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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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!

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.