R11i
Upgrades – A Toolkit Approach
Mike
Bromfield
Myriad
Business Consulting
mbromfield@myriad-business.com
Darren
Ryan & Dominic Hicks, UPGRADExtra
Upgrading
to Oracle Applications Release 11i can be a costly and time-consuming process,
especially if you’ve customised your current release. A way to minimize costs
and time spent upgrading is to implement a toolkit approach that is devised to
identify, access, and control key information for the R11i upgrade process.
The
toolkit, which was used during one of the United Kingdom’s first Oracle
Applications R11i major upgrade projects, provides a mechanism to scope and
support the Oracle Applications upgrade process by centralising specific
essential upgrade information and allowing it to be accessed via web-enabled
software. Additional links to documentation and desktop applications provide an
integrated, innovative, technical, and functional solution to the upgrade
process. The toolkit helps to ‘”‘de-mystify’”’ the upgrade process and
complements Oracle’s structured upgrade process and
utilities.
Before
beginning the upgrade process, ask the following
questions:
A
fundamental requirement of the upgrade process is to complete preliminary and
cut-over activities within a specified time frame that is acceptable to the
business. Because it is important to document all requirements relevant to your
site, a structured and centralised documentation subsystem, which acts as the
hub for all upgrade processes, is required.
Oracle’s
Structured Upgrade Process
Oracle
provides a structured upgrade process, broken down into two phases: pre-upgrade
and post-upgrade. Within these phases, upgrade tasks are grouped into categories
that contain a combination of technical and functional activities. The technical
activities are predominately conducted by DBAs while application specific
requirements are split between those who have an understanding of the technical
requirements and those who have an understanding of the business processes and
application functional requirements.
Before
You Receive the Software
This
category concentrates on preparing your Oracle Applications well before the
upgrade. It requires nothing from the new
software, and it allows you to continue to use your current Oracle Applications
environment. It is during this phase that you should document your
customisations. Irrespective of the amount of customisations at your site,
identify and record every single custom object.
This
category also concentrates on preparing your Oracle Applications before the
upgrade. It differs from Category 1 steps in that it requires the running of
scripts that come as part of the upgrade bundle. These scripts validate the existing environment
and identify application data and setup.
In
many cases, the application data and setup can be corrected in the existing
system without affecting the day-to-day running of the current applications.
This must be thoroughly tested, but once fixed, should no longer impact the
upgrade process.
This
category concentrates on preparing your Oracle Applications for the upgrade to
Release 11i immediately prior to the actual upgrade itself. In preparation for
the upgrade, you should process as many outstanding transactions as possible. It
is also advisable to complete any process cycles and interfaces – and if
possible, close accounting periods. The system is required to be down for this
stage in the upgrade process. The Autoupgrade itself upgrades your applications
from 10.7 to 11.5.0 and consists of approximately 16,000 scripts. You can then
Patch the 11.5.0 instance to the accepted version level.
This
category concentrates on activities that occur immediately after the completion
of Autoupgrade and before you use any of the application products. This category
affects the entire applications system and must be performed when all users are
logged off the system as with Category 3.
You
are also required to re-enable all of the triggers, constraints, and indexes
that have been removed as part of the upgrade. In addition, you must copy the
customisations into the new environment. Your pre-upgrade analysis will identify
all the objects that should be reinstated.
Complete
these activities prior to using the new features associated with the application
products. An understanding of the new application features is essential in order
to assess the impact of any changes to the existing processes. A number of new
features will become a standard part of the upgraded application, while other
features can be optionally implemented depending on each sites specific
requirements.
These
tasks are performed to finish the upgrade and are conducted by the DBAs. These
technical tasks incorporate database and server maintenance routines, loading of
the online help, and configuring the client software.
If
you have customised your Oracle Applications in order to meet your business
requirements, then you are faced with the onerous task of re-developing those
that have not been replaced with new functionality. You need to be able to
assess what the customisations are, how they have been affected, and how long it
takes to redevelop them.
In
order to fully scope the risk, you must know about every custom object
introduced at your site. This includes database objects, AOL objects and
reports, forms, and programs. The new release can affect any or all of these
objects.
There
have been significant changes to the underlying Application Schemas, with many
of the 10.7/11.0 tables and views being changed in order to meet the new 11i
requirements. Gauge the impact of these changes against all your custom objects.
Changes in the 11i functionality may mean that existing customisations work
correctly using historical data, but may not process correctly with new
transactions. The database engine now uses the Cost Based Optimiser, which can
have significant performance impact upon your
customisations.
Use
the Toolkit approach to address customizations and identify and load all necessary
site-specific information into the central repository. Use this information to
perform a full impact analysis. This is a critical factor in successfully
speeding up re-development time, as you can use this source of information to
drive the development effort. This approach
significantly reduces the cost of re-development by focusing expensive
development resources only to areas where it is required.
In
summary, you need to identify:
Using
this approach enables you to easily identify which custom objects are highly
impacted. It also enables you to more accurately estimate total re-development
time scales and resource requirements.
A
standard documentation template is attached to every entry in the Toolkit.
Developers use these templates to record analysis, tips, tricks, and solutions
identified during the re-development phase.
A
number of affected tables and views require substantial analysis and complex
coding to re-develop the customisation. The Toolkit enables you to identify all
other custom objects with the same problematic table or view. The developer who
initially identified the solution can repeat the process on all affected custom
objects.
By
centralising all information, you are able to maximize the efforts of all of the
re-developers; and by sharing solutions and focusing efforts, you can halve the
total re-development time – resulting in substantial time and cost
savings.
A
fundamental part of the upgrade process is to gain an understanding of the
impact on existing business processes. A functional assessment generally
incorporates the following elements:
Existing
Business Processes
It
is important to establish a baseline to start the impact analysis. An
understanding of the existing business processes provides this basis from which
you can link associated new features and customisations. Using this helps define
the training, testing, setup, and documentation requirements.
New
Product Features
An
understanding of the new product features is essential to reviewing the business
impact. New product features generally fall into three broad
headings:
·
Features
which are an essential part of the upgraded application functionality and must
be incorporated into the existing business processes.
·
Features which provide an immediate
benefit and have a minimal impact on the users as far as training and existing
process.
·
New
features which require significant analysis and implementation solution to
address the setup, testing, and training requirements. You can plan a number of
these features after the initial upgrade is complete and stabilised.
Links to
Customisations
Using
customisation information extracted from technical activities, customisations
can be linked to each process. This assists in confirming whether the
customisation is still relevant or redundant as a result of changes in the
upgraded functionality. This information assists in defining the testing,
training, and application setup requirements.
Testing
Requirements
The
testing phase is a crucial element of any upgrade process. It is essential that
testing requirements are identified and understood. A testing plan needs to
incorporate the requirements for each business process. Using standard
documentation templates linked to the business process provides a mechanism to
outline requirements, identify assumptions, confirm decisions, and record
results.
During
the functional analysis and testing phase, additional analysis involves
referencing various application manuals and Oracle Metalink. Make sure to
include cross-references to these sources within the centralised documentation,
as the application environment constantly changes.
The
structured upgrade process provides an initial checklist for the required
upgrade activities. During the upgrade process, you should expand this list to
incorporate your site-specific requirements. Additional steps may be
incorporated as a result of introducing application patches, developing
additional data correction scripts, or adding application setup changes
including parameters, menus, responsibilities, and profile
options.
The
upgrade process is supported by a vast array of functional and technical
documentation. Document links to key information, and wherever possible,
incorporate timings to indