Patching Shared Oracle E-Business Suite Products (Doc ID 1069099.1)

Last updated on JANUARY 15, 2024

Applies to:

Oracle Applications DBA - Version 11.0.0 to 12.1.2 [Release 11 to 12.1]
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Goal

The products that make up Oracle E-Business Suite are tightly integrated. Some products are known as shared or dependent products. Installed and registered automatically by Rapid Install, such products depend on components from other products for full functionality.

For example, General Ledger (GL) depends on Application Object Library (FND) and Oracle Receivables (AR); Inventory (INV) depends on FND and GL; and Receivables (AR) depends on FND, INV, and GL.

This document describes how to understand the actions AutoPatch takes with shared Oracle E-Business Suite products.

Note: A job should never be skipped during a patch application, regardless of the product's installation status, unless the product specific development team that supports confirms that it is harmless to skip the job.

Product Dependencies and AutoPatch Actions

The specific actions taken by AutoPatch for a product is in part determined by the:

Contents of the relevant file driver files
Status of the product in the FND_PRODUCT_INSTALLATIONS table

File Driver Files

These files:

Contain a complete list of the files that make up a specific product
Are located in the <PRODUCT_TOP>/admin/driver directory
Have a .drv suffix

Each product has an individual and unique set of file driver files. As part of the patching process, AutoPatch reads these files to create a valid list of files for the current system configuration. If a patch contains a file that is not present in any of the file driver files, AutoPatch will display an error "File in patch is not a known Oracle Applications file".

Installed Products

The term 'installed' has a specific meaning in this context. There are three possible categories:

An installed product has a status of 'I' in the FND_PRODUCT_INSTALLATIONS table. AutoPatch reads an installed product's file driver files to obtain a complete list of valid files that can be patched.
A product that is not installed has a status of 'N' in the FND_PRODUCT_INSTALLATIONS table, and will not be patched by AutoPatch: the utility never reads this type of product's file driver files.
A shared (dependent) product has a status of 'S' in FND_PRODUCT_INSTALLATIONS. AutoPatch behavior with this category of product is (of necessity) the most complex, and is described in the next section.

Shared Products

AutoPatch will patch a shared product in the following cases.

Case 1

If a shared product is present in the shared products list of any installed products (you can verify this from the $APPL_TOP/admin/applprod.txt file), and if the shared product's driver file is included in an installed product's driver file either directly or indirectly, AutoPatch will patch the file.

For example: PER is a shared product, and INV is an installed product. AutoPatch will patch the relevant PER file (PERCOMM.fmx in this example) if all the following criteria are met:

PER is listed in INV's shared product list
PERCOMM.fmx is present in $PER_TOP/admin/driver/percomm.drv file
PERCOMM.fmx is included in INV's file driver files

Case 2

If a shared product is present in the shared products list of any installed products (you can verify this from the $APPL_TOP/admin/applprod.txt file), and if the shared product's file is included in the installed product's file driver file either directly or indirectly, AutoPatch will patch the shared product's file when a patch supplies a new version.

For example: PER is a shared product, and INV is an installed product. AutoPatch will patch the relevant PER (PERCOMM.fmx in this example) file if both the following criteria are met:

PER is in INV's shared product list
PERCOMM.fmx is included in INV's file driver files

AutoPatch will not patch a shared product in the following cases

Case 1

If a product is in shared mode alone, AutoPatch will not patch the product.

Case 2

If a shared product is in the list of shared products of any other installed products, AutoPatch will not patch the product. For example, if product PER is in shared status and INV is in installed status, and if PER is in the list of shared products for INV, PER files will not be patched.