Steven Chan

In addition to their benchmarking efforts, our Applications Performance Group works with some of our largest E-Business Suite customers in the world. These customers have thousands of concurrent end-users, sprawling multi-terabyte databases, enormous clusters of application-tier servers, and massive RAC architectures. The Applications Performance Group is called in whenever a customer experiences severe performance issues. Every year, our performance architects take all of their hard-won experience with these customers and distill it into a single OpenWorld presentation. Wondering how many JVMs to use per CPU? Curious about tuning the garbage collection parameters on your app tier? Want some tips for optimizing your Concurrent manager setup? Isam Alyousfi and Lester Gutierrez cover these topics, and much, much more, in their densely-packed presentation: * Tuning the Oracle E-Business Suite Environment (S307954, PDF, 1.7 MB) Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

There are many ways of integrating the E-Business Suite with third-party applications. Neeraj Chauhan and Vijay Shanmugam, from our E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group, covered the latest options and integration architectures in their OpenWorld 2009 session: * Integration Architecture for Oracle E-Business Suite (Session S309528, PDF, 3.1 MB) Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 is already certified with the 10gR2 10.2.0.4 database for several platforms. Our Applications Platforms Group continues to certify additional platforms on a regular basis. They have just completed their certification of Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 versions 12.0.4 and 12.1.1 with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 for x64 (64-bit) platforms. Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

Everyone gives lip service to the importance of security, but it's often relegated to the back-burner in actual practice. For example, my anecdotal experience is that when conference attendees are polled about Critical Patch Updates, usually fewer than 50% of the respondents state that they're up-to-date on the latest CPU. One potentially complicating factor is that there are many things that one can do to secure the E-Business Suite, and it may be hard to know where to start. At minimum, all Apps DBAs should be intimately familiar with these documents: * Best Practices for Securing Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i (Note 189367.1) * Best Practices for Securing Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 403537.1) There are many other security-related Oracle products that you can use with your E-Business Suite environment, too. Eric Bing and Robert Armstrong profiled all of the latest security-related tools and options that are relevant to E-Business Suite users in their recent OpenWorld 2009 session: * Critical Data Protection and Security in Oracle E-Business Suite (S307960, PDF, 1 MB) Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

I recently wrote about the eternal dilemma of the Apps system implementer: whether it's worth customizing the E-Business Suite or not. Customizations and extensions introduce the challenge of deploying your customizations between multiple development, QA, and production environments. Our new Application Change Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite has the potential to help to with that, and a few other notable systems management tasks, too. The Application Change Management Pack is one of the most-interesting new lifecycle management products released recently from our Applications Technology Group. The Application Change Management Pack is an optional add-on to the Application Management Pack. The Application Management Pack is an Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control plug-in for the E-Business Suite. Ken Baxter and Biju Mohan covered the new Application Change Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite in detail in their OpenWorld 2009 session: * Application Change Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite: An Introduction (Session S309527, PDF, 2 MB) Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

I'm part of the Applications Technology Integration group within the E-Business Suite Development division. One of this team's responsibilities is to ensure that new Oracle technologies are integrated into -- or work with -- the E-Business Suite. Lisa Parekh leads our team, and every year she manages to pack a survey of the increasingly-broad EBS technology stack landscape at OpenWorld into her session. If you're interested in getting a quick overview of everything that we consider important about the latest EBS technology stack capabilities, download her presentation here: Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

