’s easily.
It has become mandatory that when you upgrade R12.0.x to 12.1.1 you need to conditionally upgrade the OCM to the latest version.OCM can be configured easily if you digg metalink a little bit and you should not install with runInstaller or setup.exe in R12 ,instead you should use autoconfig to install in EBS environments. also you should install it only in database and in IAS ORACLE_HOME’s and not in 8.0.6 or 10.1.2 ORACLE_HOME.whether it is a useful tool or not we need to know about this tool
since its an R12 conditional Upgrade Step.
It has become mandatory that when you upgrade R12.0.x to 12.1.1 you need to conditionally upgrade the OCM to the latest version.OCM can be configured easily if you digg metalink a little bit and you should not install with runInstaller or setup.exe in R12 ,instead you should use autoconfig to install in EBS environments. also you should install it only in database and in IAS ORACLE_HOME’s and not in 8.0.6 or 10.1.2 ORACLE_HOME.whether it is a useful tool or not we need to know about this tool
since its an R12 conditional Upgrade Step.
APPS INTERVIEW
Cracking The Oracle Apps Dba Interview
1. What happens if the ICM goes down?
2. How will you speed up the patching process?
3. How will you handle an error during patching?
4. Provide a high-level overview of the cloning process and post-clone manual steps.
5. Provide an introduction to AutoConfig. How does AutoConfig know which value from the XML file needs to be put in which file?
6. Can you tell me a few tests you will do to troubleshoot self-service login problems? Which profile options and files will you check?
7. What could be wrong if you are unable to view concurrent manager log and output files?
8. How will you change the location of concurrent manager log and output files?
9. If the user is experiencing performance issues, how will you go about finding the cause?
10. How will you change the apps password?
11. Provide the location of the DBC file and explain its significance and how applications know the name of the DBC file.
Answers
1. All the other managers will keep working. ICM only takes care of the queue control requests, which means starting up and shutting down other concurrent managers.
2.
o You can merge multiple patches.
o You can create a response file for non-interactive patching.
o You can apply patches with options (nocompiledb, nomaintainmrc, nocompilejsp) and run these once after applying all the patches.
3. Look at the log of the failed worker, identify and rectify the error and restart the worker using adctrl utility.
4. Run pre-clone on the source (all tiers), duplicate the DB using RMAN (or restore the DB from a hot or cold backup), copy the file systems and then run post-clone on the target (all tiers).
Manual steps (there can be many more):
o Change all non-site profile option values (RapidClone only changes site-level profile options).
o Modify workflow and concurrent manager tables.
o Change printers.
5. AutoConfig uses a context file to maintain key configuration files. A context file is an XML file in the $APPL_TOP/admin directory and is the centralized repository.
When you run AutoConfig it reads the XML files and creates all the AutoConfig managed configuration files.
For each configuration file maintained by AutoConfig, there exists a template file which determines which values to pick from the XML file.
6.
o Check guest user/password in the DBC file, profile option guest user/password, the DB.
o Check whether apache/jserv is up.
o Run IsItWorking, FND_WEB.PING, aoljtest, etc.
7. Most likely the FNDFS listener is down. Look at the value of OUTFILE_NODE_NAME and LOGFILE_NODE_NAME in the FND_CONCURRENT_REQUESTS table. Look at the FND_NODES table. Look at the FNDFS_ entry in tnsnames.ora.
8. The location of log files is determined by parameter $APPLCSF/$APPLLOG and that of output files by $APPLCSF/$APPLOUT.
9.
o Trace his session (with waits) and use tkprof to analyze the trace file.
o Take a statspack report and analyze it.
o O/s monitoring using top/iostat/sar/vmstat.
o Check for any network bottleneck by using basic tests like ping results.
10.
o Use FNDCPASS to change APPS password.
o Manually modify wdbsvr.app/cgiCMD.dat files.
o Change any DB links pointing from other instances.
11.
o Location: $FND_TOP/secure directory.
o Significance: Points to the DB server amongst other things.
o The application knows the name of the DBC file by using profile option “Applications Database Id.”
Set # 1 : Compatibility
On which databases can Oracle Applications be installed on (i.e. Oracle, SQL Server, Informix, etc.) ?
Answer :-
Oracle database only.
Set # 2 : FND vs. AOL
What is the difference between “FND” and “AOL” ?
What are they ?
What do they mean ?
Answer:-
FND is the system name of core Application Object Library(AOL).
AOL consists of the entire schema which forms the base layer for Functioning of Oracle Applications(without which the Apps can not work).
Set # 3 : Schemas
What is the difference between the following schemas and when are they being
Used by the system :
1) Apps
2) Applsys
3) Applsyspub
Answer :-
Apps is the database schema which used for connecting applications(front end) user It internally uses the Applsyspub user for connecting .It comprises synonyms for all the individual module’s objects. Concurrent Requests also use the apps db schema for executing the requests.
Applsys is a schema in oracle applications which contains the information about the FND or Foundation Tables.
Applsyspub is the schema which used internally in Oracle Applications (Gateway User) by application Users.
Set # 4 : Techstack
What do we mean by Techstack ?
What comprises the Techstack ?
Answer:-
In Oracle Applications the Technical Software Components which comprises of the entire Applications is called Techstack.
They are
1. Db Techstack.—(Database (Oracle RDBMS ) Software.
2. Applications Techstack.(in 11i the 8.06 (i.e. for forms ,reports and for PL/SQL and other libraries) and 8.1.7 for Application Server).(in R12 the releases 10.1.2 and 10.1.3).
Set # 5 : “GL” Database User
When does the system logs in as Database user “gl” and why ?
Answer:-
When using the General Ledger Module Responsibilities the system logs in as Database user gl and this is done for database security.
Set # 6 : Password Change
Before changing password for “apps”, what would you say are the top three
Precautions to be taken (before doing in Production) ?
Can we change the password for user “guest” ? Why ?
Answer:-
Ensure that downtime is taken for changing the apps password.
Ensure that no application users are connected
Ensure that no concurrent requests are running .
And make the application tier down and change the apps user password. This is best approach.
We can change the Guest user’s password. This is done for advanced security.
Set # 7 : “xml” vs. “dbc” files
What’s the difference between the “xml” file and the “dbc” file ? How are they
Being used by the system ?
Answer :-
Xml file in oracle Applications is the context file which is maintained by Autoconfig to maintain the Applications configuration in a centralized manner.
Dbc file is the file used to connect the application user to the database.
Set # 8 : TWO_TASK
What is the “TWO_TASK” variable ? How does Oracle Applications uses it ?
Answer:-
Oracle Applications System maintains TWO_TASK variable for the applications to work properly.
It will be common for database tier and application tier. So that from applications tier users can connect to the database without issues.
Set # 9 : $AD_TOP
What is $AD_TOP ?
What does “AD” stand for ?
Which type of user mostly uses this directory ?
Answer :-
AD_TOP is the TOP for Application DBA Module which contains all the essential utilities and files used for maintaining the Oracle Applications System.
AD stand for Applications DBA.
