Wednesday, December 31, 2014

The 10 days of Blogging past - 2014 Edition: Day 10

As I conclude "The 10 days of Blogging past" feature today with the article "R12 Payables: Invoice Workbench error APP-SQLAP-10108 when committing" that was posted just 9 short months ago but already has rocketed up to the top spot with 545 views!  It goes without saying that this post was the top for the year of 2014 as well too!  What did we cover last year on this day?  It was "Database FLASH exhaustion" that had an amazing (at that time) 170 views and it is very interesting that the past few days we have seen a drop off from the 5:1 ratio to this being just above a 3:1 ratio comparing last year with this year.

What will next year look like during our end of year review?  I do not rightly know, but it is awesome to see that 5:1 ratio discussed over the last few days reflected in the overall stats for the blog as I ended 2013 just under 8,000 views and 2014 sees the pageviews up over 40,000!

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

The 10 days of Blogging past - 2014 Edition: Day 9

Getting almost completed with "The 10 days of Blogging past" today we review the post "What happens when your Concurrent Manager goes crazy?" which has been online for only 15 months but has gathered a massive 496 views.  This shows me that even established technology like the Concurrent Manager can experience changes and the amount of details included in the post help to piece together some things that could be classified as mysteries if the post was not around to be searched on.  Contrasting the article that was covered on Day 9 last year, "Concurrent:Active Request Limit (or how I finally learned to know what my system was saying)" that was around about 16 months and had 126 views which only reaches a 4:1 ratio comparing that last 2 years.  Again, if we just think about what would have been in my top 10 for just posts from 2014 we would have "R12: Hiding the DQM Serial Sync Index Program" listed instead with 436 views and I am sure you noticed this was the post spotlighted on Day 7 of "The 10 days of Blogging past"!

Monday, December 29, 2014

The 10 days of Blogging past - 2014 Edition: Day 8

The post "Disconnected Concurrent Manager" with 446 views may look familiar if you have been reading the last few days during "The 10 days of Blogging past" as it was featured on Day 2 from being 8th overall last year.  I would say it is obvious from the popularity of this post that other people and companies have network outages or other issues that wreck havoc with their EBS application from time to time.  Last year we had the post "duration not active: A Tale of Two Articles" with 91 views and while a bit under, it is very close to the magic 5:1 post ratio!  Speaking of flashbacks during "The 10 days of Blogging past", I covered "ASM Alert: RAC ASM disk offline after rebalance" on Day 5 this year since it was 6th overall blog posts but would have been 3rd overall for 2014 blog posts.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

The 10 days of Blogging past - 2014 Edition: Day 7

Continuing "The 10 days of Blogging past" we find article "R12: Hiding the DQM Serial Sync Index Program" on Day 7 with 436 page hits which meets our 5:1 ratio between the article covered last year on this day "Learning more about DBA_ALERT_HISTORY" that had 86 views.  This year's article is yet another instance of an unintended "feature" of R12 which likely has caught a lot of other Support individuals off guard so it is quite exciting to be leading the charge to shine light on these dark corners of the application!

How does this compare to last year?  Well the post "R12: Problem with Expense Report Export Program" would have the 4th highest hits of 2014 with 311 views and if it seems familiar to you that could be it was listed on Day 2 of the "The 10 days of Blogging past" feature just a few days ago!

Saturday, December 27, 2014

The 10 days of Blogging past - 2014 Edition: Day 6

On the other side of halfway for "The 10 days of Blogging past" we visit the post "R12: Application server craziness" which continues the trend we have been seeing with R12 ruling the top 10 lists this year and last.  While it was not the first issue I found with R12, it was the first problem I had with R12 in our PROD environment, and from the 404 views it has received since I am guessing other people have had a problem with this in their implementations as well!  As stated, R12 rules around the blog lately and it continues with "EBS R12.2.4 Release Notes" that would have been in this spot with 269 views if we were focusing on just 2014 posts.  Compared to last year's post the article "Concurrent Manager holding lock on a report" held down the spot on Day 6 with 82 views which is almost dead on the mark for the 5:1 ratio that I have been mentioning all during this feature comparing the last 2 years.

Friday, December 26, 2014

The 10 days of Blogging past - 2014 Edition: Day 5

Tonight we continue "The 10 days of Blogging past" after yesterday's Christmas article with "ASM Alert: RAC ASM disk offline after rebalance" with 363 page views!  This was one of those articles where I was able to find references on My Oracle Support which corresponded to something that had just happened at work so not only did it make more sense to me about that incident, but what I found could help us (and everybody else) avoid future issues!

If we counted just the posts from this year, we would have "R12: FND_LOG_MESSAGES" in our countdown today with only 218 views.  I thought it was pretty interesting that this post did not get more hits, because it seems like EVERY implementation of R12 is going to have this bloat and later on in the year I found more reason that this table needs a lot of attention!  While on the list last year in this spot we had "Supplier issue in Expense Report Import" with 81 views and while you can see there is a drop off from the 5:1 ratio, it is still up there around that range.

Thursday, December 25, 2014

The 10 days of Blogging past - 2014 Edition: Day 4

In today's Christmas edition of "The 10 days of Blogging past", we cover the article "Database FLASH exhaustion" with 359 hits!  This compares to last year when it was the TOP article for the blog last year with 170 views but again if we were just comparing this year it would be the post "Hotsos Symposium 2014 - Day 1" that would take this spot on our list with 205 views!  This is awesome because it is another example of how much presenting at conferences can enhance your "brand value" or just general recognition in the blogging ecosystem and I know that I have been getting more views as a result of each opportunity I get to present!

Last year in this spot we had "Your Oracle DB not playing nice with Hyperion products" from mid 2013 with only 72 views and again we see an almost 5:1 ratio between the entries on this list from last year and this year.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

The 10 days of Blogging past - 2014 Edition: Day 3

As we continue on our feature "The 10 days of Blogging past" day 3 brings us the post "R12: Bouncing Workflow agent process" with 358 since it was posted in 2013.  This was not on the top 10 list last year, but it skyrocketed up the charts because I think this showcased a clear change in Support operations from the previous EBS version to R12 so a lot of other people were probably blindsided by this too.  This also continues a theme I posted about yesterday where changes in R12 are driving a lot of traffic to the blog as the 3rd entry in our list last year was "System Wait Events Part 2" with just 71 views.

If we count just this year, we continue the same trend of R12 ruling all as the entry "R12: Changes in GL_DAILY_RATES table" was a very simple update but it would have been listed today on the top 10 list of 2014 as it has received 201 hits since May!  This is an average of around 30 hits a month which you can see is roughly 1 hit per day since it was posted.  I have already learned that R12 seems to be very popular around here, but this also shows me that even the smallest changes can have a ripple effect out there in the community since there could be a lot of reasons this is impacting people and information is really important to spread out into the ecosystem!

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

The 10 days of Blogging past - 2014 Edition: Day 2

Continuing the 2014 edition of "The 10 days of Blogging past" we have today the blog post "R12: Problem with Expense Report Export Program" having 316 views already this year with it being put online February 2014!  What did I take away from this post, and the success of it?  There are a lot of R12 features (or bugs) which have not been shaken out of our system, and that a lot of other people are interested in!  Why so much interest?  Are people searching for potential problems ahead of implementation, are they encountering the bugs live like we are here, or is there a combination of both?  Just as with some of the new things I find with recent upgrades like NFS, Exadata, or 11.2.0.3, R12 is no different with the larger community pooling our resources and always searching out other solutions or problems that have been identified. 

Last year on the top 10, we had the post "Disconnected Concurrent Manager" with just 61 views so you can see a continued trend of more traffic to the blog this year but if we were measuring just 2014 posts then the article "Purge Inactive Sessions and HWM expectations" would be on our second day with 199 views.  This post was the result of some investigation on my part in QA about what I wanted to do in PROD, related to what my expectations were regarding how I thought purging data out and the HWM (High Water Mark) would be interacting.  It was really interesting because things did not happen the way I expected them to so I had a lot to say in the post as I learned quite a bit and obviously I think others are dealing with high volumes related to inactive sessions too!

Monday, December 22, 2014

The 10 days of Blogging past - 2014 Edition: Day 1

This year I am going to dust off my top 10 posts review feature "The 10 days of Blogging past", and 289 views gets the article "Concurrent:Active Request Limit (or how I finally learned to know what my system was saying)" as the first post, which is LAST place, on the top 10 list for 2014!  How does this compare to last year?  Well last year the top post of the year had only 170 views with this post being number 7 on the top 10 with just 126 views!  This post was a good learning lesson to start writing down even "simple" things I was running into on a daily basis, which also led me to stop taking things for granted and start researching these types of items.

What was the last post on the top 10 list last year?  I am glad you asked!  It was "Purging concurrent and Fixed Assets" and had only 60 views, so you can see how far the blog has come if there is an almost 5 time increase in page hits for #10 on the list last year compared to this year.

