Planning for the future

Some things that are going to be coming up in the not too distant future (that you’ll definitely want to start planning/budgeting for).

  • Oracle RDBMS 19c is the only database release currently certified with any version of E-Business Suite.  The next certified version will be RDBMS 23c, which won’t be available outside of the “OCI Base Database Service” until sometime 1H CY2024.  (And won’t be certified with E-Business Suite until sometime after that).
  • Oracle RDBMS 19c is nearing the end of Premier Support (April 30, 2024).  However, they have waived the Extended Suport fees until April 30, 2026.  This is only a general waiver at this point (not just EBS).

[From MOS 742060.1]

  • When RDBMS 23c is released, it will only talk to Oracle Clients that are 19c or higher.  (This means that it won’t talk to anything on the current appsTier) 

[From MOS 207303.1]

The folks at ATG have been telling us for some time that:

  • The upgrade to EBS R12.2 is the last “major upgrade” for E-Business Suite.  Basically, the process we used to get to R12.2 (or to R12.1.3, R11i, etc) isn’t going to be used in the future to maintain EBS.  Everything from R12.2 forward will be delivered through the patching process (adop).
  • They are working on giving us the ability to perform major version upgrades of the software installed in the appsTier ${ORACLE_HOME} and ${IAS_ORACLE_HOME}.   Currently, we’re only able to do “point release” patching of those tools.  This would include major version upgrades to Oracle Forms & Reports (currently 10g 10.1.2.3) as well as WebLogic (Currently 10.3.6).  

DISCLAIMER: I am not privvy to any secret “inside information”. Anything that I’m mentioning here is either publicly documented or has been publicly announced as “in the works”. Any speculation on dates is purely speculation on my part.

So, given that, here’s what I’m expecting to see in the (hopefully near) future:

  • Some time 1H CY2024, RDBMS 23c will be released for Linux x86-64 on-prem. (Other on-prem platforms will come later).
  • Oracle ATG will release procedures that will allow us to upgrade the appsTier Oracle Homes to much more current versions. The current version of Oracle Forms & Reports is 12.2.1.19.0, and the current version of WebLogic is 14.1.1.0, I would imagine that we would jump pretty close to those versions.
  • Oracle usually releases the next “point release” of E-Business Suite R12.2 late in the fall (September-November timeline). So, expect R12.2.14 around that time.
  • If I were to guess, just based on timelines, we’ll probably see the ATG announcement for the Oracle Home update processes/certifications to come around the time that they announce EBS R12.2.14 and that certification of EBS against RDBMS 23c will come shortly after.

So, what does this mean for you?

It means that CY2025 will probably be a very busy year. Plan and budget accordingly.

Installing E-Business Suite R12.2.11 + RDBMS 19c on OEL 8.5: Part 3 – Running RapidWiz

In our previous posts, we built the OEL 8.5 virtual machine, downloaded the software, and built our staging area.

In this post, we’re going to use the RapidWiz tool to perform a single-node Fresh Install of E-Business Suite R12.2.0. (We will have to upgrade to R12.2.11 after the install).

Launch Rapidwiz

As your “generic” user (jmorrow, in my case), open a terminal window and launch RapidWiz.

We’re going to be using “sudo” to actually invoke RapidWiz because, since this is a single node, it needs to run as root in order to handle deploying software for both “oracle” and “applmgr”.

If we were doing a typical two-node installation (dbTier on one node, appsTier on the other), you would simply run rapidwiz as “oracle” or “applmgr” on the appropriate node.

export DL=/Stage/Oracle_EBSR12211
export STAGE=/Stage/StageEBSR12211
cd ${STAGE}/startCD/Disk1/rapidwiz

sudo ./rapidwiz

If you expand the tree, you can see everything that it’s going to install.

We’re going to choose to install E-Business Suite. This will give us an “empty” E-Business Suite database in addition to the necessary software.

