Windows Vista: Support ends in April 2017

You should be aware that product lifecycles which Oracle does not directly control CAN impact support for Oracle products.  In this case, Microsoft has set the end of life for Windows Vista to be April 2017 and that means that Oracle will be supporting the EBS product from a historical perspective so you need to get off that product and onto newer Windows platforms which are currently slated to be supported past April 2017.

Oracle EBS R12.2.5 has been released!

From Steven Chan's blog comes news about the release of EBS 12.2.5 which is a cumulative release update pack so can be applied to any R12.2 release without needing to go to any other releases.  There are multiple resources for you available on this article, but just as important are some questions asked and answered as well so make sure you click on the comments link!

How can you tell if Oracle products are certified or can get patches?

Do you know the differences between the terms Premier Support, Extended Support, Error Correction Support and Sustaining Support?  If you have Oracle products in your environment, you really should know so that you are aware of when you can get new patches from Oracle and Steven Chan tells us exactly how to understand these terms tonight by explaining how to find information on the MOS Certification page and deciphering it with the Lifetime Support Policies!

Weekend Learning: Getting the most out of My Oracle Support

Since I review a lot of articles from My Oracle Support and recommend that you add them as favorites, this post from Steven Chan's blog reminds us all about the Hot Topics e-mail that goes out every day and how it can be modified so you are notified when your favorited MOS documents are changed!  Do not miss out on this easy way to stay up to date on MOS articles that are relevant to your current technology stack, or even about where your technology is going in the future!!

JRE 1.8 upgrade activates TLS settings that knocks out Oracle Forms

I have talked about HeartBleed and POODLE vulnerabilities recently which both relate to SSL and TLS but tonight MOS document "Forms with SSL not Working After Upgrade to JRE 1.8 from 1.7" from note ID 1675195.1 combines them both with JRE updates and Oracle Forms!  Are you getting reading to update your version of the JRE soon?  Need to know more about JRE 1.7 and how it will be autoupdating to JRE 1.8?  Learn from Steven Chan's blog entry on the subject!

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)."

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!

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.

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!

EBS ATG webinar: Advanced EBS management with OEM

In less than 24 hours, there will be a webinar by the ATG team on advanced EBS management using the OEM tool with a focus on 12c and R12.2.  Visit the page here to get all the details and sign up for what looks to be a very useful webinar.  Looks like it will be so useful that I decided to post during the day *gasp* in order to give you as much advance notice about this one!  :}

EBS 12.2.3 is released!!

Okay, I'm cheating a little since I shared a tweet about this yesterday, but being an "apps guy" I think this some pretty big news!  Follow this link to Steven Chan's EBS blog where he has the files available, the readme linked, says what is included like a new look and feel plus a Worklist feature which sounds pretty darn cool to me!!  On top of all of this, are the usual upgrade path documents that you should be reviewing and getting familiar with if you're not on R12 already (or if you have been on a lower version for years, and want to be getting the latest and greatest version of R12).

Blog spotlight follow up: Steven Chan's EBS blog

Several months ago, I started a feature of spotlighting blogs and now I want to start a follow up feature so where else would I start but with Steven Chan's EBS blog?

First off, Steven and crew have added a lot of updates which I'll break down into several different categories:

Certifications:

Java 1.6.0_60, 1.6.0_65, 1.7.0_40 and Java 1.7.0_45 are now certified with EBS.

Now you can use Transportable Tablespaces on 10gR2, potentially saving you time in your upgrade processes.

IE10 on Windows 7 is now certified with EBS.

The Application Management Pack is now certified with the latest version of 12c and EBS Plug-in 12.1.0.2 is now available for EM 12c.

The initial release of 12c is certified with 11i and R12, while the terminal release of 11gR2 is certified as well and even more certifications are available for 11gR2.

Multiple versions of EBS client configurations are now certified on Windows 8.

Firefox ESR 24 is certified with multiple EBS clients.

Running EBS on SPARC?  If so, 11i is now certified with 11gR2.

