Oracle ERP – Blogs

Oracle has announced Oracle EBS 12.2 version on Sep 19, 2013. This latest version presents Online Patching to support administrations with high-availability requirements by dramatically reducing planned maintenance downtimes.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2.2 Media Pack is available at e-delivery site.

Few of the facts from Oracle’s press release

Enhancements Drive Increased Business Value

With hundreds of cross-industry capabilities that span enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management and supply chain management, Oracle E-Business Suite helps customers manage the complexities of global business environments.

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 helps organizations further optimize business processes, reduce costs and respond quickly to changing market conditions by introducing enhancements in the following areas:

Oracle Contract Lifecycle Management for Public Sector: An integrated acquisition management solution that helps drive efficiencies across government procurement processes and helps align compliance with the rules and regulations of the public sector acquisition process.

Oracle Financials: Integration with Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub and Oracle Data Relationship Management helps companies improve automation and efficiency while supporting compliance with changing accounting and reporting requirements.

Oracle Projects: Enhanced cost breakdown structure and labor costing helps improve cost control and accelerate project cash flow.

Oracle Purchasing: Improved integration, automated complex approval hierarchies and embedded best practices support greater efficiency in the purchasing cycle.

Oracle Supplier Lifecycle Management: An improved qualification user interface, qualification approval re-routing capabilities and mandatory compliance documentation help organizations streamline supplier evaluation.

To further help organizations transform supply chains from a functional necessity to a competitive advantage, the latest release of Oracle E-Business Suite includes the following supply chain management enhancements:

Oracle Order Management: A new solution for selling subscription services leverages Oracle Configurator to enable users to configure and sell products along with subscription-based services on a single order.

Oracle Warehouse Management: Streamlined mobile user interfaces, enhanced managerial workbenches, improved catch-weight functionality and better extensibility supports greater fulfillment flexibility.

Oracle Manufacturing Execution System: Usability improvements such as express serialized manufacturing help boost the productivity of shop floor operators and increase compliance through standardization. In addition, Oracle’s electronic-kanban electronic inventory planning and supply management solution helps enterprises successfully execute key lean manufacturing concepts.

Oracle Enterprise Asset Management: Enhanced support for compliance with safety regulations helps prevent injuries.

To help organizations further modernize HR practices, the latest release of Oracle E-Business Suite includes:

Oracle Payroll and Oracle Time and Labor: Simplified functions for local payroll administrators help reduce project costs and streamline workforce management.

This is a 2^nd part of takeout from last ATG Live Webcast June 14 was an introduction of new ‘Online Patching Cycle’ in Oracle EBS R12.2. ADOP (AD Online Patching) will replace ADPATCH as the 12.2 new patching tool. The first-hand information about ADOP shows that it will be follow phases from Prepare, Apply, Finalize, Cutover to Clean-up.

Oracle Application will be only offline during the Cutover phase as presented below:

In the Prepare phase (Preparing the File System) Patch Edition and Run Edition will be synchronized on the file system and a new Patch Edition in the database will be created. All files on the Patch Edition are an exact copy of the files on the Run Edition.

What type of synchronization?

• Incremental synchronization is the default
• Only files changed in the last patch application are copied
• Full synchronization available if necessary

Patch Edition is created in the database and all code objects in the Patch Edition begin as pointers to code objects in the Run Edition. Objects are only “Actualized” into the Patch Edition when a new revision of the code is applied. Storage objects such as tables are not copied. New patching standards are followed for upgrading storage objects.

In the Apply phase (applying patches) execution of patch drivers to update Patch Edition will be done. We can apply multiple patches and patches are applied to the copy (Patch Edition) as the production application is unaffected by the changes. Users are connected to the Application and can perform their work unaffected by the patch. Changes are made in the isolation of an Edition and the running application is unaffected by these changes

In the Finalize phase we will be performing the final operations that can be executed while the Application is Online like compile invalid objects, generate derived objects and Pre-compute DDL to be run at Cutover

In the Cutover phase downtime will be taken and users are logged off the system. The Patch file system is promoted to be the Run file system and the Patch database edition is promoted to be the Run database edition. Next action will be to perform final maintenance operations and finally users are brought back online on the patched system. We can also pause patching cycle at this stage for as long as it is required to wait for an appropriate downtime window (minutes)

In the Clean-up phase Cleanup occurs after users have been brought back online to the newly patched Application. The pre-patch file system is now ready for the next patching cycle and Database code objects patched in the latest patching cycle are deleted from Old Editions and once all objects are deleted from an Old Edition it is also deleted.

In the Abort phase the Online Patching Cycle can be aborted at any time prior to Cutover

Two complete file systems are always present Run Edition – Used by the running Application Patch Edition – Either, Currently being patched or waiting for the next patch cycle. These two files systems are rotated between Run and Patch during every patch cycle. Old Editions these editions are only used to store code objects that have not been patched in a later edition and we can remove by cleanup when no longer needed.

Old threads on R12.2:

http://oraerp.com/blog/e-business-suite-r12-2-no-more-downtime/

http://oraerp.com/blog/a-journey-from-oracle-e-business-suite-r12-1-to-r12-2/