Application DBA’s mostly use this directory.
Set # 10: Workflows
What is a workflow?
How does Oracle Applications uses workflows?
What would be the top three things to monitor for workflows ?
What would be the top three typical questions to ask about workflows ?
Does a Workflow have a version ? If so, how can we find out ?
Answer :-
Workflow is a module in Oracle Applications .It is also a Standalone Product. Normally workflow is used to carry out the flow of work by approving system and this is mostly used in Order Management.
The top three things to monitor workflow would be.
1.Login as Sysadmin and by using the workflow Administrator web applications monitor for any pending or errored out workflows and correct it.
2.Make sure the “Synch workflow tables” concurrent program is running properly without errors and monitoring the Workflow Managers.
3.Monitor the health of Workflow Notification Mailers .
The Top three typical questions to ask about workflows are.
1.How will you configure a workflow Notification Mailers.
2.How will you navigate and troubleshoot for finding out errored workflow notifications.
3.How will you troubleshoot that if workflow notification mailer is not working properly(not sending e-mails).
Workflow has a Version, by executing the wfver.sql in FND_TOP/sql we can find this component’s version.
How will you find the pending and running concurrent requests from SQL prompt?
after logging as apps user in sqlplus
run this sql $FND_TOP/sql/afrqrun.sql
This will show the pending and running concurrent requests in the instance
Newly Added
What is Transaction Manager(Concurrent Manager) and its purpose?
Ans:-
Transaction Manager is defined so that it has a special pool of database resource to execute concurrent requests.
Its not like other concurrent managers and its not dependent on any concurrent queue tables. i.e when a client submits concurrent request which is assigned to the Transaction Manager then it immediately executes that conc request. This manager is used to run high priority concurrent requests.
How can you restrict application access to only certain users?
Ans :- By editing the apps.conf configuration file in Apache/conf directory and adding the
directive and by giving Allow and bouncing the apache.
Other users will get 403 forbidden error. You can also customize the error message in httpd.conf.
Question :- What are the different options in adpatch and explain about those.
adpatch apply=no
This is done for testing the patch with the instance.This will not apply the patch but generate a logfile which we can check.
adpatch preinstall=y
mostly used in upgrades or specifically when told in a patch readme,This option applies ad updates first then do the rest
nocompiledb
nocompilejsp
nodatabaseportion
nocopyportion
nogenerateportion
nojcopy
nogenform
nolink
adpatch option=hotpatch(for hot mode)–not adivisable for some patches(especially hr global like that)..
—————-
more q&a to come…………………….
LOG FILE SYNC
SLOVING LOG FILE SYNC
It was one of those intriguing days when for almost 2-3 days users/developers/managers has been bugging me for “possible” slowness in our EPR instance. Ofcourse I checked everything: no long running queries eating up resources, no sudden spurt of sessions, nothing in AWR report to show off, nothing to show that there is slowness in the database !!!
I do not normaly loose sleep over performance issues, but it was irritating when apps support guys woke me up in middle of night for two consecutive nights. One batch job (conc. request) very critical to business, was running 5 hours behind schedule. Obvious place to look for was dbconsole “top activity” and tracing the conc. request. The trace file showed that request was just running crazy (tail -f of trace) and dbconsole did not show any particular activity which might be causing the slowness in the database. I tkprofed (sys=no, sort=exeela,prsela,fchela) the trace and found nothing wrong with the sqls that were reported. No wait events like “db file sequential/scattered read”, apart from few occurances of “log file sync” event. Looking more carefuly in the “top sessions” in dbconsole it occured to me that indeed “log file sync” was reported occasionally but only for few seconds.
Observing more keenly I also found that trace of the sessions (tail -f of trace) was freezing occasionaly for few second and showing “log file sync” after it freezes. So it seems “log file sync” is my area of concern, albeit it was very miniscule in the overall database scenario.
As per metalink standard Note:34592.1 on “log file sync”:
The log file sync wait may be broken down into the following components:
1. Wakeup LGWR if idle
2. LGWR gathers the redo to be written and issue the I/O
3. Time for the log write I/O to complete
4. LGWR I/O post processing
5. LGWR posting the foreground/user session that the write has completed
6. Foreground/user session wakeup
Tuning advice based on log file sync component breakdown above:2. LGWR gathers the redo to be written and issue the I/O
3. Time for the log write I/O to complete
4. LGWR I/O post processing
5. LGWR posting the foreground/user session that the write has completed
6. Foreground/user session wakeup
Steps 2 and 3 are accumulated in the “redo write time” statistic. (i.e. as found under STATISICS section of Statspack and AWR)
Step 3 is the “log file parallel write” wait event. (Note 34583.1:”log file parallel write” Reference Note )
Steps 5 and 6 may become very significant as the system load increases. This is because even after the foreground has been posted it may take a some time for the OS to schedule it to run. May require monitoring from O/S level.
As mentioned earlier, my AWR report was not showing “redo write time” and “log file parallel write” to be that significant. As such Load on the machine was “normal” and there was nothing that could point me to a direction in which I could proceed.
The situation was becoming worse and batch job finally finished at 7:30 AM in the morning, 5:30 hours behind schedule. Blood hounds (business/apps support) were out after me
and they were smelling blood. But I was not letting it go and turned to my internals knowledge. During my oracle days one of the thing I learned was that we can 10046 (sql trace) trace background sessions also. They will only show wait events in trace files as they normally do not fire any sqls. LGWR was my guy this time and I turned on the trace. VOILA !!! it was showing “log file parallel write” !!However my hopes were dashed immiediately as it was normal for LGWR to post this event as it writes (IO) to redo logs. Again I was in dark and could not fathom what could be the reason for “log file sync”. One wild idea that was floating in my mind was that it could be that there are suddenly more commits in the sytem. Apps support guys purged almot 800 millions rows in workflow tables, as they fixed some issue with workflow becuase of which they were not able to purge WF tables for almost a year !!!. Could it be that there are now 1/2 the number of rows in WF tables which might have “oiled” the system and now it was “churing” out more !!! There is suddenly more commits in the database and causing the LGWR to lag behind…..
Keen observation is one common concept that many try to overlook and I was the one who was the victim of it that day. Looking at LGWR trace files again, I saw that elapsed time for “log file parallel write” was sometimes spiking. Simple unix sort on it showed that “elapsed time” was sometimes in secs where-as, as per oracle for 20k of redo it should not take more than 15 milliseconds. It was “log file parallel write” , a simple sutpid IO request on redo log files causing this delay. And since LGWR has to write to redo at every commit it was stalling the whole system !!!
Here is portion of lgwr trace showing “log file parallel write” spiking to sometime to 39 secs !!
