Part 1 - Requirements for E-Business Single Sign On with Identity Cloud Service

Hi Folks

In thes posts I will write up what was needed to enable E-Business Suite have Single Sign On with Identity Cloud Service.

First - Prerequisites,  Not Covered in this

1.  Fully working and Certified E-Business Suite Installation.  R12.1.3 or R 12.2.x.  I tested with Release 12.2.6 Demo Vision Instance from the E-Delivery templates but you are welcome to use any version you like,

2. This MUST be configured to use an TLS 1.2 endpoint with a Valid, Signed Certificate - i.e. when you browse to E-Business you must use SSL and it must be signed by a proper certifying Authority.  I had a lot of problems and did not use self-signed certificates, I used a 3rd party certificate, and all was well.

3.  You need an Identity Cloud Service ; you can sign up for one in a trial, or use a credit card to purchase one.   It's assumed you have administrative access to this.

4.  You need a host to run Weblogic; the code that makes all this work ( the asserter) is deployed in Weblogic.   This can be anything you want  - I used a standalone Linux box but feel free to use anything hanging around.   Be aware that this, too will need a hostname and a signed 3rd party certificate for this.   These two certificate requirements can be tedious to obtain to set up a demonstration, and formed the major part of the issue with this run-through.

5. It's assumed you know how to setup a Weblogic Domain , configure it to use SSL and so forth, familiarity with the Java toolset is required.

6. Download a recent version of Java and Weblogic from Oracle.com website, log on to your linux host, and let's get going.

Getting IDCS to do Single Sign On to E-Business Suite

Hi Folks

I have successfully enabled E-BUsiness to do single Sign-on with Oracle's Identity Cloud Service.

I followed the Oracle documentation and it was an interesting journey.  I will blog about this in detail shortly.

Finding and Downloading Cloud Control Plugins Offline

Hi folks

A quick blog about Enterprise Manager.  I am putting a blog together about Data Masking, and one of the things I need for that is the Cloud Control

So I have an existing Cloud Control 12.1.0.5 but in order to use it to data mask an EBS 12.2 system,  the Cloud Control needs to be at R13.1, so I need to upgrade it  ( Yes, I know, a pain )

So I downloaded R13 of the cloud control and it tells me I cannot upgrade until I have the R13 plugin for E-Business Suite.

However, I cannot download it - as the OEM downloads page on OTN no longer has the plugins on it.   The recommended way in the documentation is to use the Self-Update feature.

But this got me wondering - is there another way to do it ?   Can we get the plugin without resorting to any of that, i.e. having to do a long and complex start, stop, connect to the Internet

Let's see.

The Catalog which OEM downloads for Self-Update, is a well-publicised patch and can be manually downloaded.  So let's go and get it, and see what there is to see.

We see from Note 1388143.1 how to get it :

When we get the zip file and open it

We are looking for 13.1 plugins so click in there

Now let's get the plugin XML,  so view it :

We can see from this large XML file that every plugin is detailed.  What we want is the E-Business Plugin, and the patch number details 

\If we search then we find 

<![CDATA[Enterprise Manager for Oracle E-Business Suite consists of System Management and Change Management Feature Sets]]>

    13.1.1.1.0

    0

    2000

   

<![CDATA[

 Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-In Release 13.1.1.1.0 Read Me

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------

And at the very end of that XML EntityInstance we find 

The important thing here is the Files= tag, so if we search Metalink for that 23643778 

There is one file, so download it and examine : 

Inside that zip file is a readme : 

 Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-In Release 13.1.1.1.0 Read Me

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Description:

--------------

So that is how it is done !  

How to extract Oracle E-Business Suite OVM Templates to use on regular Linux

So if you're like me and can't wait to build your own E-Business Suite install fully from disks, why not use Oracle's ?

It's difficult because Oracle release them as large quantities of zip files, in an OVM-only format.

So I decided to try and extract them.

First thing to do is to download all the zip files from edelivery.oracle.com

( this is for 12.2.6 Vision )

rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4149895254 Jun 25 08:52 V861124-01_1of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4161834659 Jun 25 08:53 V861124-01_2of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4022878516 Jun 25 08:53 V861125-01_2of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4167947454 Jun 25 08:53 V861126-01_2of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4210862906 Jun 25 08:53 V861125-01_1of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4039052808 Jun 25 08:54 V861126-01_1of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 3982516324 Jun 25 08:58 V861127-01_1of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4085427663 Jun 25 09:00 V861127-01_2of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4181580260 Jun 25 09:00 V861129-01_1of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4223529093 Jun 25 09:00 V861128-01_2of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4231089650 Jun 25 09:01 V861128-01_1of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4052472122 Jun 25 09:07 V861130-01_1of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4113458555 Jun 25 09:07 V861129-01_2of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 3915350219 Jun 25 09:08 V861131-01_1of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 3971929518 Jun 25 09:08 V861130-01_2of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4180779762 Jun 25 09:08 V861131-01_2of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root  409489464 Jun 25 09:09 V861133-01.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4194429288 Jun 25 09:13 V861132-01_1of2.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 4225432547 Jun 25 09:16 V861132-01_2of2.zip

( whoa that's a lot ). 

