ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE R12.2

FROM A TO Z

A White Paper prepared by IT Convergence presented at Collaborate 14

Author

Gustavo Gonzalez Chief Technology Officer, IT Convergence

Copyright

IT Convergence, February 2014

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................... 3

The E-Business Suite Pillars of Innovation in Release 12.2...................................................................................................... 3

Overview of Major Technology Changes .................................................................................................................................. 5

Introduction to Online Patching ................................................................................................................................................. 7

Online Patching in Action .......................................................................................................................................................... 7

How to Assess the Technical Changes on Customs or Extensions for R12.2 ........................................................................ 10

Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................................................. 11

Put our Experience to Work for You ........................................................................................................................................ 13

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Introduction

This whitepaper takes you behind the scenes of a Beta Tester Program for an Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2

upgrade that included modules from the following families: Financial, HRMS, CRM, and Project. The project also

covered 50 customizations migrated during the upgrade, fostering further R12 innovations by sharing the lessons

learned during this project.

This initiative is part of IT Convergence’s larger commitment to support Oracle’s technology by investing in new

products. It is also aligned with our policy of “Taking Our Own Medicine”, which means that the company uses internally

the same Oracle solutions that it provides to its clients. ITC adopted this strategy to consolidate its business system into

a central Oracle E-Business Suite platform, and adopted Fusion Applications to extend the functions, simplify reporting

and improve business processes.

“Taking our Own Medicine” helps us better understand our client’s needs and deliver improved service. ITC began

implementing the Oracle E-Business Suite in 2004 with core Financials, followed by a global rollout of Oracle HRMS and

Oracle Portal in 2005. Later on we added Oracle Project Resource Management in 2006 and Oracle Telesales in 2007,

our final implementation that year being Oracle Project Management. In 2009, IT Convergence was one of the first

organizations to go live with Release 12 and afterwards implemented Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition

and BI Apps for E-Business Suite.

Figure 1: IT Convergence’s Oracle investment

Worldwide, IT Convergence operates in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Singapore, China, India and Brazil.

Having operations distributed around the globe has helped us recognize the value of the major feature of Release 12.2:

minimizing downtime to minutes, which decreases maintenance costs stemming from our IT Department and increases

value for our internal customers.

The E-Business Suite Pillars of Innovation in Release 12.2

This new release of Oracle E-Business Suite (made generally available in September) has three big pillars: Technology

Innovation, Functional Innovations and Modern User Experience.

Some of the changes introduced on technology innovation are:

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Oracle Database 11gR2 (11.2.0.3): Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 requires Oracle Database 11gR2 Version

11.2.0.3. It is recommended to upgrade to this release as soon as possible to be prepared, since it is certified for

11i and R12 releases.

Online Patching: without a doubt, this is “the” feature for this new release. The architecture of Release 12.2

allows for patches to be applied while users are transacting in the system (with minor functions disabled). A variety

of Oracle tools will report customizations and/or extensions that are not compliant with online patching.

Oracle WebLogic Server (Fusion Middleware 11g): Oracle Containers for Java (OC4J) is replaced with Oracle

WebLogic Server. This brings comprehensive changes to Oracle E-Business Suite installation, cloning,

configuration, deployment, and system administration tools and procedures.

Oracle Access Manager 11g: Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 is certified to work only with Oracle Access Manager

11gR1. Oracle E-Business Suite environments that are already integrated with Oracle Single Sign-On must be

migrated to Oracle Access Manager 11gR1 Version 11.1.1.5.

Regarding the Functional innovations, we can mention:

ORACLE FINANCIALS

ORACLE PROJECTS

ORACLE PURCHASING

ORACLE PAYROLL AND ORACLE TIME AND LABOR

ORACLE ORDER MANAGEMENT

ORACLE INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

ORACLE WAREHOUSE MANAGEMENT

Integration with Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub and Oracle Data Relationship Management.

New tax rule Operators

Ability to schedule AP/AR Netting Batch Program

New Legislative & regulatory updates for many countries

Costing using HR rates or using Payroll actuals

Total Time Reporting for Exempt Employees

Parallel approvals

Improved Supplier User Interface Registration

Simplified functions for local payroll administrators

Allow update person with future person type changes

Selling subscriptions

Enhanced Billing for Extended Warranty.

