Tuesday, September 30, 2014

R12.1.3: AME approval list out of sequence

Were you aware that the AME approval order for iProcurement is wrong on certain R12.1.3 patch sets?  The MOS article "Approval List Sequence Is Not Sorted Properly" via note ID 1561967.1 has all the details how to replicate the issue, impact, cause and which patches resolve the problem.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Blog roll update: Iggy Fernandez

Lately my blog roll updates have been pretty technical and many related to Exadata specifically, but today I bring you a different kind of blog!  If you need to brush up on your SQL (or NoSQL) skills and then take them to the next level, you need to check out Iggy Fernandez's blog!  My SQL/NoSQL skills are just fine, there is no reason I need to visit Iggy's page you say?  Wrong you would be!  Not on does his blog cover this subject, but he is an Oracle ACE, regular contributor with the NoCOUG, and author of the Beginning Oracle Database 11g Administration book.  Do you really want to miss out on the posts of an experienced DBA about the subject of SQL or NoSQL?  I would not if I were you!

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Exadata cell hangs running patchmgr

Coming from a new unpublished bug, while running the patchmgr application to start patching Exadata it is possible to encounter a problem with it hanging on a ":Working: DO:" task output.  Drilling down it appears netstat might be running on the node in question, but for the full details visit the article "Exadata Cell Pre-upgrade Hangs" on My Oracle Support via note ID 1926228.1!

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Weekend Learning: Oracle Business Intelligence Applications - Information Center

Do you have Oracle Business Intelligence Applications in your environment?  Are you looking for more information about OBIA?  Well the My Oracle Support document "Information Center: Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (OBIA) Release 7.9.6.x and Later" under note ID 1406496.2 will fit that bill!  Take a look to find a LOT of relevant articles!

Friday, September 26, 2014

ALERT: Bash vulnerability and Oracle products

Coming straight from Oracle Security Alert CVE-2014-7169, is the notice that the GNU Bash shell command line for Unix/Linux has a newly released vulnerability which will allow an unauthenticated user session to run code.  There are many products like Exadata, Solaris and Linux which do have a patch available to fix this (Exadata was not patched earlier this morning, unless I missed something) but there is a long list of Oracle application which do not yet have patches.  Follow the link to find all the details!

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Thoughts: Larry Ellison "steps down"

By now everybody has heard about Larry Ellison stepping down from his role as CEO into dual roles as the Executive Chairman and CTO yet what everybody is focusing on is his move from the CEO role.  I think what is more important to focus on are three things: Larry has put the well being of his company first before the ego he is known for by allowing this change to keep his management team together, the direction and ideas the new CEOs are going to bring to running Oracle, and the interesting fact that Oracle did not have a CTO at this time.

I have seen some posts or tweets the past week where people are acting like Larry has died, or Oracle is going under immediately, but I think people are blowing things out of proportion because it sounds like Larry has been the de facto CTO while he was the CEO so this will allow him to concentrate on what he has been excelling at while the CEOs can do the same in their focus areas too.

What do you think?

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Oracle Open World: Blogger Meetup

Are you heading to Oracle Open World?  Do you blog about Oracle technology?  If you answered yes to both of these, then you should sign up for Pythian's blogger meetup!  Just take a look at the line up with everybody that is signing up, and it is a veritable who's who of Oracle bloggers so do not miss this great opportunity to do some networking.  Between this and OakTable World going on during Oracle Open World, I am really sad that I am not going to be there again this year but there is always next year!  Maybe I will snag a Discover Pass and then just spend a few days at the off conference events during the week.  I mean, it is a plan right?  :}

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

XMLTYPE tables do not show up in DBA_TABLES

While researching a potential performance problem in our system as a result of an e-mail from one of my co-workers, I found out that XMLTYPE tables are not really tables at all.  What makes me say that?  Well, check out this My Oracle Support note "Why Xmltype tables don't show up in Dba_tables view?" found via article ID 1419203.1 to find out which view these tables actually show up in and the reason why too!

Monday, September 22, 2014

Blog roll update: Andy Colvin

You may notice a trend lately with my blog roll updates, but if you enjoy getting information from Oracle ACEs, people working on Exadata, or working for a company like Enkitec, then you will enjoy following Andy Colvin's blog!  Okay, maybe Andy is not updating it all that frequently right now but you can see a link to his Twitter stream which usually has gems every few days.  If you are not on Twitter, you can still add the blog and then read up what he is sharing on Twitter every week or two in order to catch up with some great information.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

11gR2: Listener hangs with ORA-12518 and too many open files

How up to date are you on bugs fixed in 11.2.0.4 which affect 11.2.0.1, 11.2.0.2 and 11.2.0.3?  Were you aware there is an unpublished bug related to this and also a patch for 11.2.02 and 11.2.0.3 which can resolve this for you?  Read "11.2 : ORA-12518 Listener Hangs and Reports "Too Many Open Files" on My Oracle Support from document ID 1527483.1 and also see how you can monitor open sessions with lsof which is something featured in this article where we had problems with open connections ourselves.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

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)."