Speaking of this year, what was #10 on the list if I just had counted posts done this year?  The article "Selecting from too many tables hits Oracle DB bug on 11.2.0.3" would have taken the cake with 176 hits this year!  What is my take away from this article being on the pseudo top 10?  The famous ORA-600 error message either attracted a lot of attention, a lot of other people had the same idea I had to select from too many tables, or maybe people are upgrading to 11.2.03 and looking for future bugs.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle Purchasing - Information Center

Take this opportunity to visit My Oracle Support to bookmark "Information Center: Purchasing" located via document ID 1391694.2 so you can get webcasts, search helper assistants, FAQ, feature reviews, business processes and all the news and announcements which you need to stay on top of all the Oracle EBS issues for the Purchasing module!

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle General Ledger - Information Center

Do you want to learn more about Oracle GL?  Of course you do!  That means you want to bookmark the MOS document "Information Center: Oracle General Ledger" via article ID 1489229.2 to keep up to date on all issues related to GL with tabs on this Information Center even about performance tuning!

Friday, December 19, 2014

11.2.0.3: Gather stats job hangs due to parallel processing

While I did not actually post describing our issue (this post actually mentions the problem though) when we upgraded our DB to 11.2.0.3 on Exadata we ran into some serious issues as soon as we fired up all of our Gather Schema Statistics reports because of the parallelism that was enabled for the process.  Enter MOS note "Dbms_Stats.Gather_Table_Stats For a Table is Hanging With the Wait Event "PX Deq: Execute Reply"" via document ID 1946632.1 which sounds exactly the type of situation we had with our nodes conflicting with each other due to the parallel processing that was enabled!  Did we patch to fix the issue?  Nope, what we did was actually use the report parameter that gave us control over how many parallel processes would get spawned and then ran everything in a single Gather Schema Statistics report since we were on Exadata and had processing power to spare!

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Restarting Windows services and v$transaction

I am sure you are thinking "come on, what do I care about restarting a Windows service" or "I thought this was an Oracle blog" right?  Just hang with me for a minute and it will all make sense!  While we are Oracle technologists foremost, sometimes we need to get additional skills to enhance our primary skills and this is a great example of that.  Today I found myself referencing documentation from Microsoft's Technet because we have a Windows service that keeps a connection open to our database so the software can call our database when needed, and this is keeping a transaction open.  Why is that a problem?  We need to make sure that nothing in v$transaction is older than x days due to our restoration plans, but every x days our monitoring tells us about the old transaction from the Windows service and we have to manually restart the service.  Well, HAD to after using the "net stop" and "net start" commands in a batch file so we can create a scheduled task that bounces this service every night.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

R12: Reversal date has to be entered in WebADI journal that is not a reversal

Obviously the situation described in the title does not seem right, and the only reason it happens is because of a bug!  Document ID 1929245.1 on My Oracle Support directs you to the article "Your Reversal Date Must Be The Same As Or After Your Accounting Date Error" with all of the details on which patch you need for the BNE product depending on which R12 codeline you have installed.  Here is another testing scenario to add to our testing suite!

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Configuring notifications in OEM Grid Control

Hot on the heels of my article the other day, about opatch not applying to a RAC instance correctly, is another DBA focused document but there is a reason for that!  How do we get better at Support?  Learning about the system, and what tools are available to help us be more proactive are some great ways to advance your skills!  The document "How To Configure Notification Rules in Enterprise Manager Grid Control" located in My Oracle Support via note ID 429422.1 fits in both of those buckets!  Not only do we learn about OEM, but we learn what is important from Oracle's perspective to monitor about our systems!

Monday, December 15, 2014

Weblogic timeout settings and ORA-24761 rolled back transactions

Today MOS note "Java.sql.SQLException: ORA-24761: Transaction Rolled Back" from document ID 1572916.1 teaches us about the timeout settings for Weblogic and how they can prompt "ORA-24761: transaction rolled back" errors surrounding development when SQL statements are developed to be long running statements.  When you are helping to support new things going into WebLogic, make sure you ask about this!

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Weekend Learning: RAC patching skipping database defined as ORACLE_HOME

In a continued effort to expand what I might know in a Support role, or what the term even means, I have been keeping my eyes open for nuggets of information that I can add to leverage in the future.  Tonight the My Oracle Support article "Why "opatch auto" not patching RAC database ORACLE_HOME?" via note ID 1479651.1 is one such type of nugget as I typically do not get to look at patching (opatch), ORACLE_HOME, or even GI (Grid Infrastructure) so this is another sneak under the covers of what is happening "at the database level".

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Weekend Learning: R12 GL: Setup and usage of budgets and controls

Are you going to R12, or would you just like to know more about GL budgets and their associated controls?  If you answered yes to either of those, head on over to MOS to read document "Budgets and Budgetary Control - Setup and Usage" found via note ID 1928941.1 for all the details!  I think this is a great whitepaper that has been put together that not only uses visuals by the way of screenshots, but has an actual business scenario included that helps walk us through the whole thing!

Friday, December 12, 2014

Weekend Learning: InfiniBand interfaces

Are you running InfiniBand devices with your Oracle infrastructure?  Do you want to know a bit more about it, and problems that can arise?  Of course you do!  Look no further than My Oracle Support note "InfiniBand IPoIB Interfaces Down and IBSTAT Reports HCA Ports in INITIALIZING State" via document ID 1950483.1 which sounds a LOT like an issue we had with InfiniBand interfaces a few months ago, so I wonder if this is based off of our case!  Have you ever used the ibstat command?  Do you monitor /var/log/messages for potential issues?

Thursday, December 11, 2014

R12.2: Invalid PA objects after upgrade

From the title of MOS article "Invalid Objects after Upgrading to 12.2" in document ID 1953062.1 I thought that I would find a large list of objects or even important objects that were preventing an upgrade, but instead there are 2 tables prefaced with PA which are at issue here that do not seem to be holding up your upgrade at all.  Sure, if you want to use your system post upgrade you will have problems because of them being invalid, but it should be found in a TEST instance way before you hit PROD so it does not seem that horrible of a thing.  Read the article and follow the instructions to get the required patch from the Oracle Payroll team as it appears they have it locked down at the moment.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

11gR2: Issue with ORACLE.EXE on Windows BP 9 & 10

In fresh off the presses information, it does not come fresher than this!  Visit My Oracle Support document "ORACLE.EXE MEMORY LEAK ON 11204 WHEN PATCH BUNDLE 9 OR PATCH BUNDLE 10 HAS BEEN APPLIED" which was released today via article ID 1952786.1 and is very similar to an older article where Windows BP 28 was actually rescinded for 11.2.0.3!  If you are running Oracle 11.2.0.4 on Windows, you need to bookmark this note and check back often for updates/solutions because the cause is not known yet!

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

EM12c: Reports not running due to special character in password

I have told you about my adventures with passwords before, but today is a new type of issue!  Instead of the EBS application, the MOS document "EM 12c: Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control BIP Reports do not Execute if the User Login Password has a Special Character (like $)" found via note ID 1951651.1 is about encountering error messages when trying to view BI Publisher reports if the account has a special character in the password for the account.  Is that because special characters are not allowed?  Nope, they are perfectly valid characters but do not interact well with BI Publisher report output files!!

Monday, December 8, 2014

POODLE and Oracle Linux

Now you might be saying "hey you already showed us this document" but not only has it been updated in the last week, it has some new tools for our toolbox!  Revisit MOS article "ALERT - Mitigating the SSLv3 “POODLE” Vulnerability in Oracle Linux (CVE-2014-3566)" via note ID 1940202.1 and find out how to use command line checks to verify what SSL versions are being used!  Why is this useful?  Well what if you wanted to make one file that dials out to all your servers just to gather data about them?  It would be nice to know if they were potentially vulnerable to something like this, right?  Now you can if you run these commands!

Of course this also has detailed steps, patches, and setups required to turn off SSL for many different types of software!

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Weekend Learning: Block corruption in pre-12c DB versions

Out of a lot of error messages out there, I would think that the "ORA-01578: ORACLE data block corrupted" error is likely the most feared out there for DBAs (of course behind ORA-00600).  Do you want to find out more?  Read the long article "Handling Oracle Block Corruptions in Oracle7/8/8i/9i/10g/11g" on My Oracle Support via note ID 28814.1 to get all the details which also includes a lot of datafile related tables and errors that go into the alert log which are all potential candidates for proactive alerts going forward!

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Weekend Learning: R12 A/R Patching - Information Center

Do you want to stay up to date for A/R patching related information on EBS R12?  Then look no further than the MOS note "Information Center: R12 Critical, Rollup and Recommended Patches for Oracle Receivables (AR)" found through document ID 1433375.2 for all of the details you need!

Friday, December 5, 2014

Weekend Learning: PeopleTools and PeopleSoft lifetime support

Have you ever wondered what the official Oracle support timeline is for PeopleTools and what versions are supported on the various PeopleSoft line of applications?  If so, look no further than the My Oracle Support article "Lifetime Support Summary for PeopleSoft Releases" found at note ID 1348959.1 for the complete details!  Based on the title, I thought this article would tell me the support timeline for PeopleSoft applications as well, but it did not seem to have those details, so if you find it from this document please let me know how you found it!

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Personalizing the R12 login page

Were you aware that there is a profile option value you can change in order to personalize the login page for R12?  Read MOS document "How To Remove Links From R12.X Login Page?" from note ID 1939787.1 for the details on what profile option value it is, what it needs to be, and what the page looks like when it gets updated.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

R12.1.3 GL: GLTTRN performance issue

The document "R12 Translation Performance Issue - GLTTRN" in note ID 1623156.1 is a great example of what needs to be checked when you migrate EBS from 11i to the R12 platforms.  Indexes that existed in one version might not be applicable in the other due to the data and associated structure changes and here we can see that the GL_BALANCES_N2 index needs to be modified for optimal R12 usage.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

R12 Payables: Voiding payment cannot be done when void date is payment date

File the bug described in MOS note "R12: Unable To Void Payment Where Void Date Equals Payment Date" via article ID 1189693.1 under "found during good testing"!  It appears that a date value is being compared with a timestamp value, and because of this the internal validation fails so the payment cannot be voided.

Monday, December 1, 2014

Hyperion FDM Run-Time/error 91 resolutions

Why is My Oracle Support note "Financial Data Quality Management (FDM) Error "Run-Time error '91': Object Variable or With Block Variable Not Set"" found via document ID 1436909.1 so important to read?  Besides having more than 10 ways to address this type of error depending on your version and scenario?  Well apart from local user permissions causing the issues, you can also encounter this when service account passwords get changed.  Looking to rotate your passwords according to your policy?  Then you might want to learn about this issue beforehand!

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Weekend Learning: Payables Newsletter Archive

Have you ever wanted to know more about the Oracle EBS Payables module?  Then sign up for the Payables Newsletter after you browse the backlog of THREE years of articles by navigating to the MOS document "Payables Newsletter Archive" found via note ID 214.1!

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Weekend Learning: Root shell and safety

Did you know that changing the default shell for the root user can be extremely dangerous and if you do it wrong you need to boot off of CD-ROM?  Check out the MOS article "The safe way to change root's default shell" from document ID 1018012.1 so you do not totally toast your system by trying to set your preferences!

Friday, November 28, 2014

Weekend Learning: JMS queues and SOA suite

Have you ever wanted to learn about using a JMS queue for several different message types?  How about learning how this gets developed so that you can eventually support something like this?  Then Antony Reynolds' post is for you and has some great visuals too!

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Weekend Learning: OEM Patching 101

As some of us recover from turkey induced comas, let me share with you a post from Courtney Llamas from the Oracle OEM blog about patching.  Maybe being in a support type role, you may not have to support OEM, but there is a chance you have some level of access in the tool so you may want to know more about patching for it.  Not using OEM?  You might find this post useful with the breakdown she gives, and think about how it can apply to the other systems you support and if you could write such a concise and accurate patch strategy at your shop.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

R12.1.3 Assets: Encountering APP-OF-48395 when backdating retirement

Find out how to resolve the problem MOS article "Unable to Issue a Backdated Retirement due to: APP-OF-48395" in note ID 1940140.1 details when the business is trying to retire an asset and they encounter these error messages asking them to change the retirement date.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

R12 Payables: Open Interface output not displaying rejected invoices

Add one more to your suite of test cases!  MOS document "R12 Payables Open Interface Output Does Not Display Invoices That Are Rejected Due To Being Future-Dated And Whose GL Date Is Null" article ID 1945445.1 has the details including the patches on both R12.1 and R12.2 codelines, why ORA-01400 errors are showing up when debug mode is on, and what state items in AP_INVOICES_INTERFACE have to be in for this issue to show up.

Monday, November 24, 2014

R12.2.3: AME works for a single OU

Tonight is a new bug on EBS R12.2.3 in Internet Expenses where AME rules work for just a single OU (Operating Unit).  The My Oracle Support article "AME Rule Is Working For Only One Operating Unit" in document ID 1947632.1 has the resolution and surprisingly it is NOT a patch this time!  Find out the easy fix for this and how to keep it on your checklist for future upgrades!

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Weekend Learning: Internet Expenses - Information Center

Are you staying on top of patches and information related to the Oracle EBS Internet Expenses module?  If not, make sure you bookmark the MOS page "Information Center: Oracle Internet Expenses" from note ID 1381228.2 this weekend!!

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Weekend Learning: Learning or Obsolescence?

This is an interesting post tonight, because I think most people actively following my blog would fall into the learning category of individuals, but the post from Matthew Morris on actively learning really does hit home for me as I have been using the blog to push myself to keep learning or discussing something every night so that I stretch myself beyond my comfort zone.  Last month I said how I would have had my younger self blog immediately after getting into this field, but another thing I would have told that younger self would have been: shoot for getting certified, but do not fall into the trap of thinking that is the only way you can learn about or become knowledgeable about Oracle technologies.  I feel like I have made plans over the past 3-5 years about getting certified because that was the only path available to me that I could actually map out where the random piecing together (or blogging) of information has actually given me a lot of knowledge that likely would not have been sussed out from certification.

Do I want to get certified some day?  Sure I do!  Am I okay not completing a certification in exchange for completing other tasks like new presentations, new conferences, or my random learning through the blog?  You bet I am!  I think I have finally come to terms with making my own path here through the Oracle technology jungle, with ANY progress being good because it means that I am not being paralyzed into inaction by "failing" to meet a path I set for myself.  That is why I think Matthew's article hit home so much, and why I think you might enjoy it.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Weekend Learning: Maximum open cursors with JDBC 12.1.0.2

Were you aware that "overuse" of the OracleDatabaseMetaData.getTables method in JDBC 12.1.0.2 causes an ORA-01000 error to happen?  "ORA-01000: Maximum Open Cursors Exceeded With OracleDatabaseMetaData.getTables In JDBC 12.1.0.2" in My Oracle Support via document ID 1939417.1 tells the whole (but short) story and which version of the driver has this issue fixed.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

COLLABORATE 15: Accepted!!!

A few months ago I wrote about submitting abstracts for OAUG's COLLABORATE 15 conference and today I received notification for one of my abstracts being accepted!!  Now the clock is ticking for me to flesh out my presentation and start work on the whitepaper, but I have a whole three months to get it done so I will be seeing you in April at the Mandalay Bay!  Get in on the early bird pricing for the conference and the hotels as well!

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Assets: Journal entry creation generates ERROR in posting

I know a lot of my posts recently are focused on R12.1.3, but not tonight!  Were you aware of this MOS article "FAPOST Create Journal Entries Ends with ERROR occurred in posting routine" found by note ID 1672917.1?  It appears to be a problem with consolidated retirement issues and a one-off fix was generated so you may need to be applying this some day when you encounter the issue on 11.5.10.2 and after!

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

R12.1.3: Workflow error after RPC2

In My Oracle Support document "You Have Encountered An Error In The Worklist Notifications" from note ID 1946243.1 we learn that after applying Recommended Patch Collection 2 (and the prerequisites) an error message including "OANullDBTransactionImpl cannot be cast" is encountered.  What is the problem here?  It seems that this is related to a browser issue, so plan ahead now for when you have to apply RPC2.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Customizing different heap sizes for multiple WebLogic servers

Were you aware that it is possible to give different servers in your WebLogic domain different heap size values?  I did not know that either until I read MOS document "How to Customize Different Heap Sizes for Different Servers in a WebLogic Domain" found via note ID 1924617.1 for how to change the JVM heap to be the same for all servers in the domain and also how to specify different JVM memory values between Admin and the managed servers in the domain.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Weekend Learning: Complex ATG application design

Being in a Support type role, it probably is not necessary to understand ATG application design but I can tell you that after reading this article from the Oracle Customer Experience blog there are some things which make a lot more sense.  If you had ever wondered about how different pieces are designed to fit together or want to get a few pointers to help shape the integration between your own parts of the application then give the article a once over.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Weekend Learning: Inside Cary Millsap's learning

Earlier this year, Cary posted a really great article about how he learned so much about "Oracle" and I recommend that you read it (and take it to heart) if you are just getting started with Oracle technology.  While I am of course nowhere near where Cary is, I think it is very interesting how his path mirrors how my path went because of how much he was in the field and in Support that is my entire life every day.  What is pretty different is how he saw the application causing the majority of the problems while a lot of what I see is the database having problems or not understanding the interaction between the two.  Also do yourself a favor and follow each and every blogger Cary listed, all of them you can find on my blog roll, because it is important to practice continuous learning!

I learned a new book to read from reading his article, with a few other takeaways too.  What did you take away from this?