New Lot Allocation

Distributed WMS integration with R12

Streamlined mobile user interfaces, enhanced managerial workbenches, improved catch-weight functionality and better extensibility supports greater fulfillment flexibility.

Finally, the modern user experience in E-Business Suite Release 12.2.3 brings:

Skyros Look-and-feel

Worklist Header Icon

Certification of iPad access to EBS Self-Service (iExpense, HR Self Service, Time and Labor, etc.)

Native mobile applications (Mobile Field Service, Maintenance, etc.)

Oracle Business Intelligence Mobile.

Flexfield Value Set Security Enhanced Setup

Advanced Password Hashing

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Overview of Major Technology Changes

From a technology perspective, changes in Release 12.2 are significant, so the project team should consider and study

them prior to planning the upgrade.

One of the first changes in Release 12.2 that E-Business Suite Applications’ DBAs will see is the change in the

application Tier ORACLE_HOMEs.

This new version uses two-application tier ORACLE_HOMEs to take advantage of the latest Oracle technologies:

An OracleAS 10.1.2 ORACLE_HOME that was used in previous 12.x releases.

An Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW) ORACLE_HOME that supports Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS) and

supersedes the Java (OracleAS 10.1.3) ORACLE_HOME that was used in previous releases.

Figure 2: Release 12.2 ORACLE_HOMEs

Another important change, which will impact organizations leveraging web services, is the architecture. If your

organization is already in R12.1.3, R12.2 will also have an impact on architecture, as shown on Figure 3.

Figure 3: Release 12.2 Introduction of Weblogic Server and changes on webservices

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The Web services component of Oracle Application Server processes requests received over the network from the

desktop clients, and includes the following major components:

Web Listener (Oracle HTTP Server powered by Apache)

Java Servlet Engine (Oracle WebLogic Server, WLS)

The Web Listener component of the Oracle HTTP server accepts incoming HTTP requests (for particular URLs)

from client browsers, and routes the requests to WLS.

The online patching mechanism uses a dual file system. At any given time, one file system (designated 'run') is part of

the running system, while the other (designated 'patch') is either having patches applied or stands by for patch

application. The two file systems are often referred to as fs1 and fs2.

Apart from fs1 and fs2, it is necessary to have a non-editioned file system (fs_ne) to store files containing data needed

across all file systems.

Figure 4: Dual File System in Release 12.2

The Editioned-Based Redefinition (EBR) feature of the database version 11gR2, along with the changes introduced in

the application technology make it possible to avoid one of the biggest challenges for every IT department running E-

Business Suite: the downtime.

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Over the years, applying a patch required setting the application into maintenance mode. The EBR feature on the

database allows for multiple editions, meaning that a new DB edition is created as a child of an existing edition. In case

there are changes, they can be done in the child edition while the parent will remain available. This is key for patching,

since it allows users to work with E-Business Suite while changes are made to the new edition.

EBR allows an application's database objects to be changed without interrupting the application's availability. For

example, an Oracle E-Business Suite patch can be applied while users are logged in and active.

Key objects used by EBR include:

Editioning views, which expose a different projection of a changed table to each edition, allowing each to see only

its own columns.

Cross-edition triggers, which propagate data changes made by the old edition into the columns of the new edition,

which subsequently replaces the old edition.

Introduction to Online Patching

As of today, patching requires a single logical operation, which demands assigning all hardware resources to the

process.

Online patching is a series of steps that include various changes to the E-Business Suite infrastructure, while allowing

users to work with the application (with certain known limitations).

THE HIGH-LEVEL STEPS ARE:

1. Making a copy of the code of the running system,which resides in both the file system and database.

2. Applying patches to the copy while users continue to access the running system.

3. Turning the copy into the new running system.

4. Recycling the original running system (now obsolete) to use in future patching cycles.

THE THREE TYPES OF DATABASE EDITION LEVERAGING THE EBR FEATURE ARE:

Run: Online users connect to this edition, which is the default database edition. The Run edition will always exist.

Patch: Patching tools connect to this edition. A child of the Run edition, the Patch edition exists only while a

patching cycle is in progress.

Old: When a Patch edition is upgraded to be the Run edition, the previous Run edition is now regarded as an Old

edition. There may be zero or more Old editions at a given time. They are discarded when a full cleanup is

performed.

