It’s coming! Don’t close your eyes. Face it head on. Ease your worries by reading this, Part I of a three part overview of the upgrade from Release 11.5.10.2 to Release 12.1.3. I’ll describe the tried and true tips and techniques – everything from “oops – did you know about these extra patches?” to ways to decrease your down time.
The Big Picture shows at a high level the tasks and challenges of the R12.1.3 upgrade. The Big Picture describes how to get started, how to motivate business users to upgrade, and whether to re-implement or upgrade. It covers the technical upgrade steps with a few functional steps; understanding these steps helps all team members work toward a better upgrade.
Oracle Support Compliance – Release 11.5.10.2 Support Milestones
Premium Support for E-Business Suite 11.5.10.2 ended November 30, 2010.
• First year of 11.5.10.2 EBS Extended Support fees are waived.
• Mandatory Patches – Minimum Baseline Patches for Extended Support 11.5.10.2 – After December 1, 2010 (Note 883202.1)
Release 12.0 Support Milestones
• February 1, 2012 – Premium Support Ends (R12.0.6) (845809.1)
Release 12.1 Support Milestones
• July 1, 2011 – You must apply R12.ATG_PF.B.delta.2 (R12.1.2 ATG RUP) (845809.1)
• February 1, 2012 – You must apply R12.ATG_PF.B.delta3 (R12.1.3 ATG RUP) (1066312.1)
• February 1, 2013 – You must upgrade to EBS R12.1.3
The Upgrade is Iterative
The Upgrade is an Iterative Process, until all the issues are resolved and new functionality is working.
The Technical Upgrade is like Evolution – It’s an Iterative Approach
The faster you can iterate, the faster you can resolve problems and proceed to the production upgrade. For these reasons, the upgrade machine should be the fastest, baddest machine available. Remember users will want to perform testing, gap analysis and training, and developers will want to recode their customizations. For this reason, you’ll need to have other machines available to clone the latest upgrade pass. The less time you spend cloning, use snapshots and very fast disks, the more time you’ll have to work on the upgrade.
In general, the iterative cycle is as follows:
- Follow the steps in the upgrade guide
- Run patchsets.sh
- Run Patch Wizard – • Patch Wizard Update for 11i (Patch 9803629)
- Apply any new patches
- Iterate back to Step 3 and run Patch Wizard, until there are no new patches
How We Learned to do the R12 Upgrade
We started with the upgrade to 12.0.4 from 11.5.10.2 and learned with each book we wrote. Our initial upgrades were based on VISION upgrades with base 11.5.10.2 patches. The same basic way Oracle initially tests the upgrade. We’ve done many technical upgrade assessments, functional assessments and customization assessments. The technical assessment is an important step to establish your patch levels for each module. If you want to continue receiving support from Oracle, then you’ll need to be patched with the Mandatory patches.
First Pass Upgrade to 12.1.1
Real customer data introduces new combinations of patch levels and possible data issues. This gave us greater insight into the upgrade issues. We then introduced the “First Pass” upgrade. We come on-site and upgrade your instance in 2 weeks. The whole assessment -1st pass upgrade usually takes 4-6 weeks, nt including customizations. This gives us many data points in our analysis of what patches are required. The 1st pass upgrade gives your functional analysts an instance to perform gap analysis and the developers an instance to see what customizations are broken.
The combination of assessments and 1st Pass upgrades help define the P3 Upgrade Methodology.
From the assessments and 1st pass upgrades we gathered new issues /solutions and developed an upgrade methodology that we use at every customer. The following picture shows the book covers for the project plan, the overview for managers and team members and the detailed, step-by-step instructions to complete the upgrade to R12.1.3.
With another release and more clients patch levels/issues, we’ve identified even more issues. The following are the pictures for the covers for the project plan, the overview and detailed upgrade guide.
Plan
Decision: re-implement or upgrade
Understand the hardware requirements and the upgrade path
Procure upgrade hardware
Purge unnecessary data
Train the functional super users in the new features of Release 12.1
Create an upgraded instance for gap analysis
Start with an assessment and a 1st pass upgrade.
Technical Assessment
Determine future capacity requirements, tech stack version compatibility and patch levels, including CPUs and PSUs. We review current issues from log files, unresolved service requests, and identify potential issues with the R12.1 Upgrade.