Friday, November 14, 2014

Weekend Learning: JDBC driver cursor leak on 11.2.0.4

Do you know how sometimes you can stumble across a solution for a problem, when you are not even looking for it?  Well let me introduce you to My Oracle Support document "Cursor Leak After Upgrading to JDBC Driver 11.2.0.4" via note ID 1939530.1 and ask if you have been having problem with "middleware" or "web services" after upgrading to 11.2.0.4?  We are not on 11.2.0.4 YET, but on 11.2.0.3 we have had some issues with memory leaks so this type of issue could be the next condition we encounter so now I am aware of it and can potentially start looking for it when we start upgrading (and testing).  Luckily we have not had the ORA-01000 errors indicated in this article, but forewarned is forearmed.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Hinting the RESULT_CACHE in 12c

Tonight, we learn from a recent article by Christian Antognini about having a new undocumented parameter for the RESULT_CACHE hint!  While the obvious lessons (the RESULT_CACHE hint, the undocumented parameter) are in front of us, what is less obvious is examining in our own environments the table he investigates: v$result_cache_objects.  Will it solve a problem for you tomorrow?  Not very likely, but we need to keep adding to our toolboxes no?  A few years ago I would not be using v$sqlarea, v$session_longops, or any number of specific v$ objects if it was not for encountering them in one off instances but then revisiting them and learning from what they did or did not tell me.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Hyperion: Level 0 Members of alternate hierarchy cannot be selected

Were you aware that on Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.1 the Level 0 Members of the alternate hierarchy cannot be accessed with SmartView via Member Selection?  Visit MOS note "Unable To Access Level 0 Members Of Alternate Hierarchy Through Member Selection Using Smart View" via document ID 1625343.1 to find out why this is expected, and what the resolution will be for it.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Magical Mystery Event Tour: Part 3

Continuing the series of posts on mysterious wait events comes another today from 12c which appeared and then disappeared all by itself.  Our friend tonight is "acknowledge over PGA limit" and the wait event does not show up in the new version of the Description of Wait Events for 12c.  Sure, the wait event SOUNDS straightforward but if it was AND common OR easily replication why does it not get an entry in the wait event listing?

When I find out more about this wait event, I will post a new article!

Monday, November 10, 2014

Learn more about JVMs by tuning with JVM Diagnostics

I think we have all been there.  Garbage Collection (GC) for Java Virtual Machines are chewing up your server processing power and once they are done with the server they need to be rebooted.  Instead of a perpetual "throw memory at it" type of solution, take a gander at this post from Oracle.  Were you aware that the JVMD (Java Virtual Machine Diagnostics) tool was part of Oracle Enterprise Manager which is licensed with several other Management Packs?  Is this already in your environment, licensed, and just sitting there gathering dust?  What if you cannot use the tool?  Read the post anyways, and learn about things like "Eden space" or different algorithms to use for your GC!

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Weekend Learning: 32/64-bit OS, Internet Explorer and Excel checks

Capping our weekend learning comes some very simple version check information for the OS, Internet Explorer and Excel.  Visit My Oracle Support document "How To Check To See If IE Or Excel Is Running In 32-bit Or 64-bit Mode?" via article ID 1321637.1 to see how to check this information.  Will it be something you use tomorrow?  Probably not, but would you rather know how to check this when the time comes?  I think so!

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Weekend Learning: Fixed Assets News Index

Did you know that the monthly FA newsletter stopped in November 2013?  Did you know that those newsletters have been archived via MOS article "Oracle Fixed Assets Product News Index" in note ID 155511.1?  Did you ALSO know that going forward the FA newsletter has been rolled into the Oracle EBS blog as one of the categories of posts?  Visit the referenced MOS article and get up to speed on everything!

Friday, November 7, 2014

Weekend Learning: R12 Release Content Documents

Did you know there is an article on My Oracle Support that collates the release documentation for the different modules of the R12 EBS application?  I did not know that either!  Go to note ID 1302189.1 and bookmark the article "R12.1 / R12.2 : Oracle E-Business Suite Releases 12.1 and 12.2 Release Content Documents" which was just updated a few days ago.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Challenges and thoughts on Big Data/Data Quality

Take in the article here to catch up on FIVE major factors that you need to consider for Big Data or Data Quality.  These are challenges, thoughts, and ideas that you really should have percolating in the back of your mind when you have to deal with either Big Data or Data Quality issues.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Big Data and Data Management

Are you using Big Data?  Do you know how to combine Data Management principles with Big Data to take a bigger step forward?  Visit this article on the subject and then follow the link within to read the C-CENTRAL article to get on the same page as CIO's about this issue!  Getting on the same page as your CIO will certainly help you navigate future Support issues on this topic!

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Do you have data quality issues?

Yesterday I shared an article that talked about if data quality issues are worth fixing, but today I share an article that asks how you know if you have issues with data quality in the first place!  Does that sound pretty straightforward?  Well, check out all the questions you can be asking the different departments in your company (or maybe user groups your team interfaces with) to see just how much data quality drift there is between reality and what you think reality is.  After you have digested this, make up questions that you can ask your own integrated teams to see how Development, Project or DBA teams are thinking about the issue of data quality and find out what they think about data quality (integrity) from their vantage points!

Monday, November 3, 2014

Data Quality: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Right?

Recently I have read several great articles about data, and the quality of it, so I am going to have a Data Quality week to highlight the different dimensions surrounding data and data quality.  I will start with this article asking if data quality is worth the effort, and how we can quantify it.  I thought it was a stroke of genius to put forward the idea that not every data quality issue needs to be fixed because in today's hypersensitive environment of "Big Data" or "Business Intelligence" having the right data, in the right format, with the correct delivery seems like the only recipe for success.  Well, that is the only story I really see being put out there because nobody is suggesting we have bad, or incorrect, data in our systems and that is exactly what data quality means in this context.  So I will ask again, what is data quality good for?

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Weekend Learning: Chief Customer Officer

Ending our weekend, I ask you to put on your thinking caps while you take in this article which introduced me to the idea of a Chief Customer Officer!  While you may be thinking the idea of another Chief level executive is silly, I disagree as this position has some long reaching potential to benefit your external customers as well as the internal customers of your products because many times the experiences of one group directly affects the performance and satisfaction of the other group!!  Is there a natural extension of this for a Chief Support Officer, or other similar Chief titles, in an organization?  Interesting concept and something I will be thinking about for some time to come!

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Weekend Learning: Resizing an OCFS2 filesystem

On the heels of yesterday's link to the Oracle Linux Information Center comes another Linux related article, this time about the OCFS2 filesystem!  Check out the MOS article "How to resize an OCFS2 filesystem" via document ID 445082.1 to add a new skill to your toolbox!

Friday, October 31, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle Linux - Information Center

Are you running an Oracle installation on the Oracle Linux platform?  Did you know there is an Information Center for that?  Bookmark MOS article "Information Center: Oracle Linux" from note ID 1381248.2 to stay on top of issues and knowledge related to Oracle Linux with recent articles such as:

Mitigating the SSLv3 “POODLE” Vulnerability in Oracle Linux (CVE-2014-3566) - Note ID 1940202.1
Oracle Linux 6.6 Release Notes - Note ID 1937716.1
Unable to Run X Applications Through SSH - Note ID 1938170.1

Thursday, October 30, 2014

POODLE vulnerability and Oracle products

By now you have likely heard about the POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) vulnerability issue facing SSL v3.0 communications, but do you know how to find out if your Oracle applications have patches released?  Follow this link to the OTN document which is keeping track of what is affected with patches available, likely vulnerable without fixes available, products not affected and those that are still being researched.  Did you know that this is so important Visa's Cybersource credit card processing platform is disabling SSL v3.0 next week to prevent malicious activities?

As a bonus, check out the article on OTN for disabling SSL v3.0 in the Oracle JDK and JRE platforms!

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Cursor sharing and RMAN errors on 11.2.0.2

Tonight I learned that if you have the gv$parameter cursor_sharing set to FORCE or SIMILAR on an 11.2.0.2 platform RMAN may spit out some odd ORA-01008 or ORA-07445 error messages.  My Oracle Support article "ORA-01008: RMAN backup fails with Assorted Errors on 11.2.0.2 if cursor sharing is enabled" via note ID 1472116.1 has all the details including the patch you need to apply in order to avoid "resolving" this by flushing the shared pool all the time.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Hyperion, SmartView, Excel & HsAddin

Ever have users report the following error message in Excel while using SmartView?

Run-time error '53':

File not found: HsAddin

Me neither!  Luckily, I went to the trusty My Oracle Support portal and found several notes which looked to be of assistance:

Connecting to Essbase Through Smart View in Excel 2007 Crashes Excel- Note ID 824533.1
SmartView Shows as Custom Toolbar Instead of Hyperion Menu - Note ID 814257.1
Smart View Error "Run-Time Error ''53'': File not Found: HsAddin" when You Click the SmartView Toolbar - Note ID 875795.1

We followed the directions in the last note, but even though we did not see SmartView in the list of disabled items, HsAddin.dll was there in the list and after being Enabled the end user was able to refresh SmartView again without issue!

Monday, October 27, 2014

Signal 17 and RHEL upgrades

This weekend we upgraded servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.11 but found quite a surprise when the DBA ran a simple ps command and received the following error message:

Signal 17 (CHLD) caught by ps (procps version 3.2.8).

What did we find out by searching the Interwebs in the middle of the night?  A KB article from Red Hat (subscription required) that told us that the error is confirmed on version 6.6 and has a few simple solutions.  Luckily our system administrators were able to implement one of them in order to return the ps command back to service!

