Document No: BLOG-0006 Author: Marie Patch Wizard Utility in EBS 11.5.10.0 to 12.1 Why Patch Wizard? Patch Wizard tells you what patches you should apply. If you have set up Patch Wizard correctly, Patch Wizard will even download the patches for you! The following My Oracle Support documents were used in compiling this document: Patch Wizard Utility [Video] [ID 976188.1] Patch Wizard FAQ [Video] [ID 976688.1] New Required Patches for Patch Wizard, Patch Manager, and Oracle Application Change Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite Releases 11i, 12.0, and 12.1 [ID 1267768.1] How To Use Patch Wizard Without Setting Up Internet Connection [ID 741129.1] Screen shots were taken from an R12.1.3 environment Patch Wizard Description Patch Wizard is a utility that comes installed as part of the E-Business Suite products and can be accessed via Oracle Applications Manager. This utility compares the patches you have already applied against a list of all recommended Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) patches. Recommended patches can include high-priority patches or patches that update EBS products to a new code level, such as Release Update Packs (RUPs), Product Family RUPs, and pre-upgrade patches. You may still find one-off patches on My Oracle Support that is not included in Patch Wizard yet. Note that Patch Wizard will not apply the patches but will enable you to do an impact analysis prior to applying them. Patch Wizard is a utility for E-Business Suite patches, and not for patches of the technology stack components (RDBMS, Forms, etc). How it works Patch Wizard is an interface that allows you to set your Patch Wizard execution preferences, analyze and compare patches currently applied in your instance to the patches included in the Recommended Patch List, perform an impact analysis, and easily download the patches you decide to apply. When conducting the analysis, the Patch Wizard retrieves current patch information directly from My Oracle Support, and compares this list with the patches you already have installed in your system. The final report will provide an output of recommended EBS patches and new code level patches for your version and the impact of installing them. You can also specify other patches for which you want Patch Wizard to perform an impact analysis. Relational Database Consulting Page 1
Before you start Verify that the latest Patch Wizard Patch has been applied by executing the following query as the APPS user: select bug_number, decode(bug_number, 10405353, 'Patch:10405353-11i (Prereq) INFOBUNDLE CONNECTION PATCH WIZARD UPDATE', 10123716, 'Patch:10123716 for the latest version of Patch Wizard in Oracle E-Business Suite (Release 11i)', 10629916, 'Patch:10629916 for the latest version of Patch Wizard in Oracle E-Business Suite (Release 12.0)', 11710489, 'Patch:11710489 for the latest version of Patch Wizard in Oracle E-Business Suite (Release 12.1)', 16357991, 'Patch:16357991 for the latest version of Patch Wizard in Oracle E-Business Suite (Release 12.1.3)') "Patch Wizard Patches Applied", creation_date from ad_bugs where bug_number in ('10405353','10123716','10629916','11710489','16357991') order by 2; If you are missing the latest Patch Wizard patch for your Version of Applications, then it is recommended to apply the patch appropriate to your EBS version (Release 11i, Release 12.0, or Release 12.1) to ensure continued access by Patch Wizard to download the current Infobundle and patches. Accessing the Patch Wizard Forms 1. Login using a user that has System Administrator Privileges 2. Select the System Administrator responsibility 3. Choose Dashboard option under Oracle Applications Manager. 4. From the dropdown list on the top-right corner, select Patch Wizard, and click the Go button. Configuring Patch Wizard Patch wizard requires a very simple initial setup that is described here. 1. Once in the Patch Wizard main form, the first section you will find is the Patch Wizard Tasks, with four tasks. The first task in the list is called Patch Wizard Preferences. Click on the icon across this task. Relational Database Consulting Page 2
2. Set the value for Staging Directory. This is going to be the working directory for this utility. Patch Wizard will use the path defined here as the work area. 3. Set the My Oracle Support (MOS) credentials. The credentials are needed so that Patch Wizard can connect to the MOS portal to retrieve the current patch information. To set the credentials, click on the Metalink Credentials link in the preferences form. This will open a new form to enter a valid Support portal user, password and e-mail address. If your server uses proxy server to connect to the Internet, enter the proxy information. What if my server does not have access to the Internet? If your server does not have access to Internet, or you cannot enter your credentials, you still have the option to download the patch information file (called Infobundle file) manually; refer to the FAQ My server does not have Internet connection. Can I still use Patch Wizard? in Note 976688.1. 4. Populate the rest of the options for merge, language/platform, and display option defaults according to your instance and business requirements. (Patch Wizard does not automatically identify and select the installed languages and platform of your instance.) Relational Database Consulting Page 3