If we were preparing a system for an upgrade (where we’re bringing over an existing database), we would choose “Upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2.0” to only install the software.

You can leave this blank.

We’re going to Create a new configuration.

You’ll want to spread out your port pools. The general recommendation is that the port pool for File System 2 should be at least FS1+10.

There are a few things to pay attention to here. First, you’ll want to select “Fresh Database” (the default is to install VISION).

Next, make sure you set your SID. In our case, we’re going to use “PROD”.

Next, make sure that the database OS user is correct.

The default Database Directory is “/d01/oracle/PROD”. We are using “/oracle/PROD”. Once you make that update, the Database Home will also change.

The default Datafiles Directory is “/d01/oracle/PROD/data”. We’re using “/oradata/PROD” instead.

Since this is a throwaway, we’re going to choose Suite Licensing. Depending on your requirements, you may want to use Component Licensing instead.

We’re going to accept the defaults here. Again, depending on your requirements, you may want to choose differently.

REMEMBER: E-Business Suite Licensing is contractual. Your selection on these menus does NOT change what software will be installed. It only amounts to a “bit flip” in a licensing table. That said, there is no supported way to de-license an E-Business Suite module. So, if you’re doing this for real, make your selections carefully.

This screen is for country-specific functionality, typically called “localizations”. These items are usually to satisfy specific legislative requirements. This screen is NOT for languages.

If you need any country-specific functionality, make those selections here.

THIS screen is where you choose languages and character sets. By default, you only get American English (US) and the US7ASCII character set. If you’re wanting another character set, make that selection here.

Generally speaking, WE8ISO8859P15 should cover most “Western European” languages (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian).

The AL32UTF8 character set will cover any others (Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, etc.)

This screen gives the E-Business Suite details (the appsTier). Because of the changes we made on the dbTier configuration for this node, the defaults here are correct for our installation.

You will need to provide a password to be used for the “weblogic” administrator.

Because we’re running RapidWiz as root, you can leave the password for applmgr blank.

For this exercise, I’m un-checking “Change Default Passwords”.

When you hit “Next”, another window will pop up as RapidWiz performs a bunch of pre-installation checks. These checks will run for a few minutes, depending on the size of your VM.

These should all come back “Green”. If they don’t, click on the button beside each check to see the results.

Click “Yes” to begin the installation.

The installation should run for at least 2-3 hours.

Everything should be “Green”.

And, again, if you expand the tree, you can see everything that was installed.

At this point, RapidWiz will exit. You should have a running E-Business Suite system. Let’s do a few things to tidy up the installation…

Normally, we would create a nice .bash_profile for the oracle and applmgr users that would set up our environments. But we’re going to wait on that until after we’re done with the 19c upgrade.

Meanwhile, AutoConfig has already created some environment files for us. I like to create symbolic links in the users’s home directories to make things easier.

sudo su - oracle
ln -s /oracle/PROD/12.1.0/PROD_prod.env db.env
exit

sudo su - applmgr
ln -s /oracle/PROD/fs1/EBSapps/appl/APPSPROD_prod.env fs1.env
ln -s /oracle/PROD/fs2/EBSapps/appl/APPSPROD_prod.env fs2.env
exit


And that’s the end of Part 3. In the next installment, we’ll upgrade E-Business Suite to R12.2.11. Stay tuned!

Installing E-Business Suite R12.2.11 + RDBMS 19c on OEL 8.5: Part 2 – Staging The Software

Storage

When we built our virtual machine, we mapped some “shared folders” from our host into our VM. We’re going to download our software using the web browser on our host into that shared folder. For the purpose of this document, these are the mappings that I’m using:

Host PathVM PathDescription/Purpose
E:\Backup/BackupBackups
S:\Software/SoftwareSoftware Downloads
E:\Stage/StageStaging Area

Download the Software

Download your installation media from Oracle’s E-Delivery site, https://edelivery.oracle.com. You will need a valid login in order to do this.

Login with your valid Oracle credentials.