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Weekend Learning: Ways to instrument code

Have you ever had a situation where you wished code was instrumented?  Maybe a situation where you had no idea what the error was for a report when it crashed or what table/data was behind the error?  How about needing to get progress information into gv$session_longops?  Well Tim Hall of oracle-base.com fame wants you to instrument your code!  His article even has a few suggestions on how you can accomplish this feat, and I'll tell you that being in Support it is really critical that we plan to have as much information at hand at all times since when we have that .01% chance of encountering an issue we have the same amount of information as the 99.9% when it works right.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle DB Information Centers on Security and Installation

As a follow up to my post about the main Information Center for Oracle database products, today I introduce you to several other My Oracle Support articles which may interest you as well:

Information Center: Overview of Database Security Products - Note ID 1548952.2
Information Center: Overview Database Server/Client Installation and Upgrade/Migration - Note ID 1351022.2

Friday, October 24, 2014

Weekend Learning: How software quality can degrade

The best thing about knowledge, is that it never gets old.  Take Cary Millsap's article from a few years about how software quality can be degraded due to the organizational model your company has!  On the surface it is obviously a great article, but the sharing of his ideas stimulated a really great discussion in the comments section as well.  Can we always try to find ways to enhance our processes so we maximize quality and support?  Of course!  Read Cary's article to see if there are some ways you can change processes in order to give your customers a best in-class type of experience.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

EBS R12 Security Issue: FND_LOG_MESSAGES

Were you aware that when you upgrade to E-Business Suite R12 one of the changes introduces a very serious security issue?  Read this note from CERT to find out what happened to the FND_LOG_MESSAGES table with the upgrade to R12 and why it is the root cause for the issue I shared at the beginning of the year about the volume growth for FND_LOG_MESSAGES!

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Deep Thoughts: Digital Disruption

Recently I read a great article titled "Disrupt or Be Disrupted - Digitally Speaking" and it left me thinking about how I could see digital disruptions not only from/for external customers but our internal customers at work as well.  How often do you think about changes at work, or changes in technology, and want to embrace something that will make your life easier or provide a better service in some way?  Of course this is directed towards executives or masters of digital domains, but we can adapt some of these lessons at a lower level to think differently in our current roles.

Make sure you click through to Accenture's PDF that is also chuck full of information about what the different terms are, percentage of companies that are embracing this in varied ways, and questions that you need to ask yourself about how much of a digital disruptor you believe yourself to be.  The article from the Altimeter Group isn't too shabby either!

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

R12.1.3: Unable to print A/R Invoices with BPA after patching

After reading My Oracle Support note "Bill Presentment Architecture (BPA) Issue: Unable to Print AR Invoices using BPA Transaction Print - The Print Program Does Not Produce Any PDF Output - File Size = 0" via note 1933710.1 I learned that BPA can have an issue after applying an Oracle patch related to a different issue!  While it appears a template can be changed from xslfo to XSL-FO the change actually needs to take place in the Oracle provided code so instead of being a setup change it requires another Oracle patch to be deployed.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Frits Hoogland: DB parameters from spfile

I've mentioned a few of Frits' articles before, and while this one may be a little out in left field for somebody in a Support role that never really gets to deal with pfile/spfile or even ASM, I think it is a good exercise to follow along with!  Frits has a shortcut to use ASM to get the information out of a spfile using the strings command, but as you will see shortly something is not 100% correct so he goes digging into the guts of how Oracle is working with the spfile to come up with a very interesting (and probably right) hypothesis.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle Data as a Service

Last year I posted a nice article I found about DaaS (Data as a Service), but did you know that Oracle now has their own DaaS product?  It was news to me too!  This post from the Oracle Cloud Solutions site lead me over to the Oracle Data as a Service for Business and Oracle Data as a Service for Marketing data sheets but I thought the highlight was the mention of Oracle's BlueKai product which sounds like a centralized source to allow your customers to opt-out from multiple platforms/campaigns with a single touch point.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Weekend Learning: Solaris Zones

Ever wonder about virtualization or VM emulation?  How about hardware partitioning on a server?  If you answered yes to either of these questions, check out this article from the Oracle Systems Blog Austria about the 10 best features of Solaris Zones!

Friday, October 17, 2014

Network monitoring tool: iperf

Looking to add to your toolbox of commands and measurements for your network?  Then this article is for you!  Learn how to use this open source command to measure either client or server connectivity but also look at the comments section, as at least one person seems to have found a strange behavior which you may be able to replicate as well.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

How do you find EBS patches?

This sounds like a simple question, but Chris Warticki links us to a great resource on My Oracle Support that really ties together the subject of EBS patching.  It has all the EBS patches, ATG patches, Support Policies, CPUs, and some other valuable documentation which make this one MOS note you cannot miss bookmarking!  Not following Chris' blog or Twitter account?  Now is the time to change that!

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Oracle: Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance

Were you able to catch up with Larry Ellison's keynote speeches during Oracle OpenWorld?  Did you see the announcement of Oracle’s Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance?  Do you think your backup strategy could use a refresher?  Maybe you want to suggest to your business how their data can be a lot more secure in the event of a disaster?  Check out the infographic, datasheet, and white paper to get up to speed for the future of data backups!

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Converting cron jobs to EM jobs

Have you ever been frustrated with how little configuration there is for cron/crontab jobs?  Well boy are you in luck!  Check out this article from Oracle's Enterprise Manager blog for a great how-to guide for converting your old cron jobs from simple lines in the crontab to complex entries in the EM Job Activities.  This is particularly useful for getting cron jobs to throw out alerts when something is going wrong, and helps take you to the next level of supporting your applications.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Jeff Smith on blogging & my thoughts

Do you blog?  Are you thinking of blogging?  Do you like THAT Jeff Smith and his Oracle SQL Developer tool?  If you answered yes to any of these, I would check out Jeff's LinkedIn post about what he learned by blogging for 30 days in a row.  I am not sure how many days in a row I have blogged now, I am trying for an entire year without missing a day, but I would add these to his bulleted list:

Blogging consistently makes you learn consistently.  Ever get that question about what you would tell your self years ago if you could travel through time?  I would give my younger self the advice to start blogging from my first moment on the job not only because of the opportunities like presenting that might come, or being more involved in the Oracle community, but because it would force me to get engaged and learn each and every day.

The more technical your content, the more hits you get.  I thought I had a lot of hits when I went to Hotsos in March since I finally broke the 2000 hits/month milestone, but the past 2 months have seen me hit well over 3500 hits/month due to the more technical content I have shared which was full of error messages and 12c specific information.  This month?  A lot less technical content/keywords which can be picked up by search engines so my metrics are trending for less than 3000 hits/month for October.

You need to understand what your social input bandwidth threshold is.  That is a lot of words for "do not get overwhelmed by all the stuff out there" because once you have a blog list, it will grow.  When you get on LinkedIn, your network will grow.  If you start Tweeting, you will have a lot of followers/followees/content to dig through.  Quickly, you can get overrun by input and start turning a deaf ear towards them in order to "get control".

Decide if you want to use images to enhance or show what you are talking about.  There are a lot of great blogs out there that use images to teach or reference and that is fantastic for what they are doing, or they regularly have images which really make me think of them as more professional than the pure text posts I do on a regular basis.

Do not depend on a single source for content.  If you have been visiting the blog for a while you will probably have noticed that right now I am really picking on a particular source for a lot of content right now.  That is probably related to my third point tonight, as there are just SO many inputs out there it is easy to target in on one source and keep riding it until you (or your audience) get bored with it.  I am going to try and break that trend over the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

So from Jeff's list, I would say I have followed #1, #3, #5, #6 (since Google does not charge), and #8 with this post.  :}

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Weekend Learning: A/P Period Close Advisor

Are you looking for ways to make your A/P Close faster?  Look no further than Oracle's Period Close Advisor which has a great overview here or you can find the Advisor in MOS via document ID 335.1 "Period Close Advisor: E-Business Suite (EBS)."  You have to deal with this a dozen times a year, so you might as well check this out to save you time each Close!

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Weekend Learning: R12: Solaris on SPARC OS updates required

Do you run EBS R12 with the Oracle Solaris OS on a SPARC platform?  If so, do you know about changes coming in December requiring you to be above a specific release of Solaris in order to continue receiving EBS patches?  True story!!  Check out the My Oracle Support note "New Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Operating System and Tools Requirements for the Oracle Solaris on SPARC platform" via document 1912669.1 for all of the details!

Friday, October 10, 2014

RMOUG 2015: Presenting!

Last month I let you know about the RMOUG abstracts being open and today I received news that I was accepted to speak there as my first event of 2015!  You can check out the presentations that will be at the event and after that visit the registration page to sign up now to save over $100 on early bird pricing.  Where else can you get two and a half days of premium Oracle technical content for less than $600, and if you sign up now it's just over $400 for a real steal!

I hope to see you there in February!

Thursday, October 9, 2014

R12.1.3: Patches for AME Approval Sequencing issues

Were you aware that there are so many issues surrounding AME Approval Sequencing that there are several different patches which need to be applied?  Article "Oracle Patches Guide - Release 12.1.3 - Approval Sequencing - Action History Display Issues With and Without AME" via MOS note ID 1598819.1 has all of the patches listed and if they are included in previous rollup patches but most have not been added so many one-off patches will need to be downloaded!

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Jonathan Lewis: Execution Plans

Are you interested in learning more about how the Optimizer works, how to walk through execution plans, or even how to generate your own plans?  Look no further than Jonathan Lewis's excellent series on execution plans courtesy of redgate and AllThingsOracle!  So far there are 10 posts, and you will probably learn something from each and every post of his!