The Exadata Database Machine Version 2 was released at OpenWorld 2009 to great fanfare. Since its unveiling, I've been getting a steady stream of questions from E-Business Suite customers who are intrigued by Exadata V2's potential. All 11gR2 Database Applications are Compatible The E-Business Suite and other OLTP applications will run on the Exadata V2 system if they're certified with the 11gR2 Database on Linux. Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i is certified on the 11gR2 database, so it can run on Exadata V2 today. Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black. ~ Henry Ford Ford's now-famous words seem a little quaint today. We live in the Golden Age of the Consumer, where virtually everything can be customized or personalized in some way. If you can customize mass-produced consumer goods, it seems reasonable to expect that you should be able to customize something as strategic and mission-critical as an enterprise resource planning system, too. But just because you can, does this mean that you should? Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.0 originally shipped with OracleAS 10.1.3 Oracle Containers for J2EE (OC4J) for running its Java-based content. Regular readers of this blog know that we certified OracleAS 10.1.3.4 with Apps 12 at the end of 2008, with additional operating system platforms following shortly afterwards. We've now certified Oracle Application Server 10g 10.1.3.5 OC4J with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12. You can upgrade to OracleAS 10.1.3.5 OC4J directly from OracleAS 10.1.3, 10.1.3.3, or 10.1.3.4. This certification allows you to upgrade the OC4J components in your R12 techstack to get take advantage of the latest performance and stability improvements in this incremental patchset. Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 was released in early May 2009. Our next upcoming release will be EBS 12.1.2. The Release Content Documents (RCD) for Apps 12.1.2 have now been published here: * Release Content Documents for E-Business Suite Release 12.1 and 12.1.x Release Update Packs (RUPs) (Note 561580.1) Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 is now certified with Oracle Database Server 11gR1 version 11.1.0.7 on Microsoft Windows x64 (Windows Server 2003). Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

Secure Enterprise Search 10.1.8.4 was certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.0 earlier this year. Our Applications Technology Group has just released their certification of Secure Enterprise Search 10.1.8.4 with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12.1.1. Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

This is the second of a series of regular updates on our Windows 7 certification projects for the E-Business Suite. Microsoft Windows 7 was officially released today. Here's a recap of our plans for certifying the Oracle E-Business Suite with Microsoft's latest operating system. As always, the answers to these questions may change as we move through the certification cycle. You're welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog for later updates. Our Progress on Windows 7 We're certifying Windows 7 with the E-Business Suite right now. We've already tested several of the Win7 betas and release candidates, and those tests have gone very smoothly. At this point, E-Business Suite product teams need to complete their certification tests with Windows 7 desktop clients. Once those tests are completed, we'll release our certification. For the usual reasons that regular readers could have predicted, I can't share any specific schedules or date estimates here. I can provide an interim update on the following Win7 questions: 1. Which EBS releases will be certified with Windows 7? 2. Which browsers will be certified? 3. Will Oracle JInitiator be certified for EBS on Windows 7? 4. Which Windows 7 editions will be certified? 5. What about Windows 7E? 6. What about Windows XP Mode? Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

The Critical Patch Update (CPU) for October 2009 was released on October 20, 2009. Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible. Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

Our recent article about our internal use of automated regression testing tools within E-Business Suite Development prompted many questions about the Oracle Application Testing Suite. I'm pleased to announce that the Oracle Application Testing Suite 9.0 is supported for use with the E-Business Suite. Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.1.1) is now certified on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (32-bit) running on x86/x86-64 hardware. Note that MS Windows Server 2008 x64 (64-bit) and MS Windows Server 2008 R2 are not covered by this announcement. Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

Every year I provide an OpenWorld update on the various ways that E-Business Suite users can use different Oracle Application Server 10g components. This presentation covers many of the topics that I visit regularly on this blog, neatly summarizing them in a single package with the latest Fusion Middleware certified versions (and desupport notices) in one place: * Using Oracle Application Server 10g with E-Business Suite (Session S307958, PDF, 1.3 MB) Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

OpenWorld 2009 has kicked off with a bang. As in previous years, I was invited to share our latest E-Business Suite technology stack certification roadmap with the OAUG EBS Technology Stack Special Interest Group (SIG) members. Most of what I covered in this Roadmap discussion will be familiar to regular readers of this blog. Even if you've been keeping up with this blog's announcements, the convenient thing about this Roadmap presentation is that it summarizes our latest techstack certifications, desupport notices, support policy updates, and other important topics from the last year in a single, cohesive presentation. Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

I'm very pleased to announce that the 11gR2 Database version 11.2.0.1 is certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i version 11.5.10.2. Existing Apps 11i environments currently running Oracle9i Release 2 (9.2.0), Oracle 10g Release 10 (10.1.0), Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0), or Oracle 11g Release 1 (11.1.0) may be upgraded to the 11gR2 Database. Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html

I'm very pleased to announce that Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is now certified as a client browser for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i. IE 8 Support Requires Forms6i Patchset 19 If you're running either Forms6i Patchset 18 or earlier in your EBS 11i environment, you will need to apply Forms6i Patchset 19 to get support for Internet Explorer 8. Steven Chan http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/about.html