In the search box, type “oracle e-business suite”. Then, from the results below, select “DLP: Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.11” to add it to your cart.

Next, type “oracle database 19c” into the search box and select “DLP: Oracle Database 19c Enterprise Edition 19.3.0.0.0” to add it to your cart. We specifically want Enterprise Edition because it is required for E-Business Suite.

Hit “Continue” in the top right corner to proceed.

First, click on the platform pull-down on the first item in each grouping. Select “Linux x86-64” (it should auto-fill for the remaining packages in that product group).

The packages actually include more than we really need for this exercise. So, if you want to reduce your download, we only need to select the four items shown above.

Once you’ve made your selections, hit “Continue” to proceed.

Of course, you’ll need to accept the license agreement…

Here you will see exactly what is going to be downloaded. When you receive the files, they will have names like “V982063-01.zip”, so it can be somewhat difficult to decode. I recommend you click on the “View Digest Details” link. That will give you a nice report with filenames, descriptions, and checksums to validate the download. Save that report to a PDF file in your download directory for reference.

Once you’ve done that, hit the Download button. This will, initially, download a small download manager that you will need to execute. At that point, your multi-threaded download will begin.

Download the current StartCD and RapidInstall Consolidated Bundle Patch [MOS 1320300.1]

You will need to download the following patches from My Oracle Support (MOS):

PatchDescription
22066363startCD 12.2.0.51
32947483RapidInstall Consolidated Bundle Patch

Staging the Software [MOS 1596433.1]

During this process, I’m going to define some temporary environment variables to keep things simple. If your installation differs, adjust those variables accordingly.

From within our Virtual Machine, we will need to extract the files necessary to build the staging area. Note that we do NOT need to unzip all of the E-Business Suite files directly. That will be done by the buildStage script.

#  This is our download directory, where all of the zip files are placed.
export DL=/Stage/Oracle_EBSR1221

#  This is where we're going to build our staging area
export STAGE=/Stage/StageEBSR1221

Build the Staging Area using startCD 51

cd ${STAGE}
unzip ${DL}/p22066363_R12_GENERIC.zip
cd ${STAGE}/startCD/Disk1/rapidwiz/bin
./buildStage.sh

Using the menus, first choose option 1 “Create new staging area”

               Build Stage Menu

------------------------------------------------------

1.     Create new stage area

2.     Copy new patches to current stage area.

3.     Display existing files in stage TechPatches.

4.     Exit menu


Enter your choice [4]: 1

You will also need to choose a platform (Linux x86-64, in our case)

        Rapid Install Platform Menu

------------------------------------------------------

1.    Oracle Solaris SPARC (64-bit)

2.    Linux x86-64

3.    IBM AIX on Power Systems (64-bit)

4.    HP-UX Itanium

5.    Exit Menu


Enter your choice [5]: 2

Once the script is finished, choose option 4 to exit.

Patch the staging area

cd ${STAGE}
unzip ${DL}/p32947483_R12_GENERIC.zip
cd 32947483
sh patchRIStage.sh

Re-run the staging area script to “Copy patches to the existing staging area”

cd ${STAGE}/startCD/Disk1/rapidwiz/bin
./buildStage.sh

------------------------------------------------------

1.     Create new stage area

2.     Copy new patches to current stage area.

3.     Display existing files in stage TechPatches.

4.     Exit menu


Enter your choice [4]: 2

Again, choose your platform

1.    Oracle Solaris SPARC (64-bit)

2.    Linux x86-64

3.    IBM AIX on Power Systems (64-bit)

4.    HP-UX Itanium

5.    Exit Menu


Enter your choice [5]: 2

And now you have a completed staging area for E-Business Suite.

In our next posting, we’ll run RapidWiz to install E-Business Suite R12.2.11 and RDBMS 12c.