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

R12: Invoices Entry not displaying correct tax

In MOS articles that have titles which say it all "R12: Invoices Entry form (APXINWKB): Tax Amount in General tab does not display inclusive tax for a non-validated invoice" from note ID 1615808.1 really takes the cake.  Of course the article does have step by step instructions for how to replicate the issue and what patches are needed for EBS 12.0 or 12.1 code lines so you need to check this out to make sure your business will not be affected by this problem!

Monday, October 6, 2014

Oracle OpenWorld: Review

Did you enjoy OpenWorld?  Did you get to hit every session you wanted?  Did you not get to go this year?  You are all in luck tonight because I bring you a round up of OpenWorld!  Want to find people that were there attending or that were presenting?  Hit up the #OOW14 stream on Twitter!  Speaking of Twitter, are you following @oracleopenworld?  Did you get to see all the keynotes?  What about the presentations which are already available online?  Have you signed up to make sure you are notified when the Call for Proposals opens next year?

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle Database - Information Centers

Do you enjoy finding new Information Center documents on My Oracle Support?  If so, tonight is your night!  I introduce not just a single Information Center, but a bevy of them if you follow article "Index of Oracle Database Information Centers" via document ID 1568043.2!  This document has many different facets about Oracle's flagship database product in addition to many different things like Engineered Systems such as Exadata, Exalytics, Exalogic, Big Data, and SPARC plus Embedded Database systems like TimesTen or NoSQL!  Looking for GoldenGate, Audit Vault, or MySQL?  You are in luck!  Documents for these are found here too!

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Weekend Learning: Troubleshooting Essbase Agent when hanging

Did you know there are some step by step instructions for how to troubleshoot the Essbase Agent when it is hanging?  The note "Troubleshooting Essbase Agent Hangs on UNIX Systems" on My Oracle Support via document ID 1107095.1 gives you the steps using the pstack and netstat commands!  On top of it all, they give you the other information needed to open an SR when you encounter this issue which may clue you in on the application log files you need to be monitoring in the future.

Friday, October 3, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle iProcurement - Information Center

Tonight is your chance to learn more about Oracle Procurement by visiting the My Oracle Support note "Information Center: Oracle iProcurement" from document ID 1381102.2!  Bookmark this for an analyzer tool for Procurement items and the latest patch updates all on top of the usual knowledge, troubleshooting and problem solving notes we find in these Product Information Centers!

Thursday, October 2, 2014

ASM connections fail with ORA-01031 if LDAP enabled in OS

While I do not need to connect to an ASM instance, it is interesting to see a lesson that can be applied otherwise to a future problem or project.  If you read article "Connections to the ASM Instance Fail With ORA-01031 When LDAP Is Enabled at OS Level" from document ID 1927489.1 on My Oracle Support you will see there is a very basic lesson to learn about LDAP and how it needs to be setup for RAC High Availability.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

R12: Account Analysis Report performance issue

A few months ago I shared a post about the Invoice Workbench slowing down due to XLA data volume and it appears that is not the only way XLA bloat negatively affects your system.  Per My Oracle Support article "R12 Account Analysis Report (XLAAARPT) Performance Problem" with note ID 1667405.1 it appears that with the amount of data here you need to change how the report runs by modifying the indexes a bit.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

R12.1.3: AME approval list out of sequence

Were you aware that the AME approval order for iProcurement is wrong on certain R12.1.3 patch sets?  The MOS article "Approval List Sequence Is Not Sorted Properly" via note ID 1561967.1 has all the details how to replicate the issue, impact, cause and which patches resolve the problem.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Blog roll update: Iggy Fernandez

Lately my blog roll updates have been pretty technical and many related to Exadata specifically, but today I bring you a different kind of blog!  If you need to brush up on your SQL (or NoSQL) skills and then take them to the next level, you need to check out Iggy Fernandez's blog!  My SQL/NoSQL skills are just fine, there is no reason I need to visit Iggy's page you say?  Wrong you would be!  Not on does his blog cover this subject, but he is an Oracle ACE, regular contributor with the NoCOUG, and author of the Beginning Oracle Database 11g Administration book.  Do you really want to miss out on the posts of an experienced DBA about the subject of SQL or NoSQL?  I would not if I were you!

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Exadata cell hangs running patchmgr

Coming from a new unpublished bug, while running the patchmgr application to start patching Exadata it is possible to encounter a problem with it hanging on a ":Working: DO:" task output.  Drilling down it appears netstat might be running on the node in question, but for the full details visit the article "Exadata Cell Pre-upgrade Hangs" on My Oracle Support via note ID 1926228.1!

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle Business Intelligence Applications - Information Center

Do you have Oracle Business Intelligence Applications in your environment?  Are you looking for more information about OBIA?  Well the My Oracle Support document "Information Center: Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (OBIA) Release 7.9.6.x and Later" under note ID 1406496.2 will fit that bill!  Take a look to find a LOT of relevant articles!

Friday, September 26, 2014

ALERT: Bash vulnerability and Oracle products

Coming straight from Oracle Security Alert CVE-2014-7169, is the notice that the GNU Bash shell command line for Unix/Linux has a newly released vulnerability which will allow an unauthenticated user session to run code.  There are many products like Exadata, Solaris and Linux which do have a patch available to fix this (Exadata was not patched earlier this morning, unless I missed something) but there is a long list of Oracle application which do not yet have patches.  Follow the link to find all the details!

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Thoughts: Larry Ellison "steps down"

By now everybody has heard about Larry Ellison stepping down from his role as CEO into dual roles as the Executive Chairman and CTO yet what everybody is focusing on is his move from the CEO role.  I think what is more important to focus on are three things: Larry has put the well being of his company first before the ego he is known for by allowing this change to keep his management team together, the direction and ideas the new CEOs are going to bring to running Oracle, and the interesting fact that Oracle did not have a CTO at this time.

I have seen some posts or tweets the past week where people are acting like Larry has died, or Oracle is going under immediately, but I think people are blowing things out of proportion because it sounds like Larry has been the de facto CTO while he was the CEO so this will allow him to concentrate on what he has been excelling at while the CEOs can do the same in their focus areas too.

What do you think?

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Oracle Open World: Blogger Meetup

Are you heading to Oracle Open World?  Do you blog about Oracle technology?  If you answered yes to both of these, then you should sign up for Pythian's blogger meetup!  Just take a look at the line up with everybody that is signing up, and it is a veritable who's who of Oracle bloggers so do not miss this great opportunity to do some networking.  Between this and OakTable World going on during Oracle Open World, I am really sad that I am not going to be there again this year but there is always next year!  Maybe I will snag a Discover Pass and then just spend a few days at the off conference events during the week.  I mean, it is a plan right?  :}

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

XMLTYPE tables do not show up in DBA_TABLES

While researching a potential performance problem in our system as a result of an e-mail from one of my co-workers, I found out that XMLTYPE tables are not really tables at all.  What makes me say that?  Well, check out this My Oracle Support note "Why Xmltype tables don't show up in Dba_tables view?" found via article ID 1419203.1 to find out which view these tables actually show up in and the reason why too!

Monday, September 22, 2014

Blog roll update: Andy Colvin

You may notice a trend lately with my blog roll updates, but if you enjoy getting information from Oracle ACEs, people working on Exadata, or working for a company like Enkitec, then you will enjoy following Andy Colvin's blog!  Okay, maybe Andy is not updating it all that frequently right now but you can see a link to his Twitter stream which usually has gems every few days.  If you are not on Twitter, you can still add the blog and then read up what he is sharing on Twitter every week or two in order to catch up with some great information.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

11gR2: Listener hangs with ORA-12518 and too many open files

How up to date are you on bugs fixed in 11.2.0.4 which affect 11.2.0.1, 11.2.0.2 and 11.2.0.3?  Were you aware there is an unpublished bug related to this and also a patch for 11.2.02 and 11.2.0.3 which can resolve this for you?  Read "11.2 : ORA-12518 Listener Hangs and Reports "Too Many Open Files" on My Oracle Support from document ID 1527483.1 and also see how you can monitor open sessions with lsof which is something featured in this article where we had problems with open connections ourselves.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle Application Technology Group - Information Center

Were you aware that Steven Chan's ATG group has their own Product Information Center on My Oracle Support?  If you are interested in staying on top of technology changes for the EBS suite, visit document 1160285.1 for the article "R11i / R12 : Application Technology Group (ATG) Product Information Center (PIC)."

Friday, September 19, 2014

R12.13: Expense Report Export not showing everything in Both Pay situation

I work with some pretty smart people but since we are not working for a company like some of the bigger consultant companies I see out there, our discoveries and developments with Oracle technology does not have a clear platform for sharing with the outside world.  Today I get to change that, as one of my co-workers helped Oracle discover the need for a patch for Payables which you can see via My Oracle Support document "Expense Report Export Report Does Not Show Credit Card Related Invoices With Both Pay Scenario" via article ID 1917170.1 that I found today while researching the patch in question to see if we had any known issues arising from applying it.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Concurrent Manager: Killed/Giving Up

Troubleshooting a situation with our Concurrent Manager on 11.5.10.2 I ran into a problem I have never seen before.  Running similar to researching an issue like a previous post, I was trying to find out why the OS thread for the Internal Manager was taking CPU cycles and when I looked in the Administer Concurrent Manager form I can see that the Internal Manager had been up for months.  First thing I try is to Verify it, but that and every other step I was taking would end up just Pending so I started digging for why we needed the CM to be bounced.

