Oracle Applications DBA Blog

Interesting Release 12 Changes

With the next release of Oracle Applications Release 12 due in less than a couple of weeks time,31st January as of now. In today’s post I decided to write about some of the interesting changes from a technical point of view that can be expected in Release 12.Some of these have been already talked about in my previous posts in detail. The current post is based mainly in 
the Release Content Documents and The Oracle Open World Sessions relating to Release 12.

• Mixed Case Passwords
  Another interesting feature in Release 12 is that it now has support for having case sensitive mixed case passwords for user ids, for the purpose of backward compatibility case - insensitive passwords are also accepted.
• On Demand User Creation
  In case of SSO environments where a user has an account in OID but not in the E-Business Suite, the user account now gets created on the fly the moment users visits Ebusiness Suite.
• Product Schemas Locked
  In release 12 the Product schemas are kept locked and are unlocked only when required like patching.
• Request Set Restarting
  In case a request set fails in between, in release 12 the user can fix the problem and simply restart the request without  having manually complete the request remaining in that request set.
• New Tablespace in OATM
  In OATM a new 'TOOLS' tablepsace has been introduced which allows store objects related to other tools used with Oracle Applications, like for creating the End User Layer for discoverer.
• Changes To Patch Impact Analysis in OAM
  In the Oracle Applications Manager under patch impact analysis, now the impact of the patch on customized files can also be seen. Additionally OAM now also allows the user to create a list of patches whose impact analysis can be done at one  go.
• Workflow Notification Mailer Enhancements
  There have been some enhancements in Oracle Workflow Notification mailer which includes simplified configuration by way of simple and advanced setup screens. Also SSL support over IMAP and SMTP  mail server is now being supported. The workflow engine itself now implements a bulky array interface which offers performance benefits.
• Grid Control Plug-in
  Grid Control Plug-in is available for Oracle Applications which allows the integration of Oracle Grid Control within Oracle Applications Manger thereby allowing improved System Management.
• mod_oc4j
  In release 12 the support for mod_plsql module is now withdrawn. The mod_oc4j replace mod_plsql in Release 12 of Oracle Applications.
• File System Changes
  One of the major changes at the file system level in Release 12 is the introduction of the INSTANCE_TOP. The INSTANCE_TOP aims to get a clear distinction between the shared file system and the file system unique to an instance.
• Read Only Shared Application Tier Filesystem
  Oracle Applications Release 12 allows for the deployment of a shared Application Tier Filesystem in on Read Only File system also.
• Multi-Org Access Control
  Release 12 implements Multi-org Access Control which allows the user to submit requests and view access data of different operating units without having to switch between responsibilities.
• Multiple Domain Support
  Release 12 also allows that your application server nodes and the database server nodes to have different domain names.
• RAC Cloning
  The Rapidclone with Oracle Applications Release 12 allows you to extend rapidclone to clone Oracle Applications Environments deployed on the Real Application Clusters technology as well.
• XML Publisher Enhancements
  Release 12 also has a number of enhancements that have been introduced in XML Publishers like allowing support for bookmarks in PDF documents, changes to the template builder and template viewer and new features included in the graphics support.
• Web ADI Enhancements
  The Web ADI also has its set of enhancements which have been included in Release 12. These new features cover both the Web ADI product and the Software Development Kit (SDK) of the Web ADI.
• Sub-Set User Provisioning
  Release 12 also allows for new deployment scenarios for Single Sign on where in a single LDAP server and the synchronization of only a sub set of the users is done to the E-Business Suite.