Installing E-Business Suite R12.2.11 + RDBMS 19c on OEL 8.5: Part 1 – Operating System Prep

This is the first post in a multi-part series. The ultimate goal is to have a single node installation running Oracle E-Business Suite R12.2.11 & RDBMS 19c on Oracle Enterprise LInux 8.5.

For the purpose of this installation, I’m using a VirtualBox VM. However, the steps would be pretty much the same regardless of the physical (or virtual) hardware.

It is important to note, if your goal is simply to have an easy Oracle E-Business Suite Vision VM, then Oracle does have pre-built VM images (templates) that you can download and import into VirtualBox.

However, for our purposes, we’re walking through the steps to build the system from the ground up, similar to a “real” installation.

Create the Virtual Machine The “Hardware”

For a Minimal Installation, the pre-built Oracle VISION VM Templates have the following minimum hardware requirements:

  • 1 CPU Core
  • 16 GB RAM
  • 400 GB Disk

For this installation, I’m using a fairly beefy physical machine, so I’m able to size the Virtual Machine comfortably. I’m also sizing the system in a manner that would be similar to what you might actually use.

  • 8 CPU Cores
  • 24 GB RAM
  • 64GB Main Disk (Operating System)
  • 512 GB for the Oracle Software
  • 512 GB for the database
  • 64 GB for archive logs

After installing VirtualBox, create a VirtualBox VM. Assign the VM 8 CPU cores. Optionally Enable “Bidirectional Clipboard” and “PAE/NX & Nested VT-x/AMD-V”

When defining storage, create 3 disks. 64GB, 512GB, and 512GB. I recommend using “VDI” images for the disks. The “VDI” images are, essentially “thin provisioned”. So, while the disk within the VM would appear as 512GB, the underlying file (at the host level) would only be as large as the “used” portion of that disk.

You may also want to map a shared folder to the VM so that you can keep your staging area and/or downloads outside of the VM.

Install Oracle Enterprise Linux 8 (8.5)

Insert the Oracle Enterprise Linux 8.5 media into the Virtual CD-ROM drive and boot the VM.

When you’re going through the operating system install, you want to set the following:

  • Set the Timezone
  • Set the Root Password
  • Create an additional user (“jmorrow” in my case), assign it UID & GID 1000, and set the user to be administrator.
  • Software Selection: Server with GUI
  • Network: Enabled, Connect Automatically, Assign a hostname of “prod.mydomain.com”
  • On the Storage section, you’ll only want to select the Main Disk (64 GB). Choose to create a Custom Storage Configuration.
    • /boot 1 GiB
    • /home 5 GiB
    • swap 18 GiB
      IMPORTANT: Swap must be NO LESS THAN 17,179,869,184 bytes (16GB) or it will fail the installer check!
    • Use the remainder of the volume for the root volume (/)

Reboot the system when the installer finishes.

Install the VirtualBox Guest Additions

Install prerequisites for VirtualBox Guest Additions

dnf install -y kernel-uek-devel-$(uname -r) perl 
make bzip2 gzip unzip tar

dnf update -y

From the Virtual Box Menu at the top of the screen, choose “Devices –> Insert Guest Additions CD Image”. At that point, a pop-up should appear in the VM to install the Guest Additions. Follow the instructions.

Reboot the VM when done.

The Guest Additions will enable things between the Host Machine and the Guest (like cut and paste and the shared filesystems). It will also help with larger displays and keyboard/mouse capture.

Add the EPEL Repository

The EPEL “Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux” repository contains a number of useful tools that I like on Linux boxes.

tee /etc/yum.repos.d/ol8-epel.repo<<EOF
[ol8_developer_EPEL]
name= Oracle Linux \$releasever EPEL (\$basearch)
baseurl=https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/developer/EPEL/\$basearch/
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
EOF

Pre-Create Users/Groups [CONDITIONAL]

We’re going to use the pre-install packages from Oracle to do most of the operating system prep. However, in my case, I’m wanting to use specific UID/GID numbers for user and group creation. So, we’re going to pre-create those users and groups here. If you’re not concerned with the UID/GID numbers, you can skip this step.