Friday, September 19, 2014

R12.13: Expense Report Export not showing everything in Both Pay situation

I work with some pretty smart people but since we are not working for a company like some of the bigger consultant companies I see out there, our discoveries and developments with Oracle technology does not have a clear platform for sharing with the outside world.  Today I get to change that, as one of my co-workers helped Oracle discover the need for a patch for Payables which you can see via My Oracle Support document "Expense Report Export Report Does Not Show Credit Card Related Invoices With Both Pay Scenario" via article ID 1917170.1 that I found today while researching the patch in question to see if we had any known issues arising from applying it.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Concurrent Manager: Killed/Giving Up

Troubleshooting a situation with our Concurrent Manager on 11.5.10.2 I ran into a problem I have never seen before.  Running similar to researching an issue like a previous post, I was trying to find out why the OS thread for the Internal Manager was taking CPU cycles and when I looked in the Administer Concurrent Manager form I can see that the Internal Manager had been up for months.  First thing I try is to Verify it, but that and every other step I was taking would end up just Pending so I started digging for why we needed the CM to be bounced.

In the Internal Manager log I could see the following entry:

Process monitor session ended  : <date>

Process monitor session started : <date>

(the above were repeated hundreds of times)

Killed
The SID_processID@SID internal concurrent manager has terminated with status 137 - giving up.

What is interesting, is that the <date> above was many months prior to when I tried to give the Internal Manager the Verify command.  What does this mean?  Well we have another opportunity to proactively monitor our log files for this known issue!

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

R12.1.3: Event Oracle.Apps.AR.Adjustments.Adjustment.Approve not firing

Coming from a world of few business events to where we have a whole bunch more with our R12.1.3 installation, the MOS article "Transactions Workbench: Creating an Adjustment Does Note Fire Oracle.Apps.AR.Adjustments.Adjustment.Approve Event" from document 1632402.1 drew my attention.  Did you know that this business event is designed not to be fired now in R12.1.3?  Read the document and learn why!

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Exadata patch validation failure

Have you ever seen the error message "The hardware and firmware does not match with the profile" after patching your Exadata platform?  If so, visit the document "Post Exadata Patching Validation Error - /opt/oracle.cellos/CheckHWnFWProfile failed on one dbnode" via My Oracle Support note ID 1677192.1 to find out what the issue probably is.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Blog roll update: Martin Bach

Are you always looking for more information on Exadata or 12c?  How about learning from an Oracle instructor on these subjects?  If you answered yes to these, then you NEED to visit Martin Bach's blog!  The best part of this is how much Martin references and links to documentation from a variety of different people on these subjects so you can read his blog and get involved with others in the community to learn even more as time goes on.

Bonus:  I enjoyed the post here about wait events that are being introduced with new versions of the database, and makes me think about creating some documentation for myself to keep track of the "new" ones I encounter in the wild and those I am looking for!

Sunday, September 14, 2014

500 posts!

It is hard to believe that I have not missed a night (or day) of posting on the blog since January 20th of this year, and even harder to believe that I have finally hit the 500 post milestone tonight!  While it has taken over two years to get to this point, I am thinking that I will hit 1000 posts by the end of year 4 because I have so many more places to get relevant information for somebody in my type of position out there supporting EBS or Hyperion products.

Thanks for sharing the ride of the last 500 posts!  Feel free to share any favorite posts in the comments or give me advice for the next 500!

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Weekend Learning: 10 book writing tips

One day I may compile a lot of the things you read in this blog, and maybe other places in the coming future, into an actual published book.  Are you an aspiring author too?  If so, this post from Michael Abbey with Pythian has some very good tips that can probably be applied to more than just technical book writing!

Friday, September 12, 2014

R12.1: Incorrect GL and subledgers due to corruption

Are you already on R12.1?  Did you know there is a known bug where several reports are not returning subledger journals which requires a patch and datafix?  Visit the MOS article "Corruption in GL Journal Headers Causing Incorrect Reporting in GL and Subledgers" from note ID 1559470.1 to get up to speed on this issue, and make sure that you have applied the required patch!

Thursday, September 11, 2014

11gR2: ORA-600 corruption in rolling back RAC transaction

If you are on several different versions of Oracle's 11gR2 database, you may be susceptible to a known ORA-600 bug detailed in the MOS note "ALERT: Bug 13605839 ORA-600 [ktbsdp1] ORA-600 [kghfrempty:ds] ORA-600 [kdBlkCheckError]. Corruption in Rollback with Clusterwide Global Transactions in RAC" which is found in document ID 1527740.1 but the linked document 13605839.8 has all of the bug details including which versions are affected and which versions have this fixed.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Troubleshooting Automatic Remittances

Related to an old post of mine on batches where I ran into problems due to automatic batch numbering, I found another My Oracle Support article that needs bookmarking in "Automatic Remittances: Troubleshooting, Errors, Known Issues and Patches" via document ID 1369785.1.  This article will give you a lot more than just troubleshooting on Automatic Remittances for versions of the EBS application including 11.5.10 and after including patches, errors and other known issues.  Why favorite this?  Well it has been updated within the last month so it is absolutely relevant as new information keeps being released by Oracle and it is possible new patches are deployed and you can find out about it here first.

