Cloning 11i with 10g database (you may need a patch)

I faced the following error while configuring database when cloning apps 11i with 10g database and it happens directly after entering the path of the third data_top (by the way the script will always assume you have 4 data_tops even if you have more/less data_tops)

StackTrace:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at oracle.apps.ad.context.CloneContext.createContextFileForDbhomes(CloneContext.java:2816)
at oracle.apps.ad.context.CloneContext.getInputFromUsers(CloneContext.java:1485)
at oracle.apps.ad.context.CloneContext.doClone(CloneContext.java:627)
at oracle.apps.ad.context.CloneContext.main(CloneContext.java:6085)

On metalink there was the solution on Note:427981.1 Subject:RC-50004 When Specifying DATA_TOPS While Cloning a 10.2 Database
And the solution is to apply a patch with a version of CloneContext.java above 115.203. the following are possibilities patches

Patch 5473292, Patch 5732291, Patch 5604818, Patch 5456078, Patch 5474116

Well I did not do that because this means that I have to apply the patch and recopy the database, which take time.
So I recreate the database manually using control file. And when try to open the database I issued
SQL>alter database open resetlogs;
It failed with the following
alter database open resetlogs
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01113: file 1 needs media recovery
ORA-01110: data file 1: '/ora_dev/data/system01.dbf'
Even though the database was completely down when I copied it I faced this error the good thing is 2 days ago I was reading bas post http://basklaassen.blogspot.com/2008/01/recover-database.html
I followed the steps for recovery and provided the path to my online log files and the recovery completed successfully.
Next down time for the production database for sure I will apply one of the patches above.

Hope that helped
Fadi

Add new node to apps 2

Please read http://oracle-magic.blogspot.com/2008/02/add-new-node-to-apps.html before reading the steps below,

After finishing configuring the clone instance by running adcfgclone.pl I had to run the adaddnode.pl script according to note 464018.1.
While running adaddnode.pl I faced the following error
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00001: unique constraint (APPLSYS.AD_APPL_TOPS_U2) violated
ORA-06512: at line 16

I followed note 394615.1 to solve it and after I did the steps in the note I run adaddnode.pl again and I faced error related to AD_TIMESTAMPS_U1 I checked on metalink but I could not find anything then I search on google and found post by dave http://newappsdba.blogspot.com/2006/09/dont-hit-ctrl-c-while-running.html from his post I took a backup the ad_timestamps and then truncate it after that I run adaddnode.pl and it completed successfully.
Then I updated the xml file to have only the forms and web servers running on this new node following the same note 464018.1 I run autoconfig the start the service on both nodes a now able to access both nodes.

What I want to do now is to configure web cache as load balancer also I want to implement Step 2.4.1.2. Implement Forms Listener Servlet Support from note (Advanced Configurations and Topologies for Enterprise Deployments of E-Business Suite 11i) Note:217368.1 in order to have Forms Server Load Balancing, so when one form server go down in one node users will be connect to the other forms node.Because the current configuration if I am connect to webnode1 and forms on that node is down I will not be able to connect to forms and I will receive an error but if load balancing is implemented it will take me to the other working forms server node.


Fadi

Sharing is Caring 4

Oracle Community
it the new site for oracle social networking, http://www.oraclecommunity.net/to make oracle community even smaller.

enjoy
Fadi

Add new node to apps

A customer want to add new web/forms node to his current multi-node apps 11.5.10.2 production system also we have to configure a web cache load balancer.
The current system is 2 nodes (db node, apps tire node).
I am currently doing the configuration on test environment, I followed note (
How to Add a New Node to The Application Tier, and Make It a Web Server Node Only, Note: 464018.1 same as instructions of "Part 4: Adding a new node to an existing system" under "Section 4: Advanced Cloning Options" of Note 230672.1"Cloning Oracle Applications Release 11iwith Rapid Clone".

I am currently cloning the apps tire to the new server after that I will run adcfgclone.pl then adaddnode.pl in order to configure it. One important note is to disable SQL*Net Access so that the new node can access the database.
after that i will try to configure the webcache as load balancer.
I will update you once done.

Enjoy
Fadi

Questions needed answers

Dears apps dbas,
I hope thing are well with you, I received the following questions from a friend of mine and I promised him to answer them and wanted to share them with you maybe you can help me answer most of them.
Appreciate your help.

