Oracle Applications DBA Blog

Sneak Preview Release 12

Much speculation about the release dates of Oracle Applications next major release which is Release 12 has been around, However there is still no conformation on the official dates for its release to the users. The beta code version though has been out for some time now.

The current post takes a sneak preview at Release 12 (Beta).
The post just meant to share the new look and feel in Release 12 and is NOT a installation post.

As expected Release 12 was to be real big in terms of disk space at least the vision demo instance.

This is how it ate up disk space on my server

Application Tier Files - 20GB
Database Binaries - 4.5 GB
Vision Demo Data Files - 81GB

The login screen is the one perhaps that has undergone most of the changes. It comes with a fresh cool blue look. Something which you will have to get used with this Release.

The Self Service Home Page does not seem to have changed much expect for the new color scheme and link to Oracle Diagnostics on it.

The Oracle Application Manager console also looked pretty much similar with almost the same links as with 11.5.10.2

Invoking the forms based applications, It prompts you to install the Java 2 Standard Edition on your PC. Yes the Jinitiator is now gone. The installation was quick and over was over in a few clicks.



The forms interface was almost undistinguishable from 11.5.10.2, maybe just the fonts and color again.



Though the User Interface did not undergo any major changes, the Oracle Applications File system has changed quite a bit.

APPSORA.env -> APPS<SID>.env

The APPSORA.env used to setup your E-Business environment has now been replaced by the APPS<SID>.env which in trun calls the
$ORA_CONFIG_HOME/10.1.2/$TWO_TASK.env
$APPL_CONFIG_HOME/$TWO_TASK.env

Instance Top
A new Instance Top has been introduced
INT_TOP=$HOME/inst/apps/<context_name>
One of the main advantages of having this is to get a clear distinction between the shared file system and the file system unique to an instance.

Other Newly Introduced Variables

AF_JLIB - This points to your $COMMON_TOP/java/lib

JAVA_BASE - This points at $COMMON_TOP/java/

Other Environment Variable Changes

JAVA_TOP- The JAVA_TOP now points to $COMMON_TOP/java/classes instead of $COMMON_TOP/java

OA_HTML -  The OA_HTML now points to $COMMOM_TOP/oacore/html instead of $COMMON_TOP/html

FND_SECURE - FND_SECURE now points at $INST_TOP/apps/fnd/12.0.0/secure/ as opposed to $FND_TOP/secure/<SID>/

Apart from this the machine admin scripts are now located at
$INST_TOP/admin/scripts/

Please do note that the official release of R12 is yet to be done and the final product released might be different from what has been talked about in the above post.