groupadd -g 2000 dba
groupadd -g 2001 oinstall
groupadd -g 2002 oper
groupadd -g 2003 backupdba
groupadd -g 2004 dgdba
groupadd -g 2005 kmdba
groupadd -g 2006 racdba
groupadd -g 2007 asmadmin
groupadd -g 2008 asmoper
groupadd -g 2010 oraagent
useradd -u 2000 -g dba -N -m -c "Oracle Database Owner" oracle
useradd -u 3000 -g dba -N -m -c "Oracle Applications Owner" applmgr

Install Prerequisites for E-Business Suite R12.2 [MOS 1330701.1]

dnf install -y oraclelinux-release
dnf config-manager --set-enabled ol8_addons
dnf install -y oracle-ebs-server-R12-preinstall.x86_64

The oracle-ebs-server-R12-preinstall.x86_64 package will handle most of the configurations mentioned in MOS 1330701.1. It will also create the following users and groups (if they don’t already exist):

oinstall:65535
dba:65536
oracle:65535
applmgr:65536

Install Prerequisites for RDBMS 19c [MOS 2552181.1]

dnf install -y oracle-database-preinstall-19c

This package will create the following users and groups on top of what the EBS package creates (if they don’t already exist):

oper:54323
backupdba:54324
dgdba:54325
kmdba:54326
racdba:54330

Install Additional Packages [MOS 2790032.1]

When I was building the staging area, I encountered MOS 2790032.1.

dnf install -y libnsl.i686

Install Additional Packages [OPTIONAL]

Many of these are things that I’ve found useful/necessary with E-Business Suite systems. They are not necessary to complete the EBS or RDBMS intallation.

dnf install -y fontconfig-devel.x86_64 libXrender-devel.x86_64 screen.x86_64 xinetd.x86_64 dos2unix.x86_64 curl.x86_64 wget.x86_64 htop.x86_64

Modify User/Group Membership [CONDITIONAL]

This is largely for convenience. We want to make sure that certain users have access to the Virtual Box Shared Folders (vboxsf). Additionally, we want to make sure that my personal user (jmorrow) can sudo easily.

usermod -G vboxsf,oinstall,dba oracle
usermod -G vboxsf,oinstall,dba applmgr
usermod -G vboxsf,oinstall,dba,wheel jmorrow

Add Additional Volumes

This is where we bring in those additional disks that we created along with the Virtual Machine.

Create the volume for our Oracle Software Installation (/oracle)

# Create the volume
pvcreate /dev/sdb
vgcreate OracleVG /dev/sdb
lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n OracleLV OracleVG

# Put a filesystem on it
mkfs.xfs /dev/OracleVG/OracleLV

# Update /etc/fstab, create the mountpoint, and mount the volume
export BLKID=`blkid -o export /dev/OracleVG/OracleLV|grep "^UUID="|cut -f2 -d"="`

echo "UUID=${BLKID} /oracle/PROD xfs defaults 1 2" >>/etc/fstab
mkdir -p /oracle/PROD
mount /oracle/PROD

Create the volume for the Oracle Database (/oradata)

# Create the volume
pvcreate /dev/sdc
vgextend OracleVG /dev/sdc
lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n OradataLV OracleVG

# Put a filesystem on it
mkfs.xfs /dev/OracleVG/OradataLV

# Update /etc/fstab, create the mountpoint, and mount the volume
export BLKID=`blkid -o export /dev/OracleVG/OradataLV|grep "^UUID="|cut -f2 -d"="`
echo "UUID=${BLKID} /oradata/PROD xfs defaults 1 2" >>/etc/fstab
mkdir -p /oradata/PROD
mount /oradata/PROD

Create the volume for the Oracle Database Archivelogs (/oraarch)

# Create the volume
pvcreate /dev/sdd
vgextend OracleVG /dev/sdd
lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n OraarchLV OracleVG