Did you know that Office 2010 64-bit is certified with EBS 12?

R12:

The R12.1 Consolidated Update Patch #2 is available, but is not required if you are already on R12.

Steven reminds us that if you're on R12.1.1 or R12.1.2, you're closer to being able to go to R12.1.3 than you think!

Are you unsure if you should go to R12.1.3 or R12.2?  Steven has an answer for you.

Do you know about the new flexfield value set security feature in R12.2?

Are you using Oracle VM Templates?  New templates are available for R12.2.2.

New Information:

An offer to help Oracle shape the future of the next generation of the EBS interface.  I'll sign up, how about you?

Want to see a great reason to attend Oracle OpenWorld next year?  How about getting support timeline updates direct from the source?

The CPU for October has been released.

Did you know that you are expected to be signing your JAR files?

A new white paper on best practices for gathering EBS statistics, while another paper is available on getting optimal performance from the EBS.

Oracle is sharing the presentations from OpenWorld 2013 for a few months!

Elke suggests a series of upgrade recommendations that are available now.

Can you use 3rd party tools to modify your DB?  Steven has an answer on this one too.

Breaking News: EBS R12.2 Announced!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog --

Normally this isn't the type of thing I'm really up on when announced, but now that I'm getting a bit more connected to the community, you just might find more of these "Breaking News" type of posts on the site!  Thanks to Yury, I heard that Steven Chan's blog has announced the availability of Oracle EBS R12.2 with all the features I was introduced to during the OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech conference (and which I shared with you in this post and this one too).  Go visit Steven's blog for the final edits to the R12.2 plan, read the full Press Release, and be the first to get your hands on the R12.2 Technical Planning Guide.

-- We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Windows R12 certs Part Deux

Crossing the streams between my first two spotlights on Steven Chan's blog and the EBS Support blog, is an article related to something I touched on last month regarding the release of EBS 12.1 on Windows systems.  This month is the reinforcement of the same certification which may seem odd but it was this post that helped me realize that even though the two blogs are similar, and may have the same content from time to time, they are really complementary blogs that may have different audiences but the best way to enjoy them is in conjunction.  I hope by the end of this spotlight, you'll feel the same way!

OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech - Day 1

Continuing my coverage from the OAUG Connection Point - AppsTech conference in Pittsburgh, here is the schedule of events I went to including my reviews of the sessions:

8:30 AM - General Session, Steven Chan - Oracle EBS Technology Latest Features & Roadmap - Grand Ballroom

Here I had the chance to talk with Steven one-on-one for a moment before he gave the opening session, which was a very pleasant experience because he seems like a very genuine and relatable individual. He even remembered my name from a brief e-mail encounter (I had completely embarrassed myself by sending him a comment meant for my team because it was too early in the morning to be online for an Oracle webinar) which happened almost six months ago, and tells me that he takes his blogging and role at Oracle very seriously!

On to the session itself, there was SO much that he went over that my head felt like bursting but then I reminded myself that I'd read a lot of his work already and that this was a refresher course almost.  Except for actually finding out: what Endeca really was, that 12.2 will likely (since it hasn't been officially announced) be replacing the OC4Js with WebLogic, the code name for 12.2 is Skyros (if I spelled it right), a move towards more SOAP & REST services, there are new whitepapers coming out for each module with relation to Exadata and Exalogic, Oracle saved 231 TB of space with Advanced Compression on their own systems, then a few notes 1484997.1 and 1195034.1 that were referenced.  Whew!  And I cut that list in probably 1/4th too!

9:45 AM - Workflow Performance Tuning in R12 - Salon 6 - Karen Brownfield - Scratch that, Working Effectively with Oracle's Public APIs - Salon 5 - Rob Lepanto with API Wizard

Why? I was thinking that the name of Karen Brownfield. sounded familiar but I didn't know why until I started doing a run through of my presentation last night and it dawned on me that she was the author of the Solution Beacon PDF that I referenced in my presentation! I don't remember reading her whole presentation, so I had made a mental note to review it anyways so now that she has updated her presentation for R12 (and is no longer with Solution Beacon) I'll read the new one when it becomes available but since I'd already seen some of it I went with the APIs to learn something new.