In the Internal Manager log I could see the following entry:

Process monitor session ended  : <date>

Process monitor session started : <date>

(the above were repeated hundreds of times)

Killed
The SID_processID@SID internal concurrent manager has terminated with status 137 - giving up.

What is interesting, is that the <date> above was many months prior to when I tried to give the Internal Manager the Verify command.  What does this mean?  Well we have another opportunity to proactively monitor our log files for this known issue!

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

R12.1.3: Event Oracle.Apps.AR.Adjustments.Adjustment.Approve not firing

Coming from a world of few business events to where we have a whole bunch more with our R12.1.3 installation, the MOS article "Transactions Workbench: Creating an Adjustment Does Note Fire Oracle.Apps.AR.Adjustments.Adjustment.Approve Event" from document 1632402.1 drew my attention.  Did you know that this business event is designed not to be fired now in R12.1.3?  Read the document and learn why!

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Exadata patch validation failure

Have you ever seen the error message "The hardware and firmware does not match with the profile" after patching your Exadata platform?  If so, visit the document "Post Exadata Patching Validation Error - /opt/oracle.cellos/CheckHWnFWProfile failed on one dbnode" via My Oracle Support note ID 1677192.1 to find out what the issue probably is.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Blog roll update: Martin Bach

Are you always looking for more information on Exadata or 12c?  How about learning from an Oracle instructor on these subjects?  If you answered yes to these, then you NEED to visit Martin Bach's blog!  The best part of this is how much Martin references and links to documentation from a variety of different people on these subjects so you can read his blog and get involved with others in the community to learn even more as time goes on.

Bonus:  I enjoyed the post here about wait events that are being introduced with new versions of the database, and makes me think about creating some documentation for myself to keep track of the "new" ones I encounter in the wild and those I am looking for!

Sunday, September 14, 2014

500 posts!

It is hard to believe that I have not missed a night (or day) of posting on the blog since January 20th of this year, and even harder to believe that I have finally hit the 500 post milestone tonight!  While it has taken over two years to get to this point, I am thinking that I will hit 1000 posts by the end of year 4 because I have so many more places to get relevant information for somebody in my type of position out there supporting EBS or Hyperion products.

Thanks for sharing the ride of the last 500 posts!  Feel free to share any favorite posts in the comments or give me advice for the next 500!

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Weekend Learning: 10 book writing tips

One day I may compile a lot of the things you read in this blog, and maybe other places in the coming future, into an actual published book.  Are you an aspiring author too?  If so, this post from Michael Abbey with Pythian has some very good tips that can probably be applied to more than just technical book writing!

Friday, September 12, 2014

R12.1: Incorrect GL and subledgers due to corruption

Are you already on R12.1?  Did you know there is a known bug where several reports are not returning subledger journals which requires a patch and datafix?  Visit the MOS article "Corruption in GL Journal Headers Causing Incorrect Reporting in GL and Subledgers" from note ID 1559470.1 to get up to speed on this issue, and make sure that you have applied the required patch!

Thursday, September 11, 2014

11gR2: ORA-600 corruption in rolling back RAC transaction

If you are on several different versions of Oracle's 11gR2 database, you may be susceptible to a known ORA-600 bug detailed in the MOS note "ALERT: Bug 13605839 ORA-600 [ktbsdp1] ORA-600 [kghfrempty:ds] ORA-600 [kdBlkCheckError]. Corruption in Rollback with Clusterwide Global Transactions in RAC" which is found in document ID 1527740.1 but the linked document 13605839.8 has all of the bug details including which versions are affected and which versions have this fixed.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Troubleshooting Automatic Remittances

Related to an old post of mine on batches where I ran into problems due to automatic batch numbering, I found another My Oracle Support article that needs bookmarking in "Automatic Remittances: Troubleshooting, Errors, Known Issues and Patches" via document ID 1369785.1.  This article will give you a lot more than just troubleshooting on Automatic Remittances for versions of the EBS application including 11.5.10 and after including patches, errors and other known issues.  Why favorite this?  Well it has been updated within the last month so it is absolutely relevant as new information keeps being released by Oracle and it is possible new patches are deployed and you can find out about it here first.

EDIT 9/11:  I realized this morning that I forgot to link to my previous post!  Oops!  Fixed now though.  :}

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

12c: Release 1 support and alerts

Do you know where to find Oracle support documentation about the newest Release for 12c?  Well look no further than MOS document "ALERT: Oracle 12c Release 1 (12.1) Support Status and Alerts" from note ID 1565065.1 for all the patches, certifications, support policy and more on the 12.1.0.1 and 12.1.0.2 releases!  Do not forget to favorite this in MOS!

Monday, September 8, 2014

R12: Superseded RPCs

How often do you apply product Recommended Patch Collections (RPCs)?  Are you in the middle of applying some RPCs?  Did you know that some RPCs have been superseded within the last few weeks?

***SUPERSEDED*** EBS: R12.1: Receivables Recommended Patch Collection (RPC), Sep 2013 - Note ID 1579521.1
EBS: R12.1: Receivables Recommended Patch Collection (RPC), Aug 2014 - Note ID 1912247.1

***SUPERSEDED*** EBS: R12.1: Advanced Collections (IEX) Recommended Patch Collection - SEP 2013 - Note ID 1618571.1
EBS: R12.1: Advanced Collections (IEX) Recommended Patch Collection - Aug 2014 - Note ID 1912256.1

***SUPERSEDED*** General Ledger Recommended Patch Collection (GL RPC) September 2013 - Note ID 1584923.1
General Ledger Recommended Patch Collection (GL RPC) August 2014 - Note ID 1919532.1

With all of this information that can be updated, do you wish that everything was bundled in one spot?  Ask and ye shall receive!

EBS: R12.1 Oracle Financials Recommended Patch Collection (RPC), Aug 2014 - Note ID 954704.1

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Weekend Learning: JDBC/JVM connection troubleshooting

Have you made sure you have every little bit of performance from your system?  Well here is another way to squeeze out a little more performance from your system by visiting My Oracle Support note "Please update JDBC settings following MOS Basic troubleshooting of JVM consuming CPU or too many JDBC connections in EBS Apps 11i" via document ID 370583.1 and even if you are on R12 there are some nuggets of information that may interest you including a linked document towards the end of the article which is not exclusive for 11i.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Weekend Learning: EBS Workflow - Information Center

In my experience one of the parts of the Oracle E-Business Suite that changes the least is the Oracle Workflow product, but also when it does change sometimes it is very important that you have stayed on top of the documentation so when you hit go-live day you do not have an unexpected speed bump.  What is a good way to do that?  Go into My Oracle Support and bookmark the article "Information Center: E-Business Suite Oracle Workflow (WF)" located by note ID 1320509.2 so you can monitor the Workflow product for new patches or configurations that might be needed to avoid potential issues down the road.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Blog roll update: Weidong Zhou

Another great blog that you should be reading if you are interested in Exadata is Weidong Zhou's blog that is being added to my blog roll tonight.  I had learned of Weidong via his Enkitec co-worker Carlos Sierra from a post shared on LinkedIn last year, and it looks like he has not stopped sharing great information with all of us as there are some really awesome tidbits which can fuel your fire a bit!  Go take a gander, and share what you found new or interesting in the comments here!

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Office 365: EBS and Hyperion

Is your business thinking about migrating to the Office 365 solution?  Do you know what that means for either the EBS or Hyperion applications?  I found out the answer to that today by reading these My Oracle Support documents:

Is The Workflow Notification Mailer Compatible With Microsoft Office 365 Cloud Base Mailer Servers - Note ID 1914579.1
Oracle Hyperion Smart View Support for Office 365 - Note ID 1581197.1

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

RMOUG Training Days: Abstracts Open!

Are you returning to the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG) Training Days this year?  Did you know that the abstract submissions are now open?  I have not had the chance to attend this conference yet, but I am looking forward to trying to get accepted to present and I will let you know how I do!

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Limiting your attachment size in EBS

Did you know there is a built-in profile option to limit how much space users can upload in a single attachment for your Oracle EBS application?  After reading the MOS article "How to Limit The Attachment File Size?" via note ID 604458.1 you will know about the profile option as well and can start thinking of ways to use it to limit potential abuse.

Monday, September 1, 2014

COLLABORATE 15: Call for Presentations open

Are you a member of the OAUG?  Have you ever attended the COLLABORATE conference and wanted to get back there?  Do you have something to share with the rest of the OAUG?  If you answered yes to all of these, then you are in luck!  The call for presentations is now open until October 10th for members of the OAUG and getting accepted will get you a free registration!

I'm looking forward to submitting my abstracts again, but I'm also looking forward to hearing from you about your experience putting an abstract together and even more to hear you getting selected for the conference so please let me know in the comments!