# Put a filesystem on it
mkfs.xfs /dev/OracleVG/OraarchLV


# Update /etc/fstab, create the mountopint, and mount the volume
export BLKID=`blkid -o export /dev/OracleVG/OraarchLV|grep "^UUID="|cut -f2 -d"="`
echo "UUID=${BLKID} /oraarch/PROD xfs defaults 1 2" >>/etc/fstab
mkdir -p /oraarch/PROD
mount /oraarch/PROD

Update SELINUX

This will run for about 5 minutes (depending on your system).

fixfiles relabel 

Prepare the oraInventory

We’re going to pre-create the oraInventory to our preferences and so that ownership/permissions are correct.

echo "inst_group=dba" > /etc/oraInst.loc
echo "inventory_loc=/var/opt/oracle/oraInventory" >>/etc/oraInst.loc
mkdir -p /var/opt/oracle/oraInventory

Adjust Ownership & Permissions

chown -R oracle:oinstall /var/opt/oracle /etc/oraInst.loc
chmod u+rw,g+rw,o+r /etc/oraInst.loc

chown -R oracle:dba /oracle/PROD /oradata/PROD /oraarch/PROD
chmod -R u+rwX,g+rwX,o+rX /var/opt/oracle /oracle/PROD

Update /etc/hosts

Oracle E-Business Suite requires that the entry for this host is formatted as such:

<IP Address> <hostname.domainname> <hostname>

Determine your IP address (ip addr show) and assign that to the IPADDR variable. For the purpose of illustration, we’re going to use 192.168.1.100.

export IPADDR=
echo "${IPADDR} `hostname` `hostname -s`" >> /etc/hosts
cd /usr/lib
ln -s libXm.so.4.0.4 libXm.so.2

And that’s it. The operating system is prepared.

For our next post, we’ll build the staging area and perform the Fresh Installation of Oracle E-Business Suite R12.2.11 and RDBMS 12cR1.

To be continued…

Sometimes it’s the little things (Oracle Multitenant)

One of the simpler things that we tend to do in Oracle is run a query to determine which database we’re actually attached to. Maybe we want to display that on a screen or in a report, maybe we have logic to prevent something from running against production (or to only run it in production).

That query is typically either

select name from v$database;

or

select instance_name from v$instance;

HOWEVER. When you’re in a multitenant database, neither of those queries will return the value you expect. In both cases, they will return the name of the CDB (container database), and you’re probably going to be expecting the name of the PDB (pluggable database) instead.

There may be several ways to get this, but from the documentation I’ve seen, the preferred query is:

select sys_context('USERENV','CON_NAME') from dual;

Updating the Context File

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted… one of the things that I’ve been playing with lately is the E-Business Suite R12.2.10 VISION Appliance. For those that don’t know, you can download an actual Oracle VirtualBox VM image from E-Delivery with EBS R12.2.10 VISION, a 19c Database, and a configured operating system… See MOS 2717713.1 for the details.

Anyway, I was looking at this image and found a bit of code that they’re using to make changes to values in the context file. I’ve put it together in a simple script here:

The first argument is the context file you want to edit.

The second argument is the token you want to update (“s_dbSid”, for example)

The third is the value you want to assign that token (“TEST”, for example).


10-Nov-2023 – UPDATE: I’ve updated this post to include a version that should work on either the R12.1 or R12.2 appsTier.

Minimal Installation of Oracle Enterprise Linux 7 on VirtualBox

This instructional video covers the installation of Oracle Enterprise Linux 7 on a VirtualBox VM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKvbPL2pkfM

We will use this installation as a starting point for future videos including: Installation of Oracle Server 19c, Installation of Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.9, and others.

During the video, I deploy a quick script to list the packages installed. That script is available below:

#!/bin/bash
rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE} (%{ARCH})\n"


Passing Variables to EBS Start Scripts (without having them show up in the environment)

In earlier releases of Oracle E-Business Suite, many of the standard startup/shutdown scripts would accept a password as a command-line argument.  This gave us the ability to automate and/or script certain maintenance tasks.

