An Oracle White Paper October 2012 Release Notes - V4.2.0.0.0 Oracle Utilities Application Framework
Introduction... 2 Disclaimer... 2 Deprecation of Functionality... 2 New or Changed Features... 4 Native Web Services Support... 4 Fuzzy Search Support... 4 XML Data Type Support... 4 Configuration Migration Assistant... 5 Global Batch View... 5 Database Connection Tagging Support... 5 Portal Personalization... 6 MultiDomain Support... 7 Component Installation (396)... 7 Standardize Log Location... 8 Support Removal of files in Patches... 8 Allow SYSUSER to be disabled... 8 Remove Unnecessary Files for IRS compliance... 8 Console Based Management... 8 Patch Enhancements... 8 Ability to Secure a Menu Item... 9 ILM Support... 9 Fixes included in this release... 9
Introduction This document provides an overview of features and enhancements available with Oracle Utilities Application Framework version 4.2.0.0.0. Disclaimer This document in any form, software or printed matter, contains proprietary information that is the exclusive property of Oracle. Your access to and use of this confidential material is subject to the terms and conditions of your Oracle software license and service agreement, which has been executed and with which you agree to comply. This document and information contained herein may not be disclosed, copied, reproduced or distributed to anyone outside Oracle without prior written consent of Oracle. This document is not part of your license agreement nor can it be incorporated into any contractual agreement with Oracle or its subsidiaries or affiliates. This document is for informational purposes only and is intended solely to assist you in planning for the implementation and upgrade of the product features described. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described in this document remains at the sole discretion of oracle. Note: Features released in Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.1 Group Fixes are also included in Oracle Utilities Application Framework 4.2. Refer to the release notes for each Group fix for information about those fixes. Deprecation of Functionality From time to time, existing functionality is replaced with alternative features to offer greater flexibility and standardization. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2.0.0.0 the following features are being announced for deprecation in the next release or have been previously announced and are not being delivered with this version of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework: No SQL Server Support Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2.0.0.0 or above does not ship with any support for SQL Server. MPL Support The Multi-Purpose Listener (MPL) functionality of the XML Application Integration (XAI) component will be removed in the next release of the Oracle Utilities 2
Application Framework. Customers using the MPL currently should migrate to Oracle Service Bus. Note: The MPL only applies to specific Oracle Utilities Application Framework products. No provided Crystal Reports/Business Objects Interface Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2.0.0.0 or above does not ship with a supported Crystal Reports/Business Objects Interface. This facility is now available as downloadable customization for existing or new customers. Responsibility for maintenance and new features is now individual customer's responsibility. No Apache Tomcat Support Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.x or above does not support Apache Tomcat for development or production use. Customers using Apache Tomcat for development are recommended to migrate to Oracle WebLogic as outlined in the Oracle Utilities Software Development Kit. XAI Servlet deprecation The XAI Servlet (xaiserver and classicxai) will be removed in the next release of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. Customers are encouraged to migrate to the native Web Services Support as outlined in XAI Best Practices whitepaper available from My Oracle Support (Doc Id: 942074.1). ConfigLab deprecation The ConfigLab facility will be removed in the next release of Oracle Utilities Application Framework for products it is shipped with. Customers are recommended to migrate to the Configuration Migration Assistant which provides the same and more functionality. Archiving deprecation The inbuilt Archiving has been removed from Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2.0.0.0 or above, for products it is shipped with. Customers considering Archiving solution should migrate to the Information Lifecycle Management based solution provided for your product. DISTRIBUTED batch execution mode deprecation The DISTRIBUTED execution mode used by the batch component of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework will be deprecated in the next release of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. Customers using DISTRUBUTED mode should migrate to CLUSTERED mode as outlined in the Batch Best Practices For Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products whitepaper available from My Oracle Support (Doc Id: 836362.1). XAI Schema Editor deprecation The XAI Schema Editor which is a component of the Oracle Utilities Software Development Kit will be removed in the next release of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. Customers should migrate their existing schemas to Business Object based schemas and use the browser based Schema Editor instead. 3
New or Changed Features Below is a summary of the current list of enhancements allocated for release with Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2. This list is subject to change. Native Web Services Support Note: The initial release will cover Oracle WebLogic customers only in this release. Customers can now use the inbuilt Web Services capabilities of Oracle WebLogic to manage and execute the Web Services from the product. This has the following advantages: Allowing our Web Services to be managed and monitored from the console or Oracle Enterprise Manager. Allowing our Web Services to support additional security standards (such as X.509, SAML, Web Services Manager) and additional protocols (e.g. REST etc). Allow our Web Services to be deployed in a cluster at a group or individual level for increased scalability. Allow further Web Service instrumentations available from the console or Oracle Enterprise Manager. It is anticipated, some additional management tasks will need to be performed when registering a web service with the J2EE Web Application Server. Fuzzy Search Support With the introduction of additional facilities in Oracle Text in Oracle Database 11gR2 it is now possible to introduce the ability to provide an inprecise or fuzzy search capability to query zones. This enhancement will include a new supported additional operator in the SQL in the query (@fuzzy) to support fuzzy criteria and guidelines for setting up Oracle Text to support the new query. For more details of the fuzzy operator refer to http://docs.oracle.com/cd/e11882_01/text.112/e24436/cqoper.htm#i997330 This enhancement allows customers to add fuzzy searching into their solutions where appropriate. The facility will allow flexible scoring, weighting and allow specification of fuzzy results. Guidelines are available for its use. XML Data Type Support Oracle Utilities Application Framework supports the CLOB format for storing XML data. Whilst this facility is sufficient for most needs, the Oracle Utilities Application Framework has been enhanced to allow XML Data Types to be used for customization. This allows customers to take advantage of the native XML capabilities within the Oracle Database. It can be used to reference elements in the XML 4