This was a fairly basic introduction to APIs with a distinction between those that are Public (for customers to use) and Private (not not supported to use) and while there are 1500 APIs in R11 there are 2500 in R12.  We were provided with a pretty good query for DBA_OBJECTS to find what are potential APIs in our system, as well as a nice listing for what could be considered Oracle API standards.  We also had types of API failure, tips for improving API performance, wrappers (no not Dr. Dre) and information about a seeded responsibility called Integrated OA Framework responsibility with R12.  Good session!

11:00 AM - Getting ready for 12.2: Edition-Based Redefinition - City Center B - Michael Brown from BlueStar Inc.

When this one started, I was really chomping at the bit to get a sneak peek at this, and the OAUG Member of the Year for 2013 did not disappoint!  Again, Michael was under a NDA so he could not speak about his direct experiences but the public information out there tells us a great deal about this feature which is basically a type of change control within the database for only certain objects.  There are of course new types of objects to enable the editioning to happen and while I'm not going to dive into the specifics here (because then you won't visit any of his future sessions) there are a few new tables that I will share that are deployed with 12.2: dba_editions and dba_editioning_views.  There, you got a few nuggets of information after all.  :}  Really great session for the "download" and then mind boggling live demo of editioning.

1:15 PM - Oracle EBS 12.1 Upgrade Best Practices - City Center B - Elke Phelps

I thought this was going to be one of the best sessions in the conference, and I wasn't disappointed at all as I got a lot of content out of the session!  Explanation of Rapid Install and the comparison between the file sizes for 12.1.1 and 12.1.3, many reports, customer stories, and the meat and potatoes of the best practices that are recommended.  I found a lot of these were covered more in-depth during Mike's presentation the day before, but it wasn't Elke's fault I went to the pre-conference session now was it?  That said, with the wealth of knowledge that was transferred to us it was hard for our eyes not to glaze over (since it was after lunch) yet she kept us engaged and the topic was lively so we all stayed focused.

Here are all the notes she went over: 761570.1, 1290886.1, 1327399.1, 1446430.1, 1448102.1, 16791553, 384248.1, 734025.1, 399362.1, 8557019, 244040.1!

2:30 PM - Advanced Management of Oracle EBS with Oracle Enterprise Manager - Grand Ballroom - Vasu Rao

For an "advanced" type of session, this wasn't that advanced as it was more a prep for starting to use OEM which was okay with me since I don't use it today and now I want to badger my DBAs to let me use it a bit!  The way Vasu started the presentation by highlighting the top 10 CIO business and technical priorities had a great lead in to getting value out of implementing OEM, so I really started feeling like I was in a sales presentation a bit even though I was learning just about every minute about more modules or features available with the Application Management Suite which is a separately licensed product from Oracle, of which the application management pack is a part of.  I thought we got some real value when he was modeling how RUEI (Real User Experience Insight) worked to help replay a user's entire session which was a WOW moment for me!  Note 1434392.1 was mentioned, as well as I'm sure quite a few more but I have a LOT of documentation to catch up on for OEM and now excuse me I need to go bug somebody about getting me access to OEM.

4:00 PM - Ask Oracle ATG Panel Discussion with Steven, Elke, and Vasu - Grand Ballroom

Oddly, I don't have any questions on my mind to ask Oracle at this venue but maybe it isn't so odd because I'm a speaker and didn't come here with all of the "baggage" from work expecting solutions. I hate to put it that way, maybe a better way to say it is that having a complimentary registration from being a speaker has put things into perspective and I respect the other people that have had their company pay (or even out of their own pocket!) to come here to get something in return.