E-Business Suite R12.1.3

In E-Business Suite R12.1.3, for example, you could start the appsTier with the following:

cd ${ADMIN_SCRIPTS_HOME}

./adstrtal.sh apps/${APPSPW}

E-Business Suite R12.2

When we get to E-Business Suite R12.2, the startup procedure is pretty much the same, but the command line arguments are no longer there.  To get around this, we’re told to pass things on the command line u sing the echo command.  Per MOS 1902776.1, the recommendation is:

cd ${ADMIN_SCRIPTS_HOME}

{ echo "APPS" ; echo ${APPSPW} ; echo ${WLADMINPW} ; }|\
./adstrtal.sh @ -nopromptmsg

Although the command line is complicated, it works well. 

The Problem

However, the variables that are set will persist in the Unix environment of the adstrtal.sh script (and all processes that is spawns).

Test Script

So, to figure this out (and test our approaches), we have this simple test script:

#!/bin/bash
echo -e "\n--------------------------------------------------\n"
echo -e "Variables:\n"
echo -e "\tAPPSPW:  ${APPSPW}"
echo -e "\tAPPSUN:  ${APPSUN}\n"

echo -e "Full ENV DUMP in /tmp/env.txt"
echo -e "Searching through /tmp/env.txt for APPSUN and APPSPW"
echo -e "\n--------------------------------------------------\n"
env >/tmp/env.txt

grep "APPSPW\|APPSUN" /tmp/env.txt
echo -e "\n--------------------------------------------------\n"

We can set these variables and run the script normally:

{ echo ${APPSUN} ; echo ${APPSPW} ; }|./test.sh

--------------------------------------------------

Variables:

   APPSPW:  appspw
   APPSUN:  apps

Full ENV DUMP in /tmp/env.txt
Searching through /tmp/env.txt for APPSUN and APPSPW

--------------------------------------------------

APPSPW=appspw
APPSUN=apps

--------------------------------------------------

As you can see, the ${APPSUN} and ${APPSPW} variables are in the text file.

However, when we run the script with a different command line, we get a different result.

{ echo ${APPSUN} ; echo ${APPSPW} ; }|env -u APPSPW bash ./test.sh

--------------------------------------------------

Variables:

   APPSPW: 
   APPSUN:  apps

Full ENV DUMP in /tmp/env.txt
Searching through /tmp/env.txt for APPSUN and APPSPW

--------------------------------------------------

APPSUN=apps

--------------------------------------------------

The Solution

To get around that problem, we can actually DELETE the variables from the environment.

cd ${ADMIN_SCRIPTS_HOME}

{ echo "APPS" ; echo ${APPSPW} ; echo ${WLADMINPW} ; }|\
 env -u APPSPW -u SYSTEMPW -U WLADMINPW bash ./adstrtal.sh @ -nopromptmsg

The command line is even uglier. We still have ${APPSPW}, ${SYSTEMPW}, and ${WLADMINPW} in our shell, but, those variables are not inherited by the running EBS processes.

A Lifeline for EBS Customers Still on RDBMS 11gR2 and 12cR1

Yesterday, the Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group made a couple of very significant announcements for E-Business Suite customers.

  • RDBMS 12cR1 (12.1.0.2) Extended Support is available through July 31, 2022
  • The Extended Support fees have been waived for 12cR1 databases used for E-Business Suite through July 31, 2022.  [Previously, December 2020]
  • RDBMS 11gR2 (11.2.0.4) Extended Support is available through December 31, 2020.
  • The Extended Support fees have been waived for 11gR2 databases used for E-Busines Suite through December 31, 2020.

The current certified versions of the Oracle RDBMS for use with E-Business Suite R12.1 and R12.2 include 11gR2, 12cR1, and 19c.