WAIT #0: nam=’log file parallel write’ ela= 22324424 files=2 blocks=2 requests=2 obj#=-1 tim=13758521131245
WAIT #0: nam=’rdbms ipc message’ ela= 6595 timeout=294 p2=0 p3=0 obj#=-1 tim=13758521138897
WAIT #0: nam=’log file parallel write’ ela= 2343353 files=2 blocks=64 requests=4 obj#=-1 tim=13758521143128
WAIT #0: nam=’rdbms ipc message’ ela= 97448 timeout=290 p2=0 p3=0 obj#=-1 tim=13758521262712
WAIT #0: nam=’log file parallel write’ ela= 1294 files=2 blocks=80 requests=2 obj#=-1 tim=13758521264788
WAIT #0: nam=’rdbms ipc message’ ela= 9538 timeout=280 p2=0 p3=0 obj#=-1 tim=13758521275843
WAIT #0: nam=’log file parallel write’ ela= 909835 files=2 blocks=8 requests=2 obj#=-1 tim=13758521278533
Mount points for redo logs was targeted and I contacted my SAs for DMX system. They immiediately found that out of four fiber adaptors on database machine , which connects to storage array via SAN switch, one was performing little slower. They asked for some more time to investigate. I waited for almost 1 excrutiating hour and finally heard back from them. It was indeed the IO sub-system. One of the port on SAN switch was “dying” causing frequent IO queues. They swapped the port with another one and it fixed it !!!. So it was just one simple bad port on SAN switch which was giving frequent “heart burns” to the database.
Leason learned…on a very very busy system, esp. an OLTP like Oracle APPS, it is absolutely critical that write throughput on redo logs is maintained at every time. No RAID-5, just simple RAID-1, on faster fiber channels, san switches etc..
Migrating oracle apps
Migrating Oracle Apps Middle Tiers to Linux
Currently Oracle supports following platforms for its middle tier:
1. HP Tru64
2. HP-UX PA-RISC
3. IBM AIX Based Systems
4. Linux x86
5. Solaris Operating System SPARC
6. Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003 (x86)
For more information go to : https://www.metalink.oracle.com
As an experianced dba you would know that bulk of load will be on database tier where you would prefer bigger proprietry OS/hardware machines. For middle tier i.e. forms, web and conc. manager you would prefer cheaper machines with optional load balancing which also can give you higher availability and scalability (option to add more machines as load increases), than spending millions on one or two large proprietry hardware.
Many organizations nowadays are demanding that they move thier middle tier to cheaper Linux hardware at the same time keep administrative costs low by implemeting multiple middle tier nodes (for HA) and shared application tier (for lower maintenance costs). Oracle provides the ability nowadays to move your middle tier from any one of above mentioned platform to Linux Platform. The migration utility retains your exact Applications patch level, so that no APPL_TOP/Database synchronization is necessary. It also allows you to retain many customizations, thereby lowering your overall cost/time of migrating your application tiers to linux.
Although oracle supports various flavors of Linux (SLES-9,SLES-8, RHEL 3, 4,2.1, Enterprise Linux,AsiaLinux 1.0) , for sake of simplicity I would talk about Red Hat version 4.0 only, in this blog post. Also to have multiple nodes for conc. manager you would have to implement Parallel Concurrent Processing (PCP) which would make things more complex for this article, hence I would talk about only moving your forms/web nodes to Linux platform. The steps for conc. manager will be same if you want to keep one node, however for multi node, after migrating to Linux you would have to implement PCP about which I talk in my later articles.
In short I am going to do the following:
This article talks about middle tier migration only. If you want to migrate your database from one platform to Linux you would have to export/import your apps database. Please follow instructions in the following metalink note:
For 10gR2 : Note:362205.1
For 10gR1 : Note:331221.1
For 9iR2 : Note:230627.1
For 8i : Note:204015.1
1. Prerequisites
a. Database Version should be 8.1.7.4 or higher (Beware that if you are planning to move your database also from windows to linux using export/import, there is a bug in 8.1.7.4. You would have to migrate to 9i first to export/import from windows to linux.)
b. AD mini-pack G or later (minimum recommended by me will be H)
c. Implement Autoconfig if you havent yet, refer to Migrating to AutoConfig on the Application Tier
d. Maintain Snapshot Information: This will sync up your application tier with database.
e. Perl version 5.005
f. JDK version 1.3.1
g. Install Red Hat linux : Will talk about it more in a separate post.
How it works ?
1. Platform Migration Utility Patch: Oracle gives you the ability to change your middle tiers by using its Platform Migration Utility, which comes as a patch (patch#3453499). As of today patch#3453499 is included in TXK (FND & ADX) Autoconfig Rollup Patch N (August 2006) patch#5107107.
2. Create your application tier: You would have to copy your APPL_TOP,OA_HTML,OA_JAVA, COMMON_TOP/util,COMMON_TOP/_pages from your old middle tier node to linux node. Now obviously these files wont work as is on Linux, because all the exeutables will be of old middle tier e.g. if you were on HP-UX and copy files to Linux, all the executable files will be of HP-UX and wont work on linux. This gap is bridged by Platform Migration Utility. After copying the COMMON_TOP/util make sure you remove jre directory in it. This directory will be created when you install tech-stack as mentioned below.
3. Generate customer manifest: After applying platform migration utility patch mentioned above, you will have to run a script in AD_TOP. perl $AD_TOP/bin/adgenpsf.pl
This script will take about minute an generate a text file ($APPL_TOP/admin/$TWO_TASK/out/adgenpsf.txt ), which is called manifest of customer-specific files. You will have to upload this file to: http://updates.oracle.com/PlatformMigration . Oracle will send a e-mail with the link to download a patch and also username and password for this patch. This patch is specific to you only and gives all the files necessary to make your “copied” application files to work on linux (Dont apply this patch yet)
4. Clone your autoconfig xml file: As you have copied your APPL_TOP from old node to new Linux node, you would have autoconfig xml (to learn more about autoconfig please see: Migrating to AutoConfig on the Application Tier ) which has all the entries related to old node. You would have to “Clone” your xml file to new node. To do this:
run the following perl script “perl $AD_TOP/bin/adclonectx.pl migrate java= contextfile=”. This script will ask you about new mount points, ports etc… on new Linux node and will create new xml file in /admin/SID_Hostname.xml.
5. Create technology stack: If you have noticed till now, all this while we didnt have 8.0.6 and iAS homes on new Linux node. We didnt copy them ??? so where will they come from ? This is acheived by using 11.5.10 rapid-install new feature which allows you install just tech-stack from 11.5.10 CDs (DVDs in this case). Refer to chapter 5 of apps installation guide : Oracle Apps Installation Guide
Make sure you have ordered 11.5.10.2 (latest as of now) media from Oracle.
6. Apply Red hat 4.0 Oracle Interoperability patches: You would have to apply the following patches as your target linux node is Red Hat 4.0
3830807 Oracle 8.0.6.3 Interop patch
3170128 Oracle 8.0.6 Interop patch for Discoverer 4i
3846086 8.1.7.4 Interop patch for iAS ORACLE_HOME
7. Generate environment files: At this point you have all the necessary files for apps middle tier, together with autoconfig xml file. Next step will be to apply customer specific patch that you got above. But before that you would need to create environment files that has to be sourced. Run the following shell script to generate env files. /bin/adconfig.sh run=INSTE8_SETUP contextfile=target system ctxfile
8. Apply customer specific patch : Download the customer specific patch that you got above and unzip it. Read the readme carefully and apply the patch, make sure you have sourced the environment files before running adpatch. Important thing to notice here is that adpatch is to be run from “/bin” directory where you have unzipped your patch. The executable in AD_TOP/bin is not yet ready to be executable on linux. This patch will replace all your old executables with Linux and relink them. While relinking if there are any errors related executables to Ilog, Roguewave, Quantum, In that case, answer “yes” when adpatch asks whether to “Continue as if it were successful”.