Online Patching in Action

If you are familiar with E-Business Suite, you probably realize the database EBR feature cannot work alone, since the

application comprises both code and data, stored in the database and the file system.

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To understand this, a key concept is viewing the edition as a copy of the application code: the running application

executes on the Run edition, while any patching activity takes place in the Patch edition. The implementation strategy

relies on the new Edition-Based Redefinition feature for database code, and uses a dual file system approach for code

on the file system.

In E-Business Suite 12.2 there’s going to be two file systems at all times. One will be the Run edition, which is the one

being used by the running application, while the second file system will be the Patch edition, that is either being patched

or awaiting the next online patching cycle. These file systems will be switching roles in every online patching cycle.

The database level is different since the Run edition and Patch edition will not be switching roles, because the patch

edition only comes into existence during a patching cycle and becomes the new run edition at the end of the cycle. The

former database Run edition (the Old edition) and the obsolete objects it contains are discarded at the end of an online

patching cycle, and the space is reclaimed during the cleanup phase.

The key actions in the various stages of the online patching cycle can be summarized as follows:

PREPARE

Synchronizes Patch edition and Run edition on the file system.

Creates a new Patch edition in the database.

APPLY

Executes patch drivers to update Patch edition.

Patches applied: can be one or many, including customizations.

FINALIZE

Compiles invalid objects.

Generates derived objects.

Cuts over to patch edition of the file system.

Cuts over to patch edition of database.

Restarts application tier services.

CLEANUP

Delete obsolete code and seed data to recover space.

Cutover

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Figure 5: Release 12.2 online patching phases

The dual file system approach provides for application code, but applications also use the file system to read and write

business data. In Release 12.2, application data files are stored in a third area called the “non-editioned file system”

(fs_ne), which is used to store data that is needed across all file systems. Non-editioned files are neither copied nor

moved during patching: their location remains constant across online patching cycles.

The non-editioned file system is therefore completely separate from file system 1 (fs1) and file system 2 (fs2).

Figure 6: Release 12.2 online patching changes during the phases

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EBR automatically manages versioning of objects that support editioning, such as code objects. However, not all objects

can be editioned: most notably, transactional data, of which there is only one copy.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 introduces the logical view of the data model via editioning views. This new

concept isolates the running application from changes to the data model that may be introduced through a patch. Any

data model change is implemented as a new column on the table, which is only exposed to the Patch edition through the

editioning view. This same concept applies to the introduction of new tables to the model.

Prior releases of E-Business Suite used synonyms to reference tables in order to layer the different views of the data. In

Release 12.2 there is a new object called “cross-edition trigger”, which provides the logic to synchronize data across

different editions as part of the online patching.

Due to changes in the architecture, every organization must access E-Business Suite through the editioning views

(cover layer or logical representation). Any access directly to the physical layer of the data model may result in obsolete

data being displayed. This is one of the most important aspects to take into consideration when upgrading to Release

12.2 and will be explained in detail in the next section.

Figure 7: Release 12.2 Logical View of the physical data

How to Assess the Technical Changes on Customs or Extensions for R12.2

As part of the Release 12.2 upgrade, Oracle provides multiple tools to help ensure a successful process. One of them is

called “Readiness Reports”. This tool will help identify the database components in your environment (for Release 11i,

12.0, or 12.1) that need updating in preparation for Release 12.2.

SUMMARY SQL SCRIPT

Provides a summary of the schemas that will be editioned and also the schemas with objects that depend on Oracle E-

Business Suite code that are recommended to be editioned.

MANUAL FIXES SQL SCRIPT

Lists objects with different categories of violations to EBR rules that must be fixed prior to running the enablement

process to prevent errors.

AUTOMATIC FIXES SQL SCRIPT

This report lists all the objects with violations to the EBR rules that will be fixed automatically during the enablement

process.

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The output of these reports will define as “database object’s violations” those objects that fall into these categories:

Violations fixed automatically by the online patching enablement patch

Violations that require a manual fix

Conclusion

One of the main things to consider is the opportunity that online patching will bring to your business. Over the years

many global organizations, such as IT Convergence, have consolidated their ERP into a global single instance. Adding

operating units around the globe makes it very difficult to find a downtime window that does not impact a business

operation.