EDIT 9/11:  I realized this morning that I forgot to link to my previous post!  Oops!  Fixed now though.  :}

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

12c: Release 1 support and alerts

Do you know where to find Oracle support documentation about the newest Release for 12c?  Well look no further than MOS document "ALERT: Oracle 12c Release 1 (12.1) Support Status and Alerts" from note ID 1565065.1 for all the patches, certifications, support policy and more on the 12.1.0.1 and 12.1.0.2 releases!  Do not forget to favorite this in MOS!

Monday, September 8, 2014

R12: Superseded RPCs

How often do you apply product Recommended Patch Collections (RPCs)?  Are you in the middle of applying some RPCs?  Did you know that some RPCs have been superseded within the last few weeks?

***SUPERSEDED*** EBS: R12.1: Receivables Recommended Patch Collection (RPC), Sep 2013 - Note ID 1579521.1
EBS: R12.1: Receivables Recommended Patch Collection (RPC), Aug 2014 - Note ID 1912247.1

***SUPERSEDED*** EBS: R12.1: Advanced Collections (IEX) Recommended Patch Collection - SEP 2013 - Note ID 1618571.1
EBS: R12.1: Advanced Collections (IEX) Recommended Patch Collection - Aug 2014 - Note ID 1912256.1

***SUPERSEDED*** General Ledger Recommended Patch Collection (GL RPC) September 2013 - Note ID 1584923.1
General Ledger Recommended Patch Collection (GL RPC) August 2014 - Note ID 1919532.1

With all of this information that can be updated, do you wish that everything was bundled in one spot?  Ask and ye shall receive!

EBS: R12.1 Oracle Financials Recommended Patch Collection (RPC), Aug 2014 - Note ID 954704.1

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Weekend Learning: JDBC/JVM connection troubleshooting

Have you made sure you have every little bit of performance from your system?  Well here is another way to squeeze out a little more performance from your system by visiting My Oracle Support note "Please update JDBC settings following MOS Basic troubleshooting of JVM consuming CPU or too many JDBC connections in EBS Apps 11i" via document ID 370583.1 and even if you are on R12 there are some nuggets of information that may interest you including a linked document towards the end of the article which is not exclusive for 11i.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Weekend Learning: EBS Workflow - Information Center

In my experience one of the parts of the Oracle E-Business Suite that changes the least is the Oracle Workflow product, but also when it does change sometimes it is very important that you have stayed on top of the documentation so when you hit go-live day you do not have an unexpected speed bump.  What is a good way to do that?  Go into My Oracle Support and bookmark the article "Information Center: E-Business Suite Oracle Workflow (WF)" located by note ID 1320509.2 so you can monitor the Workflow product for new patches or configurations that might be needed to avoid potential issues down the road.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Blog roll update: Weidong Zhou

Another great blog that you should be reading if you are interested in Exadata is Weidong Zhou's blog that is being added to my blog roll tonight.  I had learned of Weidong via his Enkitec co-worker Carlos Sierra from a post shared on LinkedIn last year, and it looks like he has not stopped sharing great information with all of us as there are some really awesome tidbits which can fuel your fire a bit!  Go take a gander, and share what you found new or interesting in the comments here!

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Office 365: EBS and Hyperion

Is your business thinking about migrating to the Office 365 solution?  Do you know what that means for either the EBS or Hyperion applications?  I found out the answer to that today by reading these My Oracle Support documents:

Is The Workflow Notification Mailer Compatible With Microsoft Office 365 Cloud Base Mailer Servers - Note ID 1914579.1
Oracle Hyperion Smart View Support for Office 365 - Note ID 1581197.1

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

RMOUG Training Days: Abstracts Open!

Are you returning to the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG) Training Days this year?  Did you know that the abstract submissions are now open?  I have not had the chance to attend this conference yet, but I am looking forward to trying to get accepted to present and I will let you know how I do!

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Limiting your attachment size in EBS

Did you know there is a built-in profile option to limit how much space users can upload in a single attachment for your Oracle EBS application?  After reading the MOS article "How to Limit The Attachment File Size?" via note ID 604458.1 you will know about the profile option as well and can start thinking of ways to use it to limit potential abuse.

Monday, September 1, 2014

COLLABORATE 15: Call for Presentations open

Are you a member of the OAUG?  Have you ever attended the COLLABORATE conference and wanted to get back there?  Do you have something to share with the rest of the OAUG?  If you answered yes to all of these, then you are in luck!  The call for presentations is now open until October 10th for members of the OAUG and getting accepted will get you a free registration!

I'm looking forward to submitting my abstracts again, but I'm also looking forward to hearing from you about your experience putting an abstract together and even more to hear you getting selected for the conference so please let me know in the comments!