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!

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

EBS R12.2.4 Release Notes

Continuing the barrage of EBS R12.2.4 articles, have you had a chance to review the patch notes yet?  If not, they are available from the R12.2 Information Center I linked to yesterday or if you want a direct link go to the MOS article "Oracle E-Business Suite Product Specific Release Notes, Release 12.2.4" via note ID 1903217.1 and favorite it so you can get to all the great documents that are linked there!  Remember, these documents are going to be fluid as more and more information is learned from having the application released.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

EBS R12.2 Information Center

I have shared Information Centers before here on the blog, but coming from yesterday's announcement about R12.2.4 being released I have found a new one to share with you!  Are you on R12.1?  Have you yet to upgrade to any R12 platform?  Regardless of where you are in your upgrade cycles, you need to favorite "Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 Information Center" on the My Oracle Support portal via document ID 1581299.1 so you can read up on every aspect of the R12.2 platform to prepare yourself for today and beyond by keeping tabs on this page.

Monday, August 11, 2014

EBS 12.2.4: Now Available

In case you missed it because you are not following Steven Chan's EBS Technology blog, version 12.2.4 of the Oracle E-Business Suite is now available.  Review the readme for more information about how to apply this upgrade, and follow the other links provided to learn more about this release of the EBS application suite.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Database Week: ORA-600

It only feels appropriate to end Database Week with making sure that people know about the tools available when you encounter an ORA-00600/ORA-600 error message.  First let's start with "ORA-600/ORA-7445/ORA-700 Error Look-up Tool" on MOS via note ID 153788.1 which has a link to the troubleshooting tools for these as well.  Do you want to learn about an Oracle database?  Research well known errors like ORA-600s and see how far into the kernel it will take you!  Speaking of, here are some other documents which might help you a bit to learn about statistics and their relation to ORA-600 errors:

ORA-00600 [qernsRowP] on SELECT - Note ID 1910565.1
ORA-00600 [rwoirw: check ret val] After 11.2.0.4 Upgrade - Note ID 1910573.1

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Database Week: PSUs and overlay patches

While you may know what PSUs are (Patch Set Updates), do you know what overlay patches are?  Are you aware that the My Oracle Support post "Database Patch Set Update Overlay Patches Required for Use with PSUs and Oracle E-Business Suite" document ID 1147107.1 has all the information and is a great candidate for being favorited so you can stay up to date?  Well now you know!

Friday, August 8, 2014

Weekend Learning/Database Week: Solaris and Sun notes

Tonight my post pulls double duty under both the Weekend Learning and Database Week headings because there is just SO much information here for a single heading!  While we might not be running our EBS on a Solaris box, that does not mean there is not valuable information to learn so I do keep track of articles for that platform especially when they deal with the ZFS appliance.  I you had to pick just one to favorite here in My Oracle Support, I would go with 1021776.1 so you can keep on top of all the new items that come out each week!

How to replace a Sun Ray or peripheral device attached to a Sun Ray. - Note ID 1626529.1
Information Center: Sun Server X4-2 - Note ID 1619441.2
Information Center: Sun Server X4-2L - Note ID 1619505.2
Information Center: Sun Blade X4-2B Server Module - Note ID 1619506.2
Information Center: Troubleshooting for V210/V240/V440/V215/V245/V445 Servers - Note ID 1422373.2
Information Center: Patch and Maintenance for V210/V240/V440/V215/V245/V445 Servers - Note ID 1422213.2
Information Center: Overview for V210/V240/V440/V215/V245/V445 Servers - Note ID 1422147.2
Information Center: Patch and Maintenance for T5120/T5220/T5140/T5240/T5440/T6320/T6340 Servers - Note ID 1414972.2
SERVICE ALERT WEEKLY SUMMARY REPORT (2014) - Note ID 1021776.1
Solaris 11 and ZFS Storage Appliance Software (ZFSSA) NFS Servers may Experience a Deadlock Panic in 'nfssrv:rfs4_dbe_lock' - Note ID 1666249.1
Solaris 11 and ZFS Storage Appliance Software (ZFSSA) Using the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) Will Fail to Backup Files and Directories With Inodes Greater Than 2^30 - Note ID 1666311.1
Solaris 10 Kernel Patches 141444-09 and 141445-09 May Cause Interface Failure in IP Multipathing (IPMP) - Note ID 1021262.1
Solaris 11 and ZFS Storage Appliance Software (ZFSSA) May Experience a System Panic in dbuf_hash_remove() - Note ID 1640078.1
Why can the results of df(1M) differ for a shared ZFS on the NFS server and client? - Note ID 1670663.1
Issues With Certain Solaris 10 patches and Solaris 11 SRUs May Cause a Process to Become "Unkillable" - Note ID 1641745.1
Certain Solaris 10 Patches and Solaris 11 SRUs may Cause the ldmd(1M) Service to go into Maintenance State, or Cause the fmd(1M) Process to Dump Core During System Boot - Note ID 1645850.1