Now download the assemble.sh file from Metalink  ( see Appendix A Note 2254565.1 ) 

This takes an hour or so and then 

This will give you a very large file 


-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 77706019328 Jun 25 10:20 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.6_VISION_INSTALL.ova

So what do you do with this ? 

well OVA is a tarfile really so 

tar -xvf and then we get 

-rw-------. 1 root root       11351 Apr 20 16:13 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.6_VISION_INSTALL.ovf

-rw-------. 1 root root 77706006528 Jun 26 12:18 Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.2.6_VISION_INSTALL-disk001.vmdk

the VMDK is where everything is, in the portable disk image. 

So we need to get access to that. 

download the VMWARE VDDK Version 5 ( Google it ) as this allows Linux to mount these types of images 

Essentially we need to do the following now 

1.  Mount the vmdk as a flat image as Linux can't handle loopback multiparts properly 

2.  take the partition (2) via counting the 512 block offsets as the disk image we want and then mount that as a loopback 

3.  vgscan that mounted loopback 

4.  varyon the lv on the discovered PV 

5.  fsck the lv as the image was shutdown dirty, and the journal needs playback ( sigh ) 

6.  mount the LV to a mount point

et voila ! 

Most of the above is straightforward except amazingly point 5 which I just could not get to work, until some research seemed to indicate it might be a UEK issue, so switched to RHCK , tried again,  fsck went through first go, and the filesystem mounted ! 

So now we can access the files in the appliance 

( All thanks to THIS Link http://www.bokko.nl/vmware-linux-vmdk-file-mount-from-linux-host-with-lvm-filesystems/ ) which gave me most of the clues for points 1..4 

Thanks for reading, you've been great 

UKOUG and Oracle

So UKOUG Call for papers for the big conferences opened yesterday.

I am on the committee helping to put together Apps 17 looking at the tech components for that conference.

Also had some nice calls with Oracle in the US who are hoping we might be able to help them with some education

Its an interesting week.  Over in one of our big clients in the UK working on Oracle Cloud SAAS and PAAS

What have i been up to this quarter

Hi folks

Apologies for not blogging for a while

It's been a few months since I posted but its been very busy with client confidential work

I've been spoken at two or three conferences (  Oracle Partner in Malaga, Northern Tech Sig ) , I've put forward some talks for Openworld ( who knows ! )  and might be accepted for the Middleware SIG  in July

I'm also on the Apps Tech committee now for UKOUG so we're looking at the state of the art and seeing what kind of presentations might reflect our members orientation

We are working closely with Oracle on the various cloud initiatives - you may not know it but Oracle have 119 cloud services ( as of writing there are 116 on cloud.oracle.com, and 3 not listed yet ( Werker, Moat and Netsuite )

So what kind of work has been going on :

Well We are recommending Engineered Systems and ODAs on the hardware side, and building solution architectures around those

we are building IAAS cloud solutions for those taking steps into the cloud

We are developing PAAS integration solutions ( ICS and MCS ) with Oracle internally, and with partners like Auraplayer

And lastly we are driving SAAS implementations with Oracle's Fusion Cloud

Out at the far end we are working with customers on IoT, Robotics/Automation, and Bots which is really cool technology

Really interesting year and we're talking to Oracle - they might want our presentations used to help other partners ( was also filmed by Oracle for some partner connect stuff last week )

so a really exciting quarter - promise to get back blogging soon.  I've submitted an article for Oracle Scene so maybe it will get picked up

See you soon
Chris

some insights into new features into ICS December 2016 release.

Hi folks after a quiet (!) december I've decided to go back to Blogging  !

http://docs.oracle.com/cloud/latest/intcs_gs/ICSGS/toc.htm#GUID-51023E08-955A-4990-A071-767E3AD16A04__DECEMBER2016-739140CB

outlines some of the new features for ICS's new release ( Integration cloud service ) .

quote :
This release of Oracle Integration Cloud Service includes two new adapters (DB2 Adapter and Oracle Logistics Adapter) and enhancements to the REST Adapter, SOAP Adapter, FTP Adapter, and Salesforce Adapter. 
Enhancements are also provided for orchestrated integrations, scheduled integrations, orchestrated integration creation options, custom adapter uploads, Expression Builder functions, XPath extension functions, exported/imported integrations, diagnostic logs, and REST APIs. 

Some of the more important ones to me : 

Orchestrated orchestrations

Application event or business object: uses an event or a business object to trigger the integration. Schedule: uses a schedule to trigger the integration instead of an adapter.

These are really important. 


Here's some more detail about these : 

• Application event or business object: This integration uses an event or a business object to trigger the integration. For example, you create an integration with an Oracle RightNow Adapter as a trigger and an Oracle Sales Cloud Adapter as an invoke. The Oracle RightNow Adapter subscribes to an event from the Oracle RightNow application to trigger the integration.
• Schedule: This integration uses a schedule to trigger the integration instead of an adapter. For example, you add an initial invoke adapter to read a trigger file and a second FTP adapter to download the file for further processing. After designing this integration, you schedule when to run it. For more information, see Scheduling Integration Runs

Check back in soon for more information.