9. Upgrade to latest developer 6i patchset : This is a good oppurtunity to upgrade your developer patchset level to latest level. As of today patchset 18 is available. For more information refer to : note:125767.1
10. Apply 11.5.10 tech-stack inter-op patch : Since you will be using 11.5.10 tech stack, you will have to apply interop patch so as to make your applications work with this new tech-stack. Read the readme and Apply patch:4139957
11. Regenerate the executables: Run adadmin to generate messages, forms, reports, graphics and jar files.
12. Run AutoConfig to complete the target system configuration : At this point your application tier is migrated to linux, you have to run autoconfig sync-up your new application tier with the database. Run autoconfig as:
$AD_TOP/bin/adconfig.sh contextfile=Target system context file
Finishing Tasks : Depending upon your implementation you may have to look at the following:
1. Custom forms may need recompile.
2. Custom settings in environment files.
3. If using discoverer, SSO, portal etc. need to check them separately if they are working. refer to thier documentation.
4. Update printer settings if you have migrated your conc. node.
5. Update workflow settings for new host.
After making sure everything is alright, try to bring up your services and login into the application. HURRAAHHH.. now you are on Linux. Do a thorough testing on Linux and in the end you can de-comission your old, costly middle tier hardware.
At this point you can bring-in another linux server and implement shared application tier and load balancing. For more details on this, wait for my next post .. till then good luck with Linux and keep reading my blog…
Currently Oracle supports following platforms for its middle tier:
1. HP Tru64
2. HP-UX PA-RISC
3. IBM AIX Based Systems
4. Linux x86
5. Solaris Operating System SPARC
6. Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003 (x86)
For more information go to : https://www.metalink.oracle.com
As an experianced dba you would know that bulk of load will be on database tier where you would prefer bigger proprietry OS/hardware machines. For middle tier i.e. forms, web and conc. manager you would prefer cheaper machines with optional load balancing which also can give you higher availability and scalability (option to add more machines as load increases), than spending millions on one or two large proprietry hardware.
Many organizations nowadays are demanding that they move thier middle tier to cheaper Linux hardware at the same time keep administrative costs low by implemeting multiple middle tier nodes (for HA) and shared application tier (for lower maintenance costs). Oracle provides the ability nowadays to move your middle tier from any one of above mentioned platform to Linux Platform. The migration utility retains your exact Applications patch level, so that no APPL_TOP/Database synchronization is necessary. It also allows you to retain many customizations, thereby lowering your overall cost/time of migrating your application tiers to linux.
Although oracle supports various flavors of Linux (SLES-9,SLES-8, RHEL 3, 4,2.1, Enterprise Linux,AsiaLinux 1.0) , for sake of simplicity I would talk about Red Hat version 4.0 only, in this blog post. Also to have multiple nodes for conc. manager you would have to implement Parallel Concurrent Processing (PCP) which would make things more complex for this article, hence I would talk about only moving your forms/web nodes to Linux platform. The steps for conc. manager will be same if you want to keep one node, however for multi node, after migrating to Linux you would have to implement PCP about which I talk in my later articles.
In short I am going to do the following:
This article talks about middle tier migration only. If you want to migrate your database from one platform to Linux you would have to export/import your apps database. Please follow instructions in the following metalink note:
For 10gR2 : Note:362205.1
For 10gR1 : Note:331221.1
For 9iR2 : Note:230627.1
For 8i : Note:204015.1
1. Prerequisites
a. Database Version should be 8.1.7.4 or higher (Beware that if you are planning to move your database also from windows to linux using export/import, there is a bug in 8.1.7.4. You would have to migrate to 9i first to export/import from windows to linux.)
b. AD mini-pack G or later (minimum recommended by me will be H)
c. Implement Autoconfig if you havent yet, refer to Migrating to AutoConfig on the Application Tier
d. Maintain Snapshot Information: This will sync up your application tier with database.
e. Perl version 5.005
f. JDK version 1.3.1
g. Install Red Hat linux : Will talk about it more in a separate post.
How it works ?
1. Platform Migration Utility Patch: Oracle gives you the ability to change your middle tiers by using its Platform Migration Utility, which comes as a patch (patch#3453499). As of today patch#3453499 is included in TXK (FND & ADX) Autoconfig Rollup Patch N (August 2006) patch#5107107.
2. Create your application tier: You would have to copy your APPL_TOP,OA_HTML,OA_JAVA, COMMON_TOP/util,COMMON_TOP/_pages from your old middle tier node to linux node. Now obviously these files wont work as is on Linux, because all the exeutables will be of old middle tier e.g. if you were on HP-UX and copy files to Linux, all the executable files will be of HP-UX and wont work on linux. This gap is bridged by Platform Migration Utility. After copying the COMMON_TOP/util make sure you remove jre directory in it. This directory will be created when you install tech-stack as mentioned below.
3. Generate customer manifest: After applying platform migration utility patch mentioned above, you will have to run a script in AD_TOP. perl $AD_TOP/bin/adgenpsf.pl
This script will take about minute an generate a text file ($APPL_TOP/admin/$TWO_TASK/out/adgenpsf.txt ), which is called manifest of customer-specific files. You will have to upload this file to: http://updates.oracle.com/PlatformMigration . Oracle will send a e-mail with the link to download a patch and also username and password for this patch. This patch is specific to you only and gives all the files necessary to make your “copied” application files to work on linux (Dont apply this patch yet)
4. Clone your autoconfig xml file: As you have copied your APPL_TOP from old node to new Linux node, you would have autoconfig xml (to learn more about autoconfig please see: Migrating to AutoConfig on the Application Tier ) which has all the entries related to old node. You would have to “Clone” your xml file to new node. To do this:
run the following perl script “perl $AD_TOP/bin/adclonectx.pl migrate java= contextfile=”. This script will ask you about new mount points, ports etc… on new Linux node and will create new xml file in /admin/SID_Hostname.xml.
5. Create technology stack: If you have noticed till now, all this while we didnt have 8.0.6 and iAS homes on new Linux node. We didnt copy them ??? so where will they come from ? This is acheived by using 11.5.10 rapid-install new feature which allows you install just tech-stack from 11.5.10 CDs (DVDs in this case). Refer to chapter 5 of apps installation guide : Oracle Apps Installation Guide
Make sure you have ordered 11.5.10.2 (latest as of now) media from Oracle.