Creating Filters Patch Wizard analyzes two different types of patches within E-Business Suite products: 1. Recommended Patches: These are patches that fix issues and have been identified as high priority patches by Oracle. You are strongly recommended to apply them. 2. New Code Levels: These are patches that deliver new functionality and bring the product code to the latest release. Patch Wizard allows you to create filters where you can select what products and what type of patches you want to analyze. The system comes with three predefined filters but you have the option to create your own filters as well. To create filters conduct the following actions: 1. Under the Patch Wizard Tasks section, select the second task, Define Patch Filters. 2. Click on Create New button. 3. Enter a name and description for the filter. 4. Mark the check boxes for one or more product families you want to include in the analysis. For each product family, you can choose to analyze for recommended patches or new code levels, or both. Executing Create Recommendation Before the first time you run a Patch Wizard process in your instance, it is recommended that you run the "Update current view snapshot" process (under "Maintain snapshot information") from the AD Administration (adadmin) menu. 1. Under Patch Wizard Tasks, select the third task, Recommend/Analyze Patches. 2. In the Options section, choose Create Recommendation. Relational Database Consulting Page 4
3. Optionally mark the checkbox for Upload patch information bundle before analyzing patches. This would let patch wizard know that you want to download the latest version of the patch list (InfoBundle file) available in My Oracle Support. Note that you must download the InfoBundle file the first time you execute this process, or manually put the InfoBundle file in the staging directory prior to the first execution. This check box does not exist in R12 (see the next section). 4. Once you launch the process to analyze the patches in your system, you need to wait until the process completes. To check the status of the execution, select the icon under the Job Status column in the Patch Wizard Tasks. Relational Database Consulting Page 5
Executing Create Recommendation - changes in R12 In R12, the Upload patch information bundle before analyzing patches check box does not exist, and the latest Infobundle is always downloaded automatically when submitting the create recommendation process for a filter (given the My Oracle Support credentials are set). Reviewing the Recommendations After the execution of the analysis process completes, a report will be displayed in the main form of the Patch Wizard utility, under the Results section. To refresh the output and view the latest results, click the Go button in the Filter Criteria section, right above the Results section. You can narrow down the selection by entering a filter name and/or completion date if needed. R11i: The results section displays the completed requests R12: The results section displays the completed and in-progress requests. Once the results are displayed and completed, click on the icon under the Details column to view the report. After clicking on the details icon, you will see that the report is divided into two sections: 1. The top area lists all the recommended patches Relational Database Consulting Page 6
2. The bottom area lists patches that provide new code levels on top of the versions you currently have in your system R11i: Only unapplied patches are displayed. However, with Patch 9803629, a "Status" column was introduced, and with that, unapplied patches are displayed as well. See Note 1178133.1-4.6 View Patch Status - for the description of the statuses "Unapplied," "Missing," and "Applied." R12: Both applied and unapplied patches are displayed. Applied patches have a status of Applied, and unapplied patches have a status of Unapplied or Missing. Unapplied means that there are no prerequisite code level patches that have not been applied yet. Missing means that there are prerequisite code level patches that have not been applied yet. Review the list of recommendations, and if you want to do an impact analysis for any of the patches, click on the icon under the Impact column, in the same row for the patch in concern. Prerequisite Patches Patch Wizard identifies the hard-prerequisite patches for the patches in the results page. Soft-prerequisites, which may be conditionally required based on your instance or functionality used, are not listed. R11i: Patch Wizard identifies the first-level prerequisite patches that have not been applied (Total Pre-Reqs column). Prerequisites-of-prerequisites are not listed. However, if analysis of patch A identified patch B as its prerequisite, and now you want to identify the prerequisites for patch B, you can run the Analyze Specific Patches process (see the section below on Analyze Specific Patches) for patch B and so on, to go down the chain of prerequisite patches. R12: Patch Wizard identifies the prerequisite codelevel patches that have not been applied (Prerequisites column). This is due to the patch prereq checking changes in R12. Please refer to the 'How has patch prereq checking improved in Release 12 compared to Release 11i?' in the General Information section of Note 459156.1 for more details. Relational Database Consulting Page 7
Reviewing the Aggregate Impact In R11i, clicking on the View Aggregate Impact link from the Patch Impact Analysis page displays the combined impact of the patch and its pre-requisite patch(es). Only first-level prerequisite patches that are unapplied, if any, are included in this analysis; i.e., prerequisites-of-prerequisites, even if they exist, are not analyzed as part of the aggregate impact. In R12, aggregate impact takes on a different definition. This will be explained in the next section. Reviewing the Aggregate Impact - changes in R12 As explained in the previous section, the View Aggregate Impact link in R11i displays the combined impact of one patch and its prerequisite patches (and not prerequisites-of-prerequisites). In R12, aggregate impact refers to the impact of multiple patches, and does not include their prerequisites. The following steps demonstrate how the aggregate impact analysis can be run in R12. 1. Check the Analyze Aggregate Patch Impact flag when executing Create Recommendation. 2. Once the process completes, check the results (Recommended Patches Results>Details button) and notice that the Included in Aggregate Patch Impact column is Yes for all the unapplied/missing patches. (The impact of each individual patch can be seen by clicking on the Impact button here). 3. To see the aggregate impact of all the patches from this recommendation with the Included in Aggregate Patch Impact column Yes, click on the paper icon to the left of the Aggregate Impact button at the top of the page. Relational Database Consulting Page 8