Talk about single sign-on and how complicated it is, but Elke and Steven indicated they have simplified the documentation from 50 pages down to 20 pages and are working on roadmap items such as changing the architecture to use WebLogic which should reduce the complexity.

Every group in Oracle has been told to integrate with OEM.  Great news to me!

Are there any thoughts to a shared oracle_home?  No.  Different risks, certs, and they still have plans on getting EBS certified on 12c.

"Sales" is pushing Fusion applications so how do we get ready?  Fusion is not the successor to EBS, as they really do different things, yet you can have some Fusion and EBS running at the same times doing their different things.  A big hint was being dropped at 12.2 (or some future release, but one that isn't TOO future) supporting touch devices.

Is your database and application supported on VM?  VMware runs their installation of EBS on VMware, and Oracle will give support until they decide it is a problem with VMware. 

DBAs are asking to upgrade the database that is currently 11.1.0.7 while the app is on 12.1.3, is that supported or suggested?  The database and applications have been decoupled, so they CAN upgrade the DB to 11.2.0.3 but may have to apply some interoperability patches for it to work.  Also, R12.2 has to be on 11.2.0.3 at least so you might as well go now.

Is Oracle going to provide archiving for EBS?  Current applications on the market are only going to really come from Oracle developers or from former Oracle developers, and now that the former Oracle employees don't have access to R12 Steven suggests rather strongly that those tools may not have all the hidden secrets figured out just yet.  An idea on using 12c heat maps to help subset data in the EBS in some way.

Windows and R12

Closing up our spotlight of Steven Chan's EBS blog for the week, is this article where R12 is certified for running on Windows 2008 Servers in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V clients.  Why is this important?  Oracle on Windows is now fully certified inside and outside VM clients!  I remember several years ago when we were going to Solaris VM containers at a company level to save resources in non-PROD environments yet our group wasn't able to shift solely due to the certifications or support that was available at the time.  That leads me to wonder just what environments are NOT supported or certified to run Oracle?

Oracle EBS Demos on YouTube

Today in the spotlight of Steven Chan's EBS blog is a more straightforward type of article where Steven announces the opening of a new YouTube channel which is really EBS-centric in the introductory and demo videos that are posted.  I'm even looking forward to watching the videos about Oracle customers upgrading to R12 and their experiences with it.  How can you turn down free information about the EBS or R12?  You can't!  To that end, I'd click through on some of the other links in this article as they will help guide you to more information.

Are you wise to SAML? Does that make you SAMLwise?

What is SAML?  Great question, glad you asked!  In our continuing spotlight, I didn't know either until I read this guest author article on Steven Chan's EBS blog about SAML, XML, WS-Security, and the interaction of the Oracle product mix.  Not only do we get an in-depth explanation of what these ideas/objects are, but Rekha offers us a nice visual aid which helps to pull the article together.  Worth a read, especially if you utilize SOA and looking to help change the landscape at work to make sure your EBS platform stays secure.

What is RBAC and how does it affect EBS?

In today's entry of our spotlight, comes a guest author detailing Role Based Access Control (RBAC) which shifts the access paradigm from our traditional (old) ways of directly assigning responsibilities directly to user accounts to a better (new) way of using responsibility assignments in conjunction with grant assignments as another layer of security.  It may surprise you to know that this isn't just for R12 either!  Plain old R11 can utilize this as well so give the whitepaper a read, if only so you are sure of what RBAC is and is not.

Why should we care about iPads if we're on R12?

Continuing my spotlight of Steven Chan's EBS blog, is a solid article on the certification for iPads with use of R12.1.3 and higher on the iOS 6 platform.  While the headline doesn't spell this out this certification is targeted just at the SSWA (HTML-only) EBS pages, yet doing our homework now will allow us to answer executives when they ask about being able to use their latest and greatest iPad to do everything their laptops used to do.  Right?  Who doesn't like to be ahead of the curve!

A few nuggets about what applications/platforms Oracle will test the Oracle Workflow product against as well as a suggestion that the Android certification is being worked on but nowhere near being ready for prime time yet.