6. Apply Red hat 4.0 Oracle Interoperability patches: You would have to apply the following patches as your target linux node is Red Hat 4.0
3830807 Oracle 8.0.6.3 Interop patch
3170128 Oracle 8.0.6 Interop patch for Discoverer 4i
3846086 8.1.7.4 Interop patch for iAS ORACLE_HOME
7. Generate environment files: At this point you have all the necessary files for apps middle tier, together with autoconfig xml file. Next step will be to apply customer specific patch that you got above. But before that you would need to create environment files that has to be sourced. Run the following shell script to generate env files. /bin/adconfig.sh run=INSTE8_SETUP contextfile=target system ctxfile
8. Apply customer specific patch : Download the customer specific patch that you got above and unzip it. Read the readme carefully and apply the patch, make sure you have sourced the environment files before running adpatch. Important thing to notice here is that adpatch is to be run from “/bin” directory where you have unzipped your patch. The executable in AD_TOP/bin is not yet ready to be executable on linux. This patch will replace all your old executables with Linux and relink them. While relinking if there are any errors related executables to Ilog, Roguewave, Quantum, In that case, answer “yes” when adpatch asks whether to “Continue as if it were successful”.
9. Upgrade to latest developer 6i patchset : This is a good oppurtunity to upgrade your developer patchset level to latest level. As of today patchset 18 is available. For more information refer to : note:125767.1
10. Apply 11.5.10 tech-stack inter-op patch : Since you will be using 11.5.10 tech stack, you will have to apply interop patch so as to make your applications work with this new tech-stack. Read the readme and Apply patch:4139957
11. Regenerate the executables: Run adadmin to generate messages, forms, reports, graphics and jar files.
12. Run AutoConfig to complete the target system configuration : At this point your application tier is migrated to linux, you have to run autoconfig sync-up your new application tier with the database. Run autoconfig as:
$AD_TOP/bin/adconfig.sh contextfile=Target system context file
Finishing Tasks : Depending upon your implementation you may have to look at the following:
1. Custom forms may need recompile.
2. Custom settings in environment files.
3. If using discoverer, SSO, portal etc. need to check them separately if they are working. refer to thier documentation.
4. Update printer settings if you have migrated your conc. node.
5. Update workflow settings for new host.
After making sure everything is alright, try to bring up your services and login into the application. HURRAAHHH.. now you are on Linux. Do a thorough testing on Linux and in the end you can de-comission your old, costly middle tier hardware.
At this point you can bring-in another linux server and implement shared application tier and load balancing. For more details on this, wait for my next post .. till then good luck with Linux and keep reading my blog…
APPS MIGRACTION
Most of the HP shops running Applications are mostly on PA-RISC based systems. HP plans to offer PA-RISC-based servers through 2008 and support the systems through 2013, and continue to push for Itanium based servers. Apps customers are asking for possible migration paths to port their applications from PA-RISC to Itanium basesd systems. This post gives detailed summary of how you can achieve this.
For release 11i Oracle had certified HP Itanium under “split configuration”, wherein your database node can run on HP-Itanium and apps tier runs on other supported platforms. Note that as of 11.5.10.2 Apps Tier is NOT supported for HP-UX Itanium.
Currently Oracle supports following platforms for its middle tier:
1. HP Tru64
2. HP-UX PA-RISC
3. IBM AIX Based Systems
4. Linux x86
5. Solaris Operating System SPARC
6. Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003 (x86)
However as of R12, oracle has certified HP Itanium as certified platform for Apps Tier, which means both your db tier and apps tier can run on HP Itanium. Hence if you are planning to port your applications (both db and apps tier) to HP-UX Itanium, then you will have to upgrade to R12 first.
Here are the summarized steps:
Database Tier: The database migration from HP-UX on PA-RISC to HP-UX Itanium (IPF) and from Itanium (IPF) to PA-RISC by copying the datafiles is possible. Starting with RDBMS 9.2.0.7 and 10.2.0.2, it is supported to copy the database files (control files, redolog/archivelog files, data files) from HP-UX on PA-RISC to HP-UX Itanium (IPF) and from Itanium (IPF) to PA-RISC. While HP-UX on PA-RISC is big endian because of the processor, the Itanium processor adapts to the endianess of the OS and is in this case also big endian. Follow these steps to migrate db-tier.
1. Patch the target operating system to the required level and make sure it has all the required OS patches and packages (e.g. ar, cc,aCC, make etc.) for more details check:Oracle Applications Release 12.0.4 Installation Manual
2. Configure the target system as per Oracle installation and configuration guide.
3. Install the required Oracle RDBMS software (9.2.0.7 or above, 10.2.0.2 or above) on the target platform (Itanium)
4. Patch the Oracle RDBMS to the required level.
5. For copying the database (using tar, cpio, dd etc.) from the source to the target system, create the required volume groups, logical volumes, file systems, raw devices etc. on the target system
6. Shutdown the Oracle database on the source system
7. Copy all the required Oracle database files, including control files, date files, undo, redo logs, Oracle initialization file etc. to the target system.
8. If required, regenerate the control file (for example when changing the file locations on the target system).
9. Setup and configure the Oracle listener etc.
10. Startup the database on the target system.
Apps Tier: For Apps tier you will need to install R12 on itnanium (follow: Note 402307.1 – Oracle Applications Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.0) for HP-UX Itanium) and upgrade to R12 running 4440000.drv on HP-UX Itanium platform.
For release 11i Oracle had certified HP Itanium under “split configuration”, wherein your database node can run on HP-Itanium and apps tier runs on other supported platforms. Note that as of 11.5.10.2 Apps Tier is NOT supported for HP-UX Itanium.
Currently Oracle supports following platforms for its middle tier:
1. HP Tru64
2. HP-UX PA-RISC
3. IBM AIX Based Systems
4. Linux x86
5. Solaris Operating System SPARC
6. Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003 (x86)
However as of R12, oracle has certified HP Itanium as certified platform for Apps Tier, which means both your db tier and apps tier can run on HP Itanium. Hence if you are planning to port your applications (both db and apps tier) to HP-UX Itanium, then you will have to upgrade to R12 first.
Here are the summarized steps:
Database Tier: The database migration from HP-UX on PA-RISC to HP-UX Itanium (IPF) and from Itanium (IPF) to PA-RISC by copying the datafiles is possible. Starting with RDBMS 9.2.0.7 and 10.2.0.2, it is supported to copy the database files (control files, redolog/archivelog files, data files) from HP-UX on PA-RISC to HP-UX Itanium (IPF) and from Itanium (IPF) to PA-RISC. While HP-UX on PA-RISC is big endian because of the processor, the Itanium processor adapts to the endianess of the OS and is in this case also big endian. Follow these steps to migrate db-tier.
1. Patch the target operating system to the required level and make sure it has all the required OS patches and packages (e.g. ar, cc,aCC, make etc.) for more details check:Oracle Applications Release 12.0.4 Installation Manual
2. Configure the target system as per Oracle installation and configuration guide.
3. Install the required Oracle RDBMS software (9.2.0.7 or above, 10.2.0.2 or above) on the target platform (Itanium)
4. Patch the Oracle RDBMS to the required level.
5. For copying the database (using tar, cpio, dd etc.) from the source to the target system, create the required volume groups, logical volumes, file systems, raw devices etc. on the target system
6. Shutdown the Oracle database on the source system
7. Copy all the required Oracle database files, including control files, date files, undo, redo logs, Oracle initialization file etc. to the target system.