4. You may choose to not select the Analyze Aggregate Patch Impact flag in step 1, as the flag is optional. In the results page, you can choose to run an aggregate impact analysis of the patches that you select manually. Just mark the checkbox to the left of the patch numbers you want to get a combined aggregate impact for, and click on the Aggregate Impact button as seen in the above screenshot (the actual button, not the highlighted paper icon). You can also override a previous analysis by selecting a different set of patches. Analyze Specific Patches The Analyze Specific Patches option in the Recommend/Analyze Patches Page allows you to specify any patch(es) for which you want to run a patch impact analysis. Once submitted, the process can be viewed by clicking the Job Status button in the main page. When complete, go to the Results section in the main Patch Wizard page to find the results (the specified patch numbers will be displayed) and click on the Details icon. During this process, the specified patches are downloaded to the staging directory. In R11i, the un-applied prerequisite patches are downloaded as well. If My Oracle Support credentials are not set in the preferences or the patch is a password-controlled patch, the patch needs to be placed in the staging directory manually before running the process. If you are on 12.1.2, see the below section Important change in R12.1.2. *You cannot specify a merged patch. *R12 has an option Analyze Aggregate Patch Impact under the Patches box. Important change in R12.1.2 After patch 7651091 (R12.ATG_PF.B.DELTA.2), which is part of the Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.2 Release Update Pack (RUP2), Patch Wizard downloads all the "ad" product patches into the <staging directory>/ad directory and all the "non-ad" patches into the <staging directory>/nonad directory. The subdirectories "ad" and "nonad" are automatically created under the staging directory if you have set up your My Oracle Support credentials and patches are downloaded automatically. If you are manually downloading the patches for Patch Wizard to analyze, you must manually create the subdirectories "ad" and "nonad" and place all the "ad" product patches in the <staging directory>/ad directory and all the "non-ad" patches into the <staging directory>/nonad directory. Scheduling the Recommend/Analyze Process The Recommend/Analyze Patches Page contains a Schedule section. You can enter a date and time in this section to run the request at a later time. The default setting is to run the job immediately. You can also schedule automatic recurring requests by entering the information in the Recurrence section. Downloading Patches After you complete your analysis and decide which patches you want to apply, Patch Wizard can help you to download and merge them so you can apply multiple patches more quickly. From the recommendations report, mark all the patches you want, and click on Download button. This will open a new form where you can select additional download options. * R12 has another option Download, Analyze and Aggregate Patch Impact. In this form, you will need to determine the platform and languages you have in your system, you can decide whether or not to merge the selected patches, and if so, how you want to merge them. You can also schedule the download to be executed at a different time. The patches will be placed in the staging directory you defined in the preferences. Please refer to the Important Relational Database Consulting Page 9
change in R12.1.2 section in this document for details on the "ad" and "nonad" subdirectories in which patches are downloaded after upgrading to 12.1.2. Does Patch Wizard mean an end to reading README s? No.Unfortunately not! Patch Wizard will not find pre-requisites of pre-requisites, so you will have to read the Readme files of recommended patches searching for additional patches Patch Wizard will not find soft requirements, conditional patches or steps, so you ll have to find those in the Readme files and figure out what to do about them Patch Wizard will over report preinstalled patches that you have already applied use the Hidden box to hide them from view Does Patch Wizard mean an end to Spreadsheets of Patches? No.Unfortunately not! You cannot print a list of patches from Patch Wizard yet You cannot make a list within Patch Wizard of the steps you need to do and in which order BUT you can copy and paste into MS Excel or Word, and that works fine You will still need to make a spreadsheet You will still need to read the Readme s for each patch, incorporate Readme information into your spreadsheet, add additional pre-requisite patches and post-steps to your spreadsheet, and research those patch readme s. Marie has over 12 years ICT experience and her experience includes: Oracle Applications (E-Business Suite) R11i and R12 11 years Oracle SQL 10 years Oracle RDBMS (8/9i/10g/11g) 12 years Oracle Enterprise Manager (10g and 11g) 8 years Microsoft SQL Server 3 years Novell Netware 4 years Relational Database Consulting Page 10