(we have some of the answers by dave (thank you) in the comments and all of them under http://www.teachmeoracle.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4102)

1. How do we know that particular instance is cloned or normal installed?
2. How can you know that how many modules are already implemented in this instance?
3. How to enable archive log without shutting down your database?
4. How can we know that whether we already applied latest AUTOCONFIG patch or not at our instance?
5. Is this possible to clone a database from hotbackup? If yes plz tell how?
6. Suppose your database size is 2000GB now you want to clone a particular one datafile or tablespace. Plz tell how co clone a datafile or tablespace?
7. You are applying a patch but suddenly it HANGS but log file didn’t showing any error what should be the reason for that HANG?
8. How to clone from multimode to single node?
9. How to apply patch on forms/reports server?

Thanks again for help
Fadi

I have been tagged

Gareth Roberts tagged me in the current round of OraBlog tag, you can check the rules.

Below are the 8 things you might not know about me:

1- Athens, Greece, Masters: I am currently doing my masters in managing business innovation and technology thurogh a scholarship here in Athens, Greece.
2- Having to change your job is a good thing: I started my oracle career after I had to change my previous job (well my old manager claims that my work was done there and the project i was working on was over, actually it turns out to be a good thing after that I changed my career path from Microsoft to Oracle)
3- Travel: I like to travel a lot and I am welling to take any chance to visit any new country/places.
4- Documentary: I am a T.V documentary addict; I can watch any type of documentary but prefer political ones.
5- Jogging: I jog 3-4 KM every other day I like jogging a lot.
6- Single: well still I am currently single. (Marry to oracle apps I guess ;-).
7- Reading: currently I am trying to get used to reading I have this book called (the management bible by John Wiley and sons) it’s a good book I guess every manager should read it, although I am not a manager yet but be prepared always. You never now what will happen next.
8- Sky is the limit and think big: Sky is the limit is my personal message at MSN messenger, and think big will be my next personal message at MSN.

My turn in tagging, I will tag.
OCP Advisor
Syed Jaffar Hussain
Lutz hartmann
Mark Rittman
Grant Ronald
Senthil Rajendran
Vikram Das
Famy Rasheed

have a nice tagging

fadi

Hail the Champions

I participate recently in a post from our famous Bolger OCP advisor, it a nice blog that help apps community with info. About Apps certification.
I am trying to be active again.
You can check his post here.

Good luck with your certification
Fadi

Oracle EBS R12 beta exam are you ready

I received the following email from oracle certification program
“Oracle University is pleased to announce the availability of the following new Oracle E-Business Suite (R12) certification exam in beta version:
Oracle EBS R12: Install, Patch and Maintain Applications [1Z0-238]
This new exam is required as part of earning the new Oracle EBS R12 Applications Database Administrator Certified Professional certification.
By participating in this beta exam, you have the opportunity to provide the Oracle Certification program with feedback about exam content which is integral to the process of exam development. We depend on the contributions of experienced professionals and developers as we continually improve exam content and maintain the value of Oracle certifications.

Beta exam period runs:
January 03 – April 04, 2008
These beta periods are subject to change, please check the exam pages for the most up-to-date information
“

Good luck with your exams
fadi

Sharing is Caring 3

Oracle wiki
is the new site from oracle where members of the Oracle community (employees and non-employees) collaboratively create and share content about Oracle-related subjects they're passionate about. http://wiki.oracle.com/

See you there
Fadi

How we solved a (ORA-02049 Timeout: Distributed Transaction Waiting for Lock) on our Apps Customized module

We have a customized Point of Sale module that is integrated with our Apps standard CRM and financial modules; we faced a serious issue on this customized module that is when users are trying to sale through this module they receive an ORA-02049 Timeout: Distributed Transaction Waiting for Lock, which require them to keep trying until they make the sale. This error used to show on daily basis on the peak hours only but we could not tell what the cause of it, simple search of the error on metalink return note 1018919.102 that advices that we should increases the distributed_lock_timeout value in the INIT.ORA file the default value was 60 seconds so we increased it to 300 seconds even though we don’t have any distributed transactions on the system all the transactions were local. We restart the issue and the problem became worse because now the end users have to wait for 5 minutes (300 seconds) before they receive the error message (ORA-02049) and because of that we had to set the value back to 60 seconds.