8. If required, regenerate the control file (for example when changing the file locations on the target system).
9. Setup and configure the Oracle listener etc.
10. Startup the database on the target system.
Apps Tier: For Apps tier you will need to install R12 on itnanium (follow: Note 402307.1 – Oracle Applications Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.0) for HP-UX Itanium) and upgrade to R12 running 4440000.drv on HP-UX Itanium platform.
ORACLE APPS R12
After much speculations and wait for Oracle Apps customers, Oracle has finally given the release date for Release 12 of Oracle applications on Jan 31 2007. For more information
Release 12 will bring lots of changes to techstack. Following are the major changes:
1. Developer release 10g instead of 6i
2. Application server 1022 will change to Application server release 10g
3. No more mod_plsql
4. OC4J will replace jserv
5. New concept of instance home (INST_TOP)
6. Middle tier oracle homes will change from iAS to 10g based iAS 10.1.3 and Develope 6i 806 Oracle home to Developer 10g 10.1.2 home
7. New filesystem layout.
http://www.oracle.com/events/applications-unlimited/index.html?pageregion=ocom_hp_c_main_1_newReleases_010207
Release 12 will bring lots of changes to techstack. Following are the major changes:
1. Developer release 10g instead of 6i
2. Application server 1022 will change to Application server release 10g
3. No more mod_plsql
4. OC4J will replace jserv
5. New concept of instance home (INST_TOP)
6. Middle tier oracle homes will change from iAS to 10g based iAS 10.1.3 and Develope 6i 806 Oracle home to Developer 10g 10.1.2 home
7. New filesystem layout.
ORACLE APPLICATIONS UPGRADE
ORACLE APPLICAIONS OVER VIEW
For quite sometime now Oracle apps customers have been trying to upgrade their apps to latest version 11i (or Release 12 now). In this blog I will talk very basic about the upgrade process. How the upgrade process actually works. This is based on my experience with upgrade projects.
Some facts about the instance that was upgraded:
1. Database size before upgrade: 800 GB
2. Database version before upgrade: 8.1.7.4
3. Apps version before upgrade : 11.0.3
4. OS version used during upgrade: HP-UX PA Risc 11.23 (11i v2) with 32 CPUs.
5. Hardware used during upgrade: HP-UX PA Risc Superdome with 32 CPUs, 80 GB RAM
6. SGA size 12 GB (7.5 GB Buffer Cache, 2.7 GB Shared Pool)
7. Database size after upgrade: 1.3 TB
8. Database version after upgrade: 10.2.0.2
9. Apps version after upgrade: 11.5.10.2
10. This upgrade did not include migrating to OATM.
In general following are the technical tasks that need to be done to upgrade 11.5.10.2. (This post does not address upgrade to release 12). The complete details as to how to accomplish and upgrade can be found in the Oracle apps upgrade manual. Oracle Applications 11i (11.5.10.2) Docs
1. Download “The Upgrade Manual Script” TUMS from metalink. TUMS comes as a patch applied using adpatch. This provides a script adtums.sql and also load some objects in db that the script uses to examine your installation. The script reports the list of steps that do not apply to your instance.
Note: If you see the upgrade manual, you will find that Oracle has categorized the various steps involved in the upgrade starting from category 1 through 7, where category 1 and 2 are pre-upgrade steps, category 3 the upgrade and rest post upgrade steps.
3. Download or get the new 11i CDs(11.5.10.2 are the latest) and stage them. Make new mount points for 11i application tier in your application tier and for 9i ORACLE_HOME on database tier. If you have-or-is planning to use multi-node architecture, setup the new mount points on the machine which is your admin-tier. Rest of the tier can be cloned later on for sake of simplicity. Follow instructions in Chapter 4 of installation manual of Oracle apps Installation Guide
For an upgrade, Rapid Install installs an Oracle9i Release 2 RDBMS Oracle home without
a database. You will use this Oracle home to upgrade or migrate your existing database
to Oracle9i.
4. Under category-2 steps, run adpatch under newly laid application tier (11i) and install latest upgrade patches in pre-install mode. e.g. for this upgrade we applied 3993353.
5. Under category-3 steps, upgrade your database to 9i release2 and run autoupgrade (executable name is adaimgr from new 11i application tier). Autoupgrade (formaly know as autoinstall) is the ad utility that upgrades your database code and objects from 10.7 or 11 to base 11i (11.5.0). This is a time consuming step. At this point you have upgraded your instance from 10.7 or 11 to base 11i (11.5.0)
6. Under category-4 post upgrade step. Apply the latest AD minipack e.g. for this upgrade we applied:AD.I.4 (4712852) with adpatch options=nogenerateportion,hotpatch
7. At this point undet category-4 step only, apply 11.5.10.2 maintenane pack udriver which can be found under $AU_TOP/patch/115/driver with following options: adpatch options=nocopyportion,nogenerateportion.
This will bring your database code and objects from base 11i (11.5.0) level to 11.5.10.2 MP level.
8. At this point you have upgraded the database to 9i release 2 and application to 11.5.10.2. Rest of the steps like, installing online help patch, install additional patches for NLS, licensing new products etc… can be done now. After this you will have to again run Rapid-install from the stage area and run it to configure and start the application servers. Follow instructions in guring and Starting Server Processes” of theChapter-4 paragraph “Con Applications Installation manual. Also as part of post upgrade steps, you can migrate your database to 10g release 2 and clone other nodes for your multi-tier setup.
The following diagram illustrate the theory behind the upgrade.
Note that you also cannot upgrade directly to 10g until the upgrade is over. This is because:
1. Your application tier may not be supported with 10g
2. Upgrade only works on 9i release 2 version.
This entry was posted on May 7, 2007 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Upgrading Oracle Applications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS
APPS MIDDLE TIER ON LINUX
Migrating Oracle Apps Middle Tiers to Linux
Posted by poorna
Currently Oracle supports following platforms for its middle tier:
1. HP Tru64
2. HP-UX PA-RISC
3. IBM AIX Based Systems
4. Linux x86
5. Solaris Operating System SPARC
6. Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003 (x86)
For more information go to :
https://www.metalink.oracle.com
As an experianced dba you would know that bulk of load will be on database tier where you would prefer bigger proprietry OS/hardware machines. For middle tier i.e. forms, web and conc. manager you would prefer cheaper machines with optional load balancing which also can give you higher availability and scalability (option to add more machines as load increases), than spending millions on one or two large proprietry hardware.
Many organizations nowadays are demanding that they move thier middle tier to cheaper Linux hardware at the same time keep administrative costs low by implemeting multiple middle tier nodes (for HA) and shared application tier (for lower maintenance costs). Oracle provides the ability nowadays to move your middle tier from any one of above mentioned platform to Linux Platform. The migration utility retains your exact Applications patch level, so that no APPL_TOP/Database synchronization is necessary. It also allows you to retain many customizations, thereby lowering your overall cost/time of migrating your application tiers to linux.