Architecture – Hardware Assessment
Review hardware configurations including options like: RAC vs SMP, Shared Application Tier with Distributed Processing, Parallel Concurrent Processing, SAN vs JBOD, RMAN vs Snapshots.
If the plan includes buying new hardware, consider migrating from the current 32-bit platform to a 64-bit platform.
Functional Assessment
The R12 Upgrade is not just a technical upgrade
The functional upgrade consists of mapping new business requirements with new functional features in R12.
Identify AS-IS Processes
Determine TO-BE Processes
Evaluate Potential Data Issues
Which New Features may replace customizations?
Estimate R12 New Features Training Needs
Recommend “Best Practices”
Example of Functional Issues
SQL> select count(*), country from ap_bank_branches group by country;
COUNT(*) COUNTRY
1081 (null)
112 US
3 NZ
226 CA
1 BB
2 GB
1 DE
The best solution is to have the AP functional superusers update the banks to their proper value. However, the following SQL statement can be used temporarily:
update ap_bank_branches set country=’US’ where country is null;
There are many other functional checks that are provided as a part of the functional assessment. We also provide a summary of functional new features for your installed modules.
Customization Assessment
CEMLI = Configurations, Extensions, Modifications, Localizations, and Integrations
The CEMLI Upgrade Assessment includes determining technical impact of Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 on CEMLIs, upgrading CEMLIs to the new technology stack, retrofit of CEMLIs for compatibility and usability on Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.
Identify all customizations
Check-in all customizations into configuration management
Determine customizations that are replaced by new R12.1 functionality
Re-Code customizations
Prepare Customization Upgrade Implementation Plan
Customization Configuration Management
Start by identifying all customizations. In some environments the customizations aren’t well documented and some customizations may have been lost due to previous patching. Check-in all customizations into configuration management. Customizations are easier to customize if you can find them and have some version control.
Determine the customizations that are replaced by new R12.1 functionality. This requires an analyst that knows the new functionality of R12.1 and understands the customizations.
Lastly, determine the customizations that need to be fixed or added to the upgrade to preserve or extend the process alignment.
Prepare
Train the Super Users and Technical Staff
Buy Hardware
Create Upgraded Instance for detailed gap analysis
Practice Testing
Practice Upgrades
Use the Maintenance Wizard (215527.1)
Step-by-step, graphical user interface for performing upgrade tasks
Consolidates instructions from multiple sources to present a comprehensive upgrade picture
Reduces upgrade tasks by filtering out those that do not apply to you (using TUMS)
Indicates critical patches that your system requires
Can automatically execute upgrade tasks for you
Run patchsets.sh
Use Patch Wizard from Oracle Application Manager (OAM)
We recommend that when you finish your upgrade to what you believe is the latest version of 12.1.3, with all the patches and Family Packs identified from patchsets.sh, this book, and your own research, you should run Patch Wizard again to see if additional patches are found.
Note that Patch Wizard may require patches for both Release 11i and Release 12 (9643141, 10629956).
If possible complete the following prior to the R12.1 upgrade weekend:
Upgrade the Database to 11.2.0.2
Migrate to OATM
Install the R12.1.1 software
Run Downtime Reducing steps
Run pre-upgrade verification steps
Technical Upgrade – Details
R12.1 Upgrade Paths
Path A DB 9iR2, 10gR2 Apps 11.5.7 or 11.5.8
DB Upgrade & Apps Upgrade need to be completed during the same downtime window.
Path B If the DB already at 11gR1, Apps 11.5.9.2 or 11.5.10.2
Only upgrade the Apps Stack
Path C Upgrade the DB & Apps in different phases
If upgrading from a release prior to 11.5.7, the upgrade path may require an interim upgrade to Release 11.5.10.2. Because of the significant downtime required to upgrade from Release 11.0 to Release 12, it may be more feasible to first upgrade to Release 11.5.10.2 and then some time later upgrade to Release 12. This requires the functional users to learn Release 11.5.10.2, and perform all the testing for another upgrade. The amount of work necessary to perform two rounds of system acceptance testing may justify another day or two of downtime, so that the upgrade from Release 11.0 to Release 12.1 can be completed in one longer period of downtime.
Upgrade Paths
The light green circles indicate the most documented upgrade path from 11.5.10.2 to 12.1.1 and 12.1.3.