After that we tried to trace the error using different event trace levels but with no luck we were not able to determine what is causing the error.

We thought that it’s a database bug and oracle advised us to upgrade the database from 9.2.0.5 to 9.2.0.7 we did that but still the issue is there.

After a month of investigation/tracing and snapshot of when the problem is happing we managed to find out what was causing the problem. It was a bitmap index that was built on the table we were trying to insert data on.

When an end user was trying to sale without committing his transaction for some reason and at the same time another end user tries to sale he will receive the error message and a lock on the table happened and the error pops-up.

We solved the issue by dropping the bitmap index and creating a normal b-tree index even though the column has only three distinct values.

ATG Rollup 4 and my Custom schema

After Appling ATG Rollup 4 patch no. (4676589) on our HP-UX server successfully we start to receive the following error only on our customized schema but not on the standard schemas.
The error was showing when we try to run any procedure from this customized schema we keep getting the following even though it used to work fine before the patch
"
ORA-00942: table or view does not existORA-06512: at "APPS.FND_CORE_LOG", line 23ORA-06512: at "APPS.FND_CORE_LOG", line 158ORA-06512: at "APPS.FND_PROFILE", line 2468ORA-06512: at "APPS.XX_PACKAGE_PA", line 682ORA-06512: at line 4
"

After checking on metalink we got a hint from note 370000.1 the note dose not apply for the same case but it did gave us the hint and the solution was as follow

connect as APPLSYSGRANT SELECT ON FND_PROFILE_OPTIONS TO SUPPORT;GRANT SELECT ON FND_PROFILE_OPTION_VALUES TO SUPPORT;


Support is my customized schema Custom
Have an error free day ;-)

fadi

Multi to Single node Cloning issue

A friend called me yesterday he was facing the following error when he tried to clone from multi node to single node cloning
"Could not create the high water mark manifest..Please re-run the program to create the manifest required for merging APPL_TOPs"

He faced this error after he run the (perl adpreclone.pl appsTier merge) and then he cancel it while running and then he run it again on the other node then he recived this error.

According to metalink notes 372819.1 and 372758.1 he should reapply the AD.I.x patch again to the node and then run Maintain snapshot and then run the perl adpreclone.pl appsTier merge again, we did so and every thing went fine.

Hope that helped and by the way this will be my last post before my Eye LASIK Surgery which is scheduled tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m.

Fadi

Support forum,

I am thinking of opening a forum here to share support cases with all users, even though I guess oracle forums a great place to post problems and to get answers quickly, I will try to open my own forum for 3 months period if it was successful I will keep it other wise I will stick with oracle forums.
Suggestion are welcomed
Fadi

Oracle support day in amman

Been busy lately, yesterday I went to oracle support day at Hayyat Amman. It was presented by two oracle support managers, wael sadaqa from Oracle dubi and jafar al omary from Oracle Saudi Arabia, they presented how to work effectively with support and the escalation process and they also stressed on using oracle diagnostics and configuration support manager. They mentioned a little bit about R12 upgrade process and they mentioned that people who are doing upgrade will get more attention from oracle support.
It was good and helpful, the presentations can be downloaded from here
Fadi

An update on this (25-jun-2007)
The presentations can be downloaded from here

Workflow again

-an update on this we applied the patch and it solved our issue
Some end-users open cases with the support claiming that they don’t receive all the email notifications related to some of their purchase orders, I thought that maybe their email were spelled wrong or maybe they changed their email preference so they don’t receive an emails at oracle application level like the last time, I checked both but none of the above applies on the case so I had to check an one of there POs on the wf_notifications table, I run the following query

select * from wf_notifications where subject like '%200700001052%'

and the email_status value was ERROR so I took the notification_id and search for it in the emails that were sent by the notification mailer to the sysadmin and I found an email with the following content

"Event Error Name: -20001Event Error Message: ORA-20001: Oracle error -20001: ORA-20001: APP-FND-02500: Error occurred during product initialization for MO when executing 'begin MO_GLOBAL.INIT; end;'.SQLCODE = -20001 SQLERROR = ORA-20001: APP-FND-02902: Multi-Org profile option is required. Please set either MO: Security Profile or MO: Operating Unit profile option.has been detected in FND_GLOBAL.INITIALIZE."