If you’re on 12cR1, you should upgrade to 19c as soon as reasonably possible.
If you’re on 11gR2, you too, should upgrade to 19c as soon as reasonably possible..  You could upgrade to 12.1.0.2, but you would be forcing yourself into another upgrade (to 19c) pretty soon.

The Oracle Server group has switched to a “yearly” release schedule.  So, sometime during 2020, there should be an “Oracle RDBMS 20c” and, sometime in 2021, we should expect an “Oracle RDBMS 21c”.

However, given that it takes a while to certify the database against E-Business Suite on the variety of platforms that are necessary, the E-Business Suite team has indicated their intention to certify on every other release.  Also important is that the certification for E-Business Suite tends to lag the database release by at least 6 months.  So, that means that the next certified release of the Oracle RDBMS for E-Business Suite should be RDBMS 21c and you might not see that certification until late in 2021.

So, if you choose to wait for the next release, you may find yourself praying for another extension… which is increasingly unlikely.

— James

Windows 10 and E-Business Suite

Tomorrow (July 29, 2015) we will see the release of Windows 10 into the wild.  PC’s all over the world that aren’t under “enterprise control” have been signing up to download the update through Microsoft’s “Windows Update” delivery mechanism and it is “going to drop” on July 29th, 2015.

For us (E-Business Suite DBAs) there should be at least some level of concern.

Because they are using this mechanism, this will likely be the largest mass deployment of software that anyone has witnessed.  Also, due to the delivery method, I would expect that Windows 10 uptake will significantly surpass any other Windows roll-out in history.

Remember, with previous Windows upgrades, you either had to go out and purchase the software or you got it when you acquired a new laptop.  This meant that, with few exceptions, those of us who have to deal with these changes at least had some breathing room before we really felt it.

Beginning tomorrow, however, anyone with a licensed copy of Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8, or Windows 8.1, could potentially upgrade to Windows 10.  While this really isn’t a concern for most corporate PC’s (where software updates/upgrades are managed by the centralized IT department), if you’re on a project where users and/or consultants have “unmanaged” PCs, you could encounter some questions.

The first thing you need to know is that, of course, nothing about Windows 10 has been officially “certified” by anyone at Oracle yet.  So, you could always stand behind that statement.  And, certainly, if your IT department is even considering rolling out Windows 10 to anyone, they should wait until that certification information is released.

Now, for those of you who are just wondering, does it even work?  The answer is, yes, it appears to… but there are a few things you should know.

First, Windows 10 ships with a new minimalistic browser called “Microsoft Edge” (also known as “Project Spartan”).  The browser works pretty well and the interface is clean, which is nice.  But, Microsoft Edge doesn’t support plug-ins (specifically, it no longer supports Active-X).   This means that you will be unable to launch Java from the Edge browser which, in turn, means that you won’t be able to launch Oracle Forms from within E-Business Suite.

But, never fear.  Windows 10 also ships with Internet Explorer 11, which is certified in many E-Business Suite configurations.  I performed some rather limited testing (log into R12.1.3, launch forms, basic navigation) using a recent pre-release version of Windows 10 (x86-64, build 10301) and Java JRE 1.8.0_51 (32-bit) and everything appears to function without much issue.  Obviously, this was far from a complete test and I wouldn’t go into production with it.  Fortunately, since Oracle has already certified Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7 and 8.1 (notably, not Windows 8) with EBS, I doubt that certification for IE11+EBS+Windows 10 will find too many problems.

So, the long and short of it is, should you encounter that Windows 10 early adopter, they should have some luck using Internet Explorer 11 (assuming that you’re patched up to support it per MOS 389422.1, of course).    Of course, should the user be technically inclined and still want to remain an early adopter, I strongly recommend running an older version of Windows (Windows XP or Windows 7) in a VirtualBox VM.   It’s a great way to be current and still be able to use some of the really old tools.  (Workflow Builder, anyone?)

— James