On top of that, it is necessary to have outages for:

Major Release Updates

Maintenance Rollups (RUPs)

Critical Patch Updates (CPUs)

Legislative and Regulatory Updates

When multiple outages occur during a year, the business management becomes reluctant to accept upgrades or new

features due to downtime costs. This situation certainly creates difficulties between IT experts, who are trying to stay up-

to-date with the version, and business users.

Release 12.2 and online patching are helping IT organizations negotiate downtimes much more easily and clearly

identify the time the process will take. It is very common to test a patch – yes, in R12.2 you will still have to test patch

applications – in QA instance and later on, during the production application, find the patch takes longer than expected

and you have to communicate the outage delay to business users.

From an R12.2 upgrade perspective, the tools provided by Oracle do help. Scripts that can automatically identify and fix

most of the compliance issues in EBS code are indeed helpful. Same applies to determining some customized objects

and providing scripts to make them compliant.

Because of the logical view of the data model that is applied, to guarantee a proper upgrade it is critical to ensure that

customs, extensions and third party systems integrated to E-Business Suite use this access to the physical data model.

Using standards and best practices is always helpful for the future.

EDITIONABLE OBJECTS ARE THOSE THAT DO NOT CONTAIN DATA:

Views (ordinary, not materialized)

PL/SQL code

Synonyms

User Types

Virtual Private Database Policies

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OBJECTS THAT INCLUDE DATA ARE NOT EDITIONABLE:

Tables

Temporary Tables

Indexes

Materialized Views

Sequences

Database links

Based on that information we can assume that any code dynamically generated through dynamic plsql is not supported

in Release 12.2, so programs that generate dynamic code must be disabled during online patch application.

ALSO BEAR IN MIND THAT NON-EDITIONED OBJECTS CANNOT DEPEND ON AN EDITIONED OBJECT:

A public synonym cannot refer to an editioned object

A function-based index cannot depend on an editioned function

A materialized view cannot depend on an editioned view

A table cannot have a column of a user-defined type whose owner is editions-enabled

A noneditioned subprogram cannot have a static reference to a subprogram whose owner is editions-enabled

In this case, the online patching “cut-over phase” will remain consistent for every environment since it is the process of

shutting down and starting up every service. In multiple tests, it took IT Convergence around 30-35 minutes of real

downtime for the cut-over phase.

Another important aspect is that prior to Release 12, resources were always assigned to the patch that was being

applied. For example, once the system was down every resource was assigned to make the process run faster. With

online patching, users can enter transactions and run the application while the patch is being applied.

The upgrade to Release 12.2 cannot be done online, but any application patch after your environment is on Release

12.2 will be, and will require using the new patching tool (ADOP).

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Figure 8: Proposed decision tree to select which version you should go

Even though it is possible to upgrade from 11.5.10.2, R12.0.X, R12.1.X to Release 12.2, we do not recommend

abandoning your R12.1.3 upgrade project if you are planning or have already started one. The reason behind our

recommendation is that major functionality and business changes take place during the upgrade from 11i to R12, and

the upgrade to R12.2 will be mainly technical.

Illustration 1 shows a decision tree that suggests with simple questions what the recommended path is for selecting your

E-Business Suite release. As time goes by, the question “Do you prefer a release with 1,000’s customers running it?” will

become out of date, since Release 12.2 is actively being selected by many organizations.

Put our Experience to Work for You

It is clear that Oracle’s announcement of the general availability of Release 12.2 raised many questions for E-Business

Suite users all around the globe.

IT Convergence was one of the few select companies Oracle chose to take part in their R12.2 Beta Testing Program.

We made the commitment to invest the time and resources needed to support Oracle Development of R12.2 Beta

Release not only because of the remarkable value that R12.2's benefits will deliver (Online patching, ENDECA,

Workflow enhancements and Mobile Apps), but also because we strongly believe that first-hand experience makes us a

better Oracle Service Provider, giving us the chance to leverage our knowledge for the benefit of our clients.

For more information on R12.2, check out our Blog entries or contact us at 1-800-675-0032 today.

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LEGAL DISCLAIMER:

The information contained herein should be deemed reliable but not guaranteed. The author has made every attempt to provide current and

accurate information. If you have any comments or suggestions, please contact us: info@itconvergence.com.

IT Convergence White Paper:

Oracle E-Business Suite R12.2 from A

to Z – February 2014

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