I check that error on metalink and I found 5 notes saying that I must apply patch (5209533) p5209533_11i_GENERIC.zip

I will apply that patch on my test/clone instance this weekend and I will update you if the issue was resolved.

For more info you can check note (393847.1) or search for the error/patch


Hope that helped
Fadi

Small issue after cloning

After I cloned my production system I faced the following error when I run adadmin or adpatch

"
AD code level : [11i.AD.I.4]


The Applications System names per the APPL_TOP and the database are different.
Applications System name per the APPL_TOP: clone
Applications System name per the database: prod

If you continue, the Applications System name per the APPL_TOP will be ignored.

Do you wish to continue [No] ?
"
To solve it I had to run the following update statement on my clone database
update FND_PRODUCT_GROUPSset APPLICATIONS_SYSTEM_NAME ='clone' ;commit;


Hope that helped

fadi

New credentials for oracle applications

Oracle has lunched a new certification programs after they have changed their apps dba OCP program then new certifications are as follow:

-Oracle 11i System Administrator Certified Expert. (1Z0-232)
Exam Number:
1Z0-232
Duration:
120 minutes
Associated Certifications:
TBD
Number of Questions:
87
Exam Price:
$195 USD
Passing Score:
60%

-Oracle 11i Workflow Certified Expert. (1Z0-231)
Exam Number:
1Z0-231
Duration:
90 minutes
Associated Certifications:
TBD
Number of Questions:
72
Exam Price:
$195 USD
Passing Score:
59%


If you pass any of the above exams you will consider an expert neither an ocp nor oca. Also both exams doesn't require any pre-requests exames.

Fadi

Starting on apps field (my personal theory)

I receive this question (how can I start on apps technical filed? How can I be an apps dba?...etc)
Well I am going to give some hints from my point of view, those hint may not be the ideal therefore any reader of this post can leave any suggestions to make the steps better and easier.

-First of all you need to have instance (vision demo database) so you can test things on it, by this I mean that you should read the installation guide which will guide you on how to build the stage area and what are the pre-requisites (hardware/software) for the installation and the installation process using rapidwiz
The installation will not finish successfully form the first time unless you are so lucky, and from the installation you will get a good experience.
-after the installation you need to understand the applications file system structure.
- also you have to read oracle applications concepts guide.
Then you can start reading about applications administration and maintaining procedures, you need to understand both adpatch and adadmin.
- By now if you manage to install oracle applications and to apply patches on it then you are in the right track.
-then after that you need to read about backup and recovery.
-you need also to monitor oracle forums and oracle blogs.
-keep metalink as your friend.
-when you see an interesting issue in forum or blog try to track it and maybe try to solve it if you can this will give you an add experience.
-try to participate on oracle applications email lists like ittoolbox …etc.
-try to get oracle applications administration books like dba filed guide and others.

finaly keep in mind that (no pain no gain)

Please leave comments on what you think the best way to be an apps dba

Fadi
P.S all the guides mentioned above can be found under (for apps 11i) http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B25516_16/current/html/docset.html

Apps 11i with Windows vista

(just an update, As a workaround for IE on Vista issue, Apps 11.5.10 works fine on Vista with firefox)
Our network department has a plan to go with windows vista and they asked me to open a TAR with oracle to get their official response.
Below is oracle response

QUESTION
=========
Summarize customer's question here. One question per heading.
Unable to connect from MS-Vista Client on e-Business suite 11.5.10
RESEARCH
=========
Steven's Blog
ANSWER
=======
Currently Jinitiator is not certified on MS-VistaDevelepemt is working on it but we don't have any ETA for it So, please don't upgrade to MS-Vista Sorry for that
KNOWLEDGE CONTENT
=================
Platform / Port Specific? = Not certified for the moment

Ready for Apps R12 go and download it now

Congratulations apps dbas and functional people oracle e-business R12 is now available for download at http://edelivery.oracle.com/ the version available is for AIX, hp-ux itanium and Linux x86 the rest of other os will be available soon,
My friend ghassan is downloading the Linux version and after that he will download the hp-ux version for me (he has 2M ADSL connection). i will post incase i face problems during the installation (i will for sure face some:-)

Anyway people you need for the vision version around 160 GB.
Check the documentation library at Oracle Applications Documentation Resources for Release 12 (Metalink Note 394692.1) and at oracle website

Enjoy
Fadi