Data Types in external products such as reporting tools and any SQL statement can include XQuery features to manage information in these fields. Note: CLOB fields will continued to be used in existing features. XML Data Type is focused on use in custom objects. Configuration Migration Assistant One of the major enhancements for Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.2 is the implementation of a data migration capability across all the Oracle Utilities Application Framework products for configuration data. The new Configuration Migration Assistant has the following capabilities: Definition of a Migration Plan which is collections of Business objects to migrate with instructions on what to migrate and in what order. It is expected that edge applications will ship with business objects and migration plans for their individual products. Migration Plans can be modular and combined to form complex migration requests. The customer creates a Migration Request which links migration plans and allows Selection Types which allow SQL WHERE clauses, specific records or Algorithms to identify data. Customer executes a Migration Export to export the data to an external file. This external file can be used a reference point for any import and can also be imported into a source control system for association with any code elements. On the target environment, the customer executes a Migration Import which lists all the changes proposed for the target environment to import the file. Customers can then choose to approve or reject individual change before applying the changes. This new facility also replaces the ConfigLab feature available in some products. Global Batch View With the introducing of DISTRIBUTED and CLUSTERED mode in Batch for the Oracle Utilities Application Framework a JMX interface was introduced at the individual threadpool level to monitor and manage the individual threads within the threadpool. Customers using multiple threadpools needed to open multiple JMX sessions to view threads across the threadpools. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework a global JMX view has be introduced that allows customers to open a single connection to view the scope and landscape of batch threads across all threadpools in that environment. This facility will be primarily used by Oracle Enterprise Manager to view and manage executions of jobs and will be also made available as an external API for job schedulers and other consoles to use. Database Connection Tagging Support In past releases of Oracle Utilities Application Framework the visibility of users at the database level was inconsistent and made debugging user connections an issue. In Oracle Utilities Application 5
Framework V4.0 the online user id was exposed on the database connection using CLIENT_IDENTIFIER on the v$session view within Oracle. This increased our visibility on the database and now will be expanded to display additional information available on v$session: ACTION Will contain the transaction type (ADD, MODIFY etc) for online transactions and Web Services in line with the Performance Statistics feature introduced in Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.0. For Batch this will contain the thread number for the job. MODULE Will contain the main object in the online transaction in line with the Performance Statistics feature introduced in Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.0. For Web Services it will contain the XAI Inbound Service Name and for Batch will contain the Batch Control. CLIENT_INFO This is a general purpose field that will contain different information per channel. For Batch it will contain the Threadpool Name, for Web Service it will contain the text "Web Service" and for online it will only be populated with a value of a specific characteristic on the user object. The latter is good to characterize users for other Oracle products. For example, you could identify call center users rather than back office users on the connection. This information is important for a number of reasons: It increased visibility at the database level for determining which connection is doing what function using v$session. The information can be used as part of the configuration of Audit Vault to centralize audit information across products. This can be an alternative for the audit functionality in Oracle Utilities Application Framework. The information can be used by other Oracle technologies to offer advanced configuration. For example, we can offer workload prioritization in Real Application Clustering based upon the values. You could offer higher database priority to users in a call center or a group of users for example. Portal Personalization The query zones in the Oracle Utilities Application Framework are configurable at runtime with users able to alter the columns viewed and sorting order of the zone. When a user customizes these elements, whenever they navigate away or close the session the zone resets to the base configuration for the zone. This enhancement allows an end user, with the appropriate permission, to explicitly save any runtime customization of the zone as the default for that zone for their user. End users are also able to reset the zone back to the base default, if desired. 6