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Weekend Learning: OBIEE - Information Center

If you get to support the OBIEE application then you will want to favorite the MOS post "Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) Product Information Center (PIC)" via document ID 1267009.1 so you can stay on top of all the news and issues that Oracle releases for the product.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

R12: Create Accounting in error due to older files

File this one away for reference if you are upgrading to R12, or if you are applying some patches, and your Create Accounting program starts giving you ORA-00001 errors.  My Oracle Support note "Create Accounting Program Ending In Error:An internal error has occurred in the program xla_je_validation_pkg.populate_segment_values. ORA-00001: unique constraint (XLA.XLA_AE_SEGMENT_VALUES_U1) violated." from document ID 1902705.1 is directly on point with the files, versions, and patch which will resolve this.

If this helps you, please let me know so I can look for more of these types of articles in the future!

Friday, August 29, 2014

Blog roll update: Oracle Open World

Following yesterday's post about updating the blog roll, I think it is a good time to share another one with you!  Are you going to Oracle's Open World this year?  Do you know good places to get new information about the conference?  Look no further than the official Oracle Open World blog!  It may seem obvious, but this blog usually takes a break in between conference cycles so right now there is a flurry of activity and don't let it fool you into thinking it will be updated all year round.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Blog roll update: oradbn

Last week I added a new blog to my list and today I decided to find another new blog that has the kind of articles I'm looking for!  While the oradbn blog from Benedikt Nahlovsky might only have a handful of posts from the last two years they are goldmines for being able to monitor the database in new and interesting ways, finding out more on ORA errors that can be encountered on new database versions, and getting 12c installed and running.  There are some great ideas here that I can use at work to implement some new monitoring but also is an outside perspective with how to handle things in a completely different way.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Assets: Can periods be reopened?

In a word, no.  Per the My Oracle Support document "How To Reopen a Closed Period In Fixed Assets?" via note ID 1358755.1 it is very clear that getting a period reopened is impossible to do as a supported option from Oracle.  I did find a post in the Oracle Community indicating that a datafix was available, but I have been told that there is not currently a datafix available for customers if the period has been closed by accident.  There are a few options available in the MOS document, but I am not sure they are viable for every situation.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Magical Mystery Event Tour: Part 2

Continuing the outlook for wait events which are out of place comes a post about the mystery behind the "GV$: slave acquisition retry wait time" wait event I have encountered on 12c.  My MOS research found two articles which are on point, but neither of which makes a whole lot of sense:

WAITEVENT: "GV$: slave acquisition retry wait" - Note ID 371117.1

This document talks about a list of instances, and thinking there is a configuration change in process until it no longer thinks the configuration change is going on.  This was something I could not understand because nothing seemed to be reconfiguring, and the document did not point me to a specific thing I could look at to see if it was reconfiguring.  After a few weeks of this being very low on our wait event alert, it eventually went away.

Wait Event GV$ Slave Acquisition High With CURSOR_SHARING To FORCE - Note ID 1589592.1

This article was referring to the parameter (in gv$parameter) cursor_sharing being set to FORCE, which we did not have it set to, and leading to a buffer value needing to be changed.  There was no changing the value before it went away, and we even had the value higher than the recommendation!

Since it went away, and we could not narrow down what was going on, I am sure I will see it again in the future and when I nail this one down there will be an update here.  :}

Monday, August 25, 2014

Free Webinar: R12 and Change Management from OAUG

Have you ever wondered about the OAUG group that I have had the wonderful chance to present for?  Wonder no more, as Wednesday you can enjoy a free presentation and get a glimpse of what the organization is all about by attending the webinar "Change is Good, Except Right Before an R12 Go-Live: Change Control and Release Management is the Key".  Not only is this a great topic, and a window into what one can see at regular conferences from the OAUG, but it is a "Best of COLLABORATE 14" so out of hundreds given this year at COLLABORATE this is one in the top percentile.  Have you already released R12?  Well, could you stand to learn something about the subject at hand anyways?  I know I could, so I'm planning on attending!

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle BI Publisher - Information Center

Do you use BI or XML Publisher?  Learn more about the technologies by visiting the Product Information Center on My Oracle Support in document "Oracle BI Publisher (BIP) Product Information Center (PIC)" via note ID 1338762.1 to be introduced to many different articles on the subject.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Weekend Learning: Solaris 20 years old

Of course those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but it may be interesting to know that Solaris celebrated 20 years of existence in 2012 and this site was created to tell the story and share some videos about it as well.  What is the big draw here?  The site also looks into the future by sharing a roadmap for the next few years, including when Solaris 12 might be released.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Weekend Learning: New and changed features for Procurement in R12.1.3 and beyond

Do you know how the Procurement module has changed in the latest R12 EBS releases?  Well look no further than this note from My Oracle Support "Procurement R12.1.3+ New and Changed Features" via ID 1607297.1!  Favorite this article since that + sign means the article will keep being updated with new features with new releases and RUPs too.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Datapump LOB export/import not in parallel

Are you getting ready to do an upgrade of your OS/DB/app platforms?  Were you planning on using Datapump to get it done?  Did you know that the export and import of LOBs cannot execute in parallel?  My Oracle Support document "DataPump Export/Import Of LOBs Are Not Executed in Parallel" in note ID 1467662.1 not only informs us of that fact but introduces us to an overview article of Oracle Large Objects for BasicFiles and SecureFiles too.  Take a few minutes to read both MOS articles!

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Blog roll update: ASM Support Guy

It has been quite a while since I had a blog roll update, but there are several new blogs that I have squirreled away for later and I hope to catch up with them over the next few months and share the really great ones with you!  Even though Bane Radulovic might not have a huge volume of posts over the last year or two, his ASM Support Guy blog has a LOT of information about ASM (duh) but also quite a bit of information about ASM in relation to the Exadata platform.  How much do you know about ASM, or ASM with Exadata?  Could you always learn more?  I know I can, so I am going to add this to my blog roll and apply some things learned from Bane and give you an update on what I have learned in future blog posts.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

R12.1.3: Invoice adjustments blocked for inaccurate accounting

Sometimes when searching for one thing, you find another, and the article "Invoice Adjustments Ends in Error - This Action Has Been Blocked To Avoid Inaccurate Accounting Entries" via document ID 1626521.1 is no different.  I am lucky that we haven't had any reports of the error "This action has been blocked to avoid inaccurate accounting entries" being encountered yet, but I am going to be checking the version of ARALLOCB.pls that we have in our system to make sure that we will not be getting it in the future.  Will you be checking as well, or will you encounter the issue when you can least afford it?

Monday, August 18, 2014

GL: FRM-40654 when reversing journal

When our GL team was trying to close out the month, they were receiving the error "FRM-40654: Record has been updated. Requery block to see change." when trying to reverse a journal entry.  After looking at everything we could regarding locks, and other people being in the record or the form, I finally researched on My Oracle Support to find the document "GLXJEENT: Journal Reversal gives Error FRM-40654: Record has been updated. Requery block to see change" via note 1135903.1 which helped me solve the problem.

There is an enhancement bug and it seems that even though it is marked as fixed in 11.5.10.2 we still encountered it on R12.1.3 so we need to find out what patch to apply to prevent this in the future!

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle EBS on VMs

Did you know that you can download versions of Oracle's EBS application for installation on a Virtual Machine (VM)?  Per Steven Chan, it is true!  Are you thinking about lowering TCO or making operating your environment easier from some standpoint like server management?  Look into the Oracle VM application and see if maybe this is an option you can implement!

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Weekend Learning: Troubleshooting memory leaks for UNIX (Siebel)

Recently I ran across the My Oracle Support article "How To Troubleshoot Memory Leaks on UNIX" in note ID 477522.1 but I was a bit disappointed to find it relating to Siebel application/architecture because I do not know anything about this nor am I aware of us running this software at work.  Why did I still post it then?  Well, this might not be specifically apples to apples for everybody (and if you support Siebel, bonus!) yet I think there are a few general ideas that can be extended for other applications so it is certainly worth a quick review.

Friday, August 15, 2014

Weekend Learning: ALL_ARGUMENTS table

Of course having joined Steven Feuerstein's webinar about creating readable PL/SQL code I knew that I was going to be learning something, but I did not think it would be something that was probably very simple and well known to many people yet I have never had to use it before!  Have you ever had to query the ALL_ARGUMENTS table before?  From the name, I bet you can guess what the contents are but have you used it before?  This was my introduction to it!  Maybe I could have learned about it when I posted a link to the Oracle Data Dictionary, but again this was a first for me so I'm excited to see how to use it in the future.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

R12.1.3: Fixed Assets form tab disappearing

While researching an issue with the FA_BOOK_CONTROLS table, I found a known bug that is two years old for Fixed Assets and does not look to be getting fixed any time soon.  If you look at document "Ledger Tab Is Disappearing In Book Controls Form" in My Oracle Support in article ID 1480497.1 you will find a simple issue where arrowing down through your search results makes the Ledger tab vanish if you start arrowing up to go back into your search results.

This is important not only for the bug, but for the thinking behind how to find a bug like this if you ever have to do any testing in the EBS suite as something that appears so static, like a tab on a form, can disappear in the blink of an eye with the correct sequence of events!