These bubbles show the upgrade paths. If your initial release is 11.0.3, you will need to upgrade to an interim release, 11.5.10.2, before you can upgrade to 12.1.1. The following chart lists the initial release, interim release and final release, with the associated patch number,
Initial Release Interim Release Final Release R12 Patch
11.0, 11.5.1 – 11.5.6 Release 11.5.10 CU2 Release 12.0.0 4440000
11.5.7. 11.5.8, 11.5.9* or 11.5.10* Release 12.0.0 4440000
11.5.7, 11.5.8, 11.5.9.2, 11.5.10.2 Release 12.0.4 6394500
11.5.9*, 11.5.10* Release 12.1 6678700
12.1.1 Release 12.1.2 7303033
12.1.1 Release 12.1.3 9239090
* includes CU1 and CU2 (consolidated update)
Figure 4 indicates that a direct upgrade path exists from Release 11.5.7 to Release 12.0.0.
The Applications Upgrade path is constrained by the database release. The following chart shows the application release and the database versions that are certified on Solaris. If the application release is 11.5.10.2, then you can upgrade the database to 11gR2 before the application upgrade, saving downtime during upgrade weekend, if you plan you use 11gR2, and you should always try to use the latest certified version of the database.
Release Certified Database Versions on Solaris
12.1 10gR2, 11gR2 and the 64 bit versions
12.0 10gR2, 11gR2 and the 64 bit versions
11.5.10.2 10gR2 or 11gR2 and the 64 bit versions
11.5.9.2 10gR2 and the 64 bit versions
11.5.7 8.1.7, 9.0.1 9.2, and 9.2-64 bit
We can see that there is no certified database version that is certified with both Release 11.5.7 and Release 12.1. Therefore, we can’t do the database upgrade before the downtime window.
Overview of the R12.1 Technical Upgrade
The database upgrade is a bit more complicated if you’re running 9.2.0.6, because of Daylight Savings Time.
- The database installed by the 11.5.10.2 RapidWiz is Version 9.2.0.6. This database version does not support Daylight Savings Time (DST). Therefore, we have two choices:
- Upgrade the database to Version 9.2.0.8, which has support for DST, and then upgrade to Version 11.2.0.1, or
Perform the Upgrade
11i pre-reqs for Release 12.1.1
11870353, 5880762, 7477784, 7721754, 7828862, 8579398, 8757781, 8761881, 8798855, 8845395, 8908907, 8990356, 8991381, 9003549, 9053932, 9109247, 9128838, 9187813, 9288021, 9304675, 9442701, 9446543, 9476923, 9535311, 9685457, 9725579, 9747572, 9871422, 9889680, 3865683, 6408117, 8242248, 6024690, 4619025, 5368595, 5357791, 5970422, 59105548, 5194357, 5230979, 4396821, 5377946, 6741394, 6505416, 7418579, 4963569, 5259121, 4551977, 4607647, 6027561, 5760729, 5382135, 4699061, 6696828, 4582937, 4507073, 8340090, 4350832, 4563075, 4582937, 4607647, 4699061, 4939444, 4963569, 4969938, 5259121, 5382135, 6349338, 6351946, 6694260, 6696828, 8340090, 8487779, 10258309, 6264601, 3153717, 4252634
This list of patches continually changes. You should run Patch Wizard to determine any missing patches for your environment. When you’ve determined your patch list, cut and paste the patch list into the Patch Search form, on My Oracle Support.
Prepare for Fusion
Nadia Benedjedou lays out short and long term goals for migrating to fusion:
The steps Nadia lays out steps to prepare your organization to migrate to Fusion include:
- Implement OBIEE
- Implement Identity Management
- Start using BI Publisher
- Use Enterprise Manager, if you’re not already, to manage more of the enterprise.
- Move your customizations to a Fusion compatible framework, JDeveloper and ADF.
- Centralize and Consolidate your data using Oracle’s Master Data Management.
In the coming months, I’ll discuss Upgrade by Request in detail, how to create 4 merged patches that contain all the patches for the 12.1.3 upgrade to help reduce downtime and how to use the Oracle supplied post upgrade verification tasks to validate your R12.1.3 upgrade. I’ll also drill down into major upgrade issues, such as HR_HOOKS, Analytic Workspaces, adgrants.sql.