Although oracle supports various flavors of Linux (SLES-9,SLES-8, RHEL 3, 4,2.1, Enterprise Linux,AsiaLinux 1.0) , for sake of simplicity I would talk about Red Hat version 4.0 only, in this blog post. Also to have multiple nodes for conc. manager you would have to implement Parallel Concurrent Processing (PCP) which would make things more complex for this article, hence I would talk about only moving your forms/web nodes to Linux platform. The steps for conc. manager will be same if you want to keep one node, however for multi node, after migrating to Linux you would have to implement PCP about which I talk in my later articles.
In short I am going to do the following:
This article talks about middle tier migration only. If you want to migrate your database from one platform to Linux you would have to export/import your apps database. Please follow instructions in the following metalink note:
For 10gR2 : Note:362205.1
For 10gR1 : Note:331221.1
For 9iR2 : Note:230627.1
For 8i : Note:204015.1
1. Prerequisites
a. Database Version should be 8.1.7.4 or higher (Beware that if you are planning to move your database also from windows to linux using export/import, there is a bug in 8.1.7.4. You would have to migrate to 9i first to export/import from windows to linux.)
b. AD mini-pack G or later (minimum recommended by me will be H)
c. Implement Autoconfig if you havent yet, refer to Migrating to AutoConfig on the Application Tier
d. Maintain Snapshot Information: This will sync up your application tier with database.
e. Perl version 5.005
f. JDK version 1.3.1
g. Install Red Hat linux : Will talk about it more in a separate post.
How it works ?
1. Platform Migration Utility Patch: Oracle gives you the ability to change your middle tiers by using its Platform Migration Utility, which comes as a patch (patch#3453499). As of today patch#3453499 is included in TXK (FND & ADX) Autoconfig Rollup Patch N (August 2006) patch#5107107.
2. Create your application tier: You would have to copy your APPL_TOP,OA_HTML,OA_JAVA, COMMON_TOP/util,COMMON_TOP/_pages from your old middle tier node to linux node. Now obviously these files wont work as is on Linux, because all the exeutables will be of old middle tier e.g. if you were on HP-UX and copy files to Linux, all the executable files will be of HP-UX and wont work on linux. This gap is bridged by Platform Migration Utility. After copying the COMMON_TOP/util make sure you remove jre directory in it. This directory will be created when you install tech-stack as mentioned below.
3. Generate customer manifest: After applying platform migration utility patch mentioned above, you will have to run a script in AD_TOP. perl $AD_TOP/bin/adgenpsf.pl
This script will take about minute an generate a text file ($APPL_TOP/admin/$TWO_TASK/out/adgenpsf.txt ), which is called manifest of customer-specific files. You will have to upload this file to: http://updates.oracle.com/PlatformMigration . Oracle will send a e-mail with the link to download a patch and also username and password for this patch. This patch is specific to you only and gives all the files necessary to make your “copied” application files to work on linux (Dont apply this patch yet)
4. Clone your autoconfig xml file: As you have copied your APPL_TOP from old node to new Linux node, you would have autoconfig xml (to learn more about autoconfig please see: Migrating to AutoConfig on the Application Tier ) which has all the entries related to old node. You would have to “Clone” your xml file to new node. To do this:
run the following perl script “perl $AD_TOP/bin/adclonectx.pl migrate java= contextfile=”. This script will ask you about new mount points, ports etc… on new Linux node and will create new xml file in /admin/SID_Hostname.xml.
5. Create technology stack: If you have noticed till now, all this while we didnt have 8.0.6 and iAS homes on new Linux node. We didnt copy them ??? so where will they come from ? This is acheived by using 11.5.10 rapid-install new feature which allows you install just tech-stack from 11.5.10 CDs (DVDs in this case). Refer to chapter 5 of apps installation guide : Oracle Apps Installation Guide
Make sure you have ordered 11.5.10.2 (latest as of now) media from Oracle.
6. Apply Red hat 4.0 Oracle Interoperability patches: You would have to apply the following patches as your target linux node is Red Hat 4.0
3830807 Oracle 8.0.6.3 Interop patch
3170128 Oracle 8.0.6 Interop patch for Discoverer 4i
3846086 8.1.7.4 Interop patch for iAS ORACLE_HOME
7. Generate environment files: At this point you have all the necessary files for apps middle tier, together with autoconfig xml file. Next step will be to apply customer specific patch that you got above. But before that you would need to create environment files that has to be sourced. Run the following shell script to generate env files. /bin/adconfig.sh run=INSTE8_SETUP contextfile=target system ctxfile
8. Apply customer specific patch : Download the customer specific patch that you got above and unzip it. Read the readme carefully and apply the patch, make sure you have sourced the environment files before running adpatch. Important thing to notice here is that adpatch is to be run from “/bin” directory where you have unzipped your patch. The executable in AD_TOP/bin is not yet ready to be executable on linux. This patch will replace all your old executables with Linux and relink them. While relinking if there are any errors related executables to Ilog, Roguewave, Quantum, In that case, answer “yes” when adpatch asks whether to “Continue as if it were successful”.
9. Upgrade to latest developer 6i patchset : This is a good oppurtunity to upgrade your developer patchset level to latest level. As of today patchset 18 is available. For more information refer to : note:125767.1
10. Apply 11.5.10 tech-stack inter-op patch : Since you will be using 11.5.10 tech stack, you will have to apply interop patch so as to make your applications work with this new tech-stack. Read the readme and Apply patch:4139957
11. Regenerate the executables: Run adadmin to generate messages, forms, reports, graphics and jar files.
12. Run AutoConfig to complete the target system configuration : At this point your application tier is migrated to linux, you have to run autoconfig sync-up your new application tier with the database. Run autoconfig as:
$AD_TOP/bin/adconfig.sh contextfile=Target system context file
Finishing Tasks : Depending upon your implementation you may have to look at the following:
1. Custom forms may need recompile.
2. Custom settings in environment files.
3. If using discoverer, SSO, portal etc. need to check them separately if they are working. refer to thier documentation.
4. Update printer settings if you have migrated your conc. node.
5. Update workflow settings for new host.
After making sure everything is alright, try to bring up your services and login into the application. HURRAAHHH.. now you are on Linux. Do a thorough testing on Linux and in the end you can de-comission your old, costly middle tier hardware.
At this point you can bring-in another linux server and implement shared application tier and load balancing. For more details on this, wait for my next post .. till then good luck with Linux and keep reading my blog…
Posted by poorna
Currently Oracle supports following platforms for its middle tier:
1. HP Tru64
2. HP-UX PA-RISC
3. IBM AIX Based Systems
4. Linux x86
5. Solaris Operating System SPARC
6. Windows 2000/Windows Server 2003 (x86)
For more information go to :
https://www.metalink.oracle.com
As an experianced dba you would know that bulk of load will be on database tier where you would prefer bigger proprietry OS/hardware machines. For middle tier i.e. forms, web and conc. manager you would prefer cheaper machines with optional load balancing which also can give you higher availability and scalability (option to add more machines as load increases), than spending millions on one or two large proprietry hardware.
