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ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT RELEASE 12

LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT TOOLS

ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE

LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT

FEATURES ARE DELIVERED

THROUGH THE FOLLOWING

TOOLS:

• Oracle Enterprise Manager

Grid Control is the next

generation management

solution used for managing

business applications, end-

user services, and the entire

grid infrastructure.

Application Management

pack for Oracle E-Business

Suite extends Grid Control to

provide central monitoring and

cloning Automation for Oracle

E-Business Suite, and links

Grid Control with Oracle

Applications Manager

• Oracle Applications

Manager is the system

management tool built into

Oracle E-Business Suite,

providing monitoring,

administration, diagnostic,

and maintenance capabilities

for a given E-Business Suite

environment.

• Oracle iSetup is a web-based

tool built into Oracle E-

Business Suite that enables

migration and monitoring of

data throughout the

application lifecycle Oracle

iSetup enables faster

implementation of Oracle E-

Business Suite at lower risk.

• Rapid Install is a wizard that

enables you to easily install

and configure a complete,

functional Oracle E-Business

Suite system.

• Rapid Clone is a tool used to

create a complete or partial

copy of an Oracle E-Business

Suite system. Rapid Clone

can be used to back up,

duplicate, or scale Oracle E-

Business Suite systems.

Oracle offers tools that help manage an Oracle E-Business Suite

system throughout its lifecycle. These tools reduce total cost of

ownership and increase IT agility to respond to changing business

needs. Release 12 enhances these tools to simplify management and

maintenance of Oracle Applications. This data sheet describes many

of these enhancements, grouping them into the following categories:

Installation; Monitoring and Administration; Maintenance; Cloning;

and Supportability.

Installation

Oracle E-Business Suite’s lifecycle begins with installation via Rapid Install.

The enhancements made to Rapid Install in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12

include:

� Simplified installation: The Rapid Install Wizard has been significantly

enhanced to simplify the process of installation. By centralizing system

configuration information, Rapid Install now makes multi-node installations

Oracle E-Business Suite even easier than before

� Ability to configure advanced topologies: Rapid Install facilitates the

configuration of advanced topologies, such as those that use DMZs, by

supporting the deployment of database nodes and middle tier nodes into

different network domains.

� Support sharing of a central technology stack: Rapid Install facilitates

installation of multiple Oracle E-Business suite nodes that share a central

technology stack as well as a central APPL_TOP. Such deployments simplify

application maintenance and help reduce downtime.

Monitoring and Administration

Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, the Application Management Pack for

Oracle E-Business Suite, and Oracle Applications Manager, combine to provide a

comprehensive approach to system monitoring and administration. From Oracle

Grid Control, multiple Oracle E-Business Suite systems can be monitored for

adherence to custom performance, configuration and security policies.

Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite

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The Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite extends Oracle

Enterprise Manager Grid Control to include the following features:

� Automatic Discovery of Oracle Applications: This feature gives Grid

Control the capability to discover Oracle E-Business Suite systems

automatically.

� Configuration Management: The Application Management Pack for Oracle

E-Business Suite enables administrators to collect, compare, and search Oracle

E-Business Suite configuration details, such as patches applied, application

configuration files, technology stack inventory, concurrent processing

configuration, Workflow configuration, and more

� System Topology Views: Grid Control provides system administrators the

ability to view the infrastructure service topology of the Oracle E-Business

Suite system. The topology view (as shown in Figure 1) lists the dependencies

between infrastructure services, key system components, and other services. In

the event of service failure, the potential causes (as identified by root cause

analysis), are highlighted in the topology view.

Figure 1: Topology View

� JVM Usage Monitoring: Grid Control monitors JVM usage in the latest Java

technology employed by Oracle E-Business Suite.

� Application Service Level Management: Application Management Pack for

E-Business Suite automatically provides service level reporting for the key

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Oracle E-Business Suite infrastructure and application services. Service level

alerts can be configured to trigger based on thresholds set on performance and

availability metrics. Monitored infrastructure services include concurrent

processing, Oracle Forms, HTML-based applications, and Oracle Workflow.

The Application Management Pack for Oracle Applications also allows you to

record application transactions (both Forms and HTML-based) and schedule

playback for service level monitoring purposes.

