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 Linux: Windows AD or LDAP server cannot authenticate due to TLS error

While the My Oracle Support article "OL 6 & 7 - Unable to Authenticate to Windows AD or LDAP Server "Could not start TLS encryption. unknown error"" from ID 2109478.1 may not be relevant if you are not changing your configuration, you may have to know this when you decide to do an upgrade so check this out!

Windows: 12c forms instance does not exist after startup

Are you running 12c on Windows?  We don't really run on Windows, but MOS document "Forms 12c Instance (FORMS_INSTANCE) "forms1" and Forms Related Registry Variables Do not Exist after Starting Nodemanager and Adminserver" via note ID 2094031.1 taught me something new tonight about the folder structure and what the solution is for this problem so maybe someday I can use it!

Weekend Learning: Frequent CHECK TIMED OUT listener status on Windows

Want to learn something about RAC configurations?  What about on Windows OS?  Well article "RAC: Frequent CHECK TIMED OUT status of listener and DB resources" from MOS document ID 1608197.1 tells us why these timeouts occur on the Windows platform and how to resolve them as well!

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.

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!

ALERT 11gR2: Windows Bundle Patch 28 Rescinded

Tonight is a fairly straightforward warning about Windows Bundle Patch 28 for 11.2.0.3 being rescinded by Oracle due to guaranteed ORA-00600 errors.  The suggested courses of action listed in MOS note 1635077.1 are to apply BP 29, or rollback BP 28 immediately.

We do not have Oracle running on Windows, but I know others out there do, so I wanted to share this critical information with you before you have a problem.

Breaking News: EBS R12.2 now available for 64-bit Windows

This post from John Abraham on Steven Chan's ATG blog details all that you need to know about this announcement, but I will say that this release does mark the end of 32-bit Windows Server releases.  Admit it, you want to know more don't you?  Well what are you waiting for?  Go find out the details!

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!