Many organizations nowadays are demanding that they move thier middle tier to cheaper Linux hardware at the same time keep administrative costs low by implemeting multiple middle tier nodes (for HA) and shared application tier (for lower maintenance costs). Oracle provides the ability nowadays to move your middle tier from any one of above mentioned platform to Linux Platform. The migration utility retains your exact Applications patch level, so that no APPL_TOP/Database synchronization is necessary. It also allows you to retain many customizations, thereby lowering your overall cost/time of migrating your application tiers to linux.
Although oracle supports various flavors of Linux (SLES-9,SLES-8, RHEL 3, 4,2.1, Enterprise Linux,AsiaLinux 1.0) , for sake of simplicity I would talk about Red Hat version 4.0 only, in this blog post. Also to have multiple nodes for conc. manager you would have to implement Parallel Concurrent Processing (PCP) which would make things more complex for this article, hence I would talk about only moving your forms/web nodes to Linux platform. The steps for conc. manager will be same if you want to keep one node, however for multi node, after migrating to Linux you would have to implement PCP about which I talk in my later articles.
In short I am going to do the following:
For 10gR2 : Note:362205.1
For 10gR1 : Note:331221.1
For 9iR2 : Note:230627.1
For 8i : Note:204015.1
1. Prerequisites
a. Database Version should be 8.1.7.4 or higher (Beware that if you are planning to move your database also from windows to linux using export/import, there is a bug in 8.1.7.4. You would have to migrate to 9i first to export/import from windows to linux.)
b. AD mini-pack G or later (minimum recommended by me will be H)
c. Implement Autoconfig if you havent yet, refer to Migrating to AutoConfig on the Application Tier
d. Maintain Snapshot Information: This will sync up your application tier with database.
e. Perl version 5.005
f. JDK version 1.3.1
g. Install Red Hat linux : Will talk about it more in a separate post.
How it works ?
1. Platform Migration Utility Patch: Oracle gives you the ability to change your middle tiers by using its Platform Migration Utility, which comes as a patch (patch#3453499). As of today patch#3453499 is included in TXK (FND & ADX) Autoconfig Rollup Patch N (August 2006) patch#5107107.
2. Create your application tier: You would have to copy your APPL_TOP,OA_HTML,OA_JAVA, COMMON_TOP/util,COMMON_TOP/_pages from your old middle tier node to linux node. Now obviously these files wont work as is on Linux, because all the exeutables will be of old middle tier e.g. if you were on HP-UX and copy files to Linux, all the executable files will be of HP-UX and wont work on linux. This gap is bridged by Platform Migration Utility. After copying the COMMON_TOP/util make sure you remove jre directory in it. This directory will be created when you install tech-stack as mentioned below.
3. Generate customer manifest: After applying platform migration utility patch mentioned above, you will have to run a script in AD_TOP. perl $AD_TOP/bin/adgenpsf.pl
This script will take about minute an generate a text file ($APPL_TOP/admin/$TWO_TASK/out/adgenpsf.txt ), which is called manifest of customer-specific files. You will have to upload this file to: http://updates.oracle.com/PlatformMigration . Oracle will send a e-mail with the link to download a patch and also username and password for this patch. This patch is specific to you only and gives all the files necessary to make your “copied” application files to work on linux (Dont apply this patch yet)
4. Clone your autoconfig xml file: As you have copied your APPL_TOP from old node to new Linux node, you would have autoconfig xml (to learn more about autoconfig please see: Migrating to AutoConfig on the Application Tier ) which has all the entries related to old node. You would have to “Clone” your xml file to new node. To do this:
run the following perl script “perl $AD_TOP/bin/adclonectx.pl migrate java= contextfile=”. This script will ask you about new mount points, ports etc… on new Linux node and will create new xml file in /admin/SID_Hostname.xml.
5. Create technology stack: If you have noticed till now, all this while we didnt have 8.0.6 and iAS homes on new Linux node. We didnt copy them ??? so where will they come from ? This is acheived by using 11.5.10 rapid-install new feature which allows you install just tech-stack from 11.5.10 CDs (DVDs in this case). Refer to chapter 5 of apps installation guide : Oracle Apps Installation Guide
Make sure you have ordered 11.5.10.2 (latest as of now) media from Oracle.
6. Apply Red hat 4.0 Oracle Interoperability patches: You would have to apply the following patches as your target linux node is Red Hat 4.0
3830807 Oracle 8.0.6.3 Interop patch
3170128 Oracle 8.0.6 Interop patch for Discoverer 4i
3846086 8.1.7.4 Interop patch for iAS ORACLE_HOME
7. Generate environment files: At this point you have all the necessary files for apps middle tier, together with autoconfig xml file. Next step will be to apply customer specific patch that you got above. But before that you would need to create environment files that has to be sourced. Run the following shell script to generate env files. /bin/adconfig.sh run=INSTE8_SETUP contextfile=target system ctxfile
8. Apply customer specific patch : Download the customer specific patch that you got above and unzip it. Read the readme carefully and apply the patch, make sure you have sourced the environment files before running adpatch. Important thing to notice here is that adpatch is to be run from “/bin” directory where you have unzipped your patch. The executable in AD_TOP/bin is not yet ready to be executable on linux. This patch will replace all your old executables with Linux and relink them. While relinking if there are any errors related executables to Ilog, Roguewave, Quantum, In that case, answer “yes” when adpatch asks whether to “Continue as if it were successful”.
9. Upgrade to latest developer 6i patchset : This is a good oppurtunity to upgrade your developer patchset level to latest level. As of today patchset 18 is available. For more information refer to : note:125767.1
10. Apply 11.5.10 tech-stack inter-op patch : Since you will be using 11.5.10 tech stack, you will have to apply interop patch so as to make your applications work with this new tech-stack. Read the readme and Apply patch:4139957
11. Regenerate the executables: Run adadmin to generate messages, forms, reports, graphics and jar files.
12. Run AutoConfig to complete the target system configuration : At this point your application tier is migrated to linux, you have to run autoconfig sync-up your new application tier with the database. Run autoconfig as:
$AD_TOP/bin/adconfig.sh contextfile=Target system context file
Finishing Tasks : Depending upon your implementation you may have to look at the following:
1. Custom forms may need recompile.
2. Custom settings in environment files.
3. If using discoverer, SSO, portal etc. need to check them separately if they are working. refer to thier documentation.
4. Update printer settings if you have migrated your conc. node.
5. Update workflow settings for new host.
After making sure everything is alright, try to bring up your services and login into the application. HURRAAHHH.. now you are on Linux. Do a thorough testing on Linux and in the end you can de-comission your old, costly middle tier hardware.
At this point you can bring-in another linux server and implement shared application tier and load balancing. For more details on this, wait for my next post .. till then good luck with Linux and keep reading my blog…
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