This enhancement will be transparent to edge applications. MultiDomain Support By default, the Oracle Utilities Application Framework sets the Oracle WebLogic to splapp for all Oracle Utilities Application Framework products. In this enhancement, it will be possible to specify a custom domain name other than splapp. This enhancement coupled with other enhancements will allow Oracle Utilities Application Framework products to be housed in a multi-domain environment such as Oracle ExaLogic with easily identifiable domains. Component Installation (396) By default the Oracle Utilities Application Framework installs all the components for all the tiers on each installation. This allows the customer to decide the role of the installation at runtime for advanced configurations. This allows customers to make the role of the tier at installation time rather than runtime. This enhancement allows the installer to only specific code and components on each tier, selectable by the person installing the product. This enhancement includes the following: The ability to select components to install. The following combinations are planned to be supported in this release: Web Application Server Full Root, XAI and Help (useful for centralized help server). Web Application Server light Root, XAI Batch Server Batch only Full Web Application Server Full and Batch Server. Note: XAI is out of scope as a standalone installable component as Native Web Services replaces this facility. Infrastructure to register the components installed for patching support. Infrastructure to relate different tiers across nodes for monitoring and patch tracking. This will be used by the Oracle Enterprise Manager pack to Note: For backward compatibility all tiers are selected as per the runtime role. 7
Standardize Log Location In past releases of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework application logs where located within the product installation structure. This enhancement allows the logs to be stored in $SPLOUTPUT which allows for centralizing logs in clustered environment. Support Removal of files in Patches The patch utilities used for Oracle Utilities Application Framework utilities cannot remove files from the product even when they are no longer required. This enhancement allows patches to remove unneeded files. Allow SYSUSER to be disabled By default, SYSUSER is created as an initial user, used to populate other users definitions after installation. It is not meant to be used as active user post this task. This enhancement allows for the logical deletion of the SYSUSER account by allowing the user record to be disabled, if desired, post installation. Remove Unnecessary Files for IRS compliance Under IRS 1075 rules, no demonstration testing or development files should exist on Production systems to prevent possible exploitation. This enhancement, with other enhancements, will strip out unnecessary files during or post installation to help satisfy security requirements. Console Based Management As with the Web Services enhancement, the customer has access to a console shipped with the J2EE Web Application Server to manage the infrastructure. This enhancement will allow customers to use the native facilities of the console to deploy and manage all the elements of our product rather than using the menu system provided. In the initial release customers will be able to register and deploy our products from the console, configure additional elements such as Web Services and the MDB from the console and monitor additional aspects of our products from the console. This enhancement allows customers to further exploit the use of the J2EE console and when combined with Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Management Pack, manage the product without the need to use the menu system. This is a basic requirement for clustering, ExaLogic and also allows us to support the Oracle Cloud when desired. Patch Enhancements To support a number of enhancements described earlier in this document the patching utilities will be enhanced to support the requirements. Additionally the patch utilities will include the additional facilities: Support for a centralized patch utilities (rather than delivering them in each patch). 8
Support for listing full 1 prerequisites and co-requisites with each patch for dependency checking. Moving patch files to standard locations. Ability to Secure a Menu Item In past releases, if a user had any access to a function then the function appeared on the menu. Once a user entered the function security access would be either applied on entry or when attempting a function. For example, function buttons would not appear if the user was authorized or an error message would be displayed if a user attempted to access the function. In this enhancement the Oracle Utilities Application Framework menu items and service calls are assessed on loading time or upon calling (for example from a BPA). The Oracle Utilities Application Framework now assesses the security privileges of the user: If the user does not have "Add" permission the "+" menu option is not displayed. If there is no Application Service attached to a menu item, for security purposes, then it will be assumed that there are no security restrictions for all users. If there is an Application Service attached to a menu item, for security purposes, only on the "Add" or "Search/Modify" transaction then the menu item will displayed to the user based upon mode of transaction applied. If an Application Service is attached to a menu item, for security purposes, on both "Add" and "Search/Modify" transactions then the menu item is displayed. Note: For products using COBOL based extensions a recompile of all CM code is required to take this functionality into account. ILM Support As the Archive engine is removed, an Information Lifecycle Management based data management strategy will be supplied with each application. Fixes included in this release The following table summarizes the additional fixes included in this release: TABLE 1 FIXES INCLUDED IN THIS RELEASE FIX ID COMMENT 1 To the nearest Service Pack 9
FIX ID COMMENT 13511356 Dashboard auto refresh will no longer close any open custom search windows 13689225 It is now possible to configure the number of rows to export to Excel which can differ from the number displayed 13689499 It is now possible to directly return the portal navigation key for a COBOL module, if it exists. 13710294 Concurrency error message is now more precise and recommends to "Retry the transaction" 13724517 Remove nullpointer exception that can occur on editing Database connection Information feature type 13831362 Fix to allow BPA script to populate Portal Context Field correctly 10
Release Notes May 2014 Author: Anthony Shorten, Principal Product Manager Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: +1.650.506.7000 Fax: +1.650.506.7200 Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. 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 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 and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. Intel and Intel Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. 1010 oracle.com