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Database Week: ASM notes

Today in Database Week I want to shine a light on these My Oracle Support articles regarding Automatic Storage Management (ASM) because they may help you learn something/more about it!  While I learned that parameters for Exadata mean something on a non-Exadata installation, my real take away was about the crashing ASM diskgroup as we just had something like this happen a few weeks ago so I need to try and correlate this just in case we need to apply the patches indicated.  If you are still in a learning mode, you can refresh yourself on the other ASM articles I've published before!

Warning Message:'Cluster target should exist in Enterprise Manager before adding the Cluster ASM target' is generated when Promoting Cluster ASM Target from auto-discovery Results - Note ID 1911635.1
Normal Redundancy :: Storage split caused crash of ASM diskgroup - Note ID 1623400.1
High 'ksv master wait' And 'ASM File Metadata Operation' Waits In Non-Exadata 11g - Note ID 1308282.1

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Database Week: RMAN notes

Continuing Database Week are several very good articles about Recovery Manager AKA RMAN!  How much do you know about RMAN?  Have you ever had to do a restore or recovery?  Could you learn a bit more about RMAN in general?  If so, you are in luck!

RMAN: RAC Backup, Restore and Recovery using RMAN - Note ID 243760.1
How to Move/Restore DB to New Host and File System using RMAN - Note ID 1338193.1
ORA-01008: RMAN backup fails with Assorted Errors on 11.2.0.2 if cursor sharing is enabled - Note ID 1472116.1
RMAN-6429 / RMAN-06429 - Note ID 227481.1

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Database Week: RAC notes

Continuing the Database Week feature, I share some documents focused around the Real Application Cluster (RAC) technology with an article about RAC files being shared across nodes, and an article about Solaris evictions while using DISM with the document linking to an in-depth feature on DISM.

RAC database HC_<SID>.dat is used by instance of different Oracle_Home - Note ID 1618161.1
RAC Performance and Eviction Issues on Solaris when DISM in Use - Note ID 1606318.1

Monday, August 4, 2014

Database Week: Data Corruption

This week, I'll highlight a bunch of database related My Oracle Support articles which all have a different slant to them.  If there is one thing that all Support individuals live in fear of, it is corrupted data in the system!  Why?  Because it will show up without any warning and cause problems that probably are not straightforward at all to fix.  Here are some notes to visit and see if you are affected plus maybe get some idea how to be proactive to identify some possible ways to alert about the keywords thrown in the log when data is corrupted!

ALERT: Bug 13605839 ORA-600 [ktbsdp1] ORA-600 [kghfrempty:ds] ORA-600 [kdBlkCheckError]. Corruption in Rollback with Clusterwide Global Transactions in RAC - Note ID 1527740.1

ALERT: Bug 8198906 - Segment header corruption if extent allocation operation is interrupted - Note ID 1229669.1

For Oracle Solaris Cluster, Silent Data Corruption may Occur When Using Buffered Sequential I/O on the Cluster File System - Note ID 1672874.1

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Weekend Learning: MOS Conflict Checker tool

A few weeks ago a new tool was released on the My Oracle Support portal so you can upload an OPatch file and have Oracle tell you what patch conflicts exist for the target patch you want to apply to your system.  Visit the page "How to Use the My Oracle Support Conflict Checker Tool [Video]" via document ID 1091294.1 to learn more about the steps for analyzing an OPatch, resolving conflicts, and what known issues are out there right now for this new tool.  Check this out, and let me know about your experiences with it!

Saturday, August 2, 2014

MS Office 2013 certification with 11i and R12

A few weeks ago there were notices from Steven Chan that Microsoft Office 2013 was certified with R12.0.6 and R12.1.3 but just a few days ago comes a post that 11i is now certified as well!  Are you ready to install Office 2013 and test against your EBS system?  If you have been holding off, these certifications remove a lot of doubt that you might have!

Friday, August 1, 2014

Weekend Learning: Creating EBS role to query users and reset password

Sure we have the power with System Administrator to query users and reset the FND_USER password, but what if you do not want everybody to have the rest of the System Administrator access in order to complete this task?  Well, if that is the case then this weekend you will want to read the MOS article "How To Create a Role That Can Query Users and Reset Passwords" from document ID 743683.1 so you can create a UMX role and then assign it to a new role and responsibility.