� Oracle E-Business Suite Home Page: Application Management Pack for

Oracle E-Business Suite provides a comprehensive view of the Applications

system, plus links to common administrative tasks in Oracle Applications.

Oracle Applications Manager

The enhancements made to Oracle Applications Manager include:

� Enhanced User Interface: The Oracle Applications Manager Dashboard has

been enhanced to improve the monitoring of Oracle E-Business Suite in the

areas of performance and security:

o Performance: The enhanced Performance dashboard provides

administrators with key performance metrics related to online, batch, and

workflow activity. For customers using Oracle Real Application Clusters,

the dashboard shows these metrics distributed across RAC instances.

Additionally, system administrators can now subscribe to receive

automated alerts when concurrent requests run longer or wait longer than

specified thresholds.

o Security: An updated suite of diagnostic reports is now available within

the Security dashboard. These reports check the Oracle E-Business Suite

system configuration against Oracle’s recommended best practices, and

highlight possible security vulnerabilities.

� Forms Monitoring: Oracle Applications Manager supports monitoring of the

Oracle Application Server components that provide Forms services in Release

12. Forms runtime process can be monitored, and detailed trace files can be

downloaded in HTML format.

Maintenance

Over the course of the Oracle E-Business Suite’s lifecycle, patches may be applied

to upgrade the Oracle E-Business Suite to the latest point release, to obtain product

enhancements, or to resolve known issues. The patch impact analysis feature within

Oracle Application Manager provides system administrators the ability to track

patches and understand their impact on the Oracle E-Business Suite system.

The key enhancements to patch impact analysis are as follows:

� Ability to analyze impact of patches to customized files registered with the

system.

� Ability for users to create a list of patches for analysis as a single set.

� Ability to identify and merge multiple language patches

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Cloning

Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite automates the process of

cloning Oracle e E-Business Suite systems via Grid Control. A step-by-step

interview guides administrators though the cloning process. Grid Control automates

the creation of clone systems, and executes any required application-specific

actions. Additionally, administrators can modify the standard cloning process to

include custom actions.

Also in Release 12, Rapid Clone has been enhanced to support cloning of RAC

systems deployed using Oracle Clusterware and Application Storage Management.

Supportability

In Release 12, Oracle Applications Manager has been enhanced to improve the

supportability of Oracle E-Business Suite systems.

The main enhancements are in the areas of diagnostics and system alert

infrastructure:

� Diagnostics: Oracle Applications Manager for Release 12 allows system

administrators to schedule and run diagnostics tests. Also, the Diagnostics

dashboard provides new graphical views of diagnostic test executions and

failures. Keyword searches can be performed on the test repository to locate

relevant tests, which can then be grouped and executed directly from the same

interface.

� System Alert Infrastructure: The system alerting infrastructure has been

enhanced with a new “flood control” mechanism to prevent multiple instances

of a given alert from overwhelming the alert system. Additionally, alerts have

been enhanced to allow summary and context information that can be retrieved

in XML format via standard business event integration mechanisms. This

feature allows administrators to create automated responses to system alerts via

the business event system.

Copyright 2007, Oracle. All Rights Reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor is it subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Data Scrambling is the

process to obfuscate or

remove sensitive data,

utilized by functional

administrators and database

administrators when cloning

an environment.

The configuration of data

scrambling is performed

within Oracle Applications

Manager. To configure data

scrambling, the functional

administrators first identify

the sensitive data attributes

and map them to database

columns. Then they collect

attributes together to define

scrambling policies and

policy sets.

DATA SCRAMBLING

CHARACTERISTICS

• Secure: When creating

the new instance,

scrambling will proceed

before any interfaces are

brought up, to ensure that

there is no access to the

internal image.

• Irreversible: Scrambling

is irreversible, so that the

original data cannot be

derived from the

scrambled data.

• Automated: Cloning is

typically performed by

system administrators as

part of testing a patch or

resolving an issue. The

scrambling process is

automated to facilitate

this.

• Scalable: The data

scrambling process is

optimized to handle large

volume of data using

sophisticated algorithms.

DATA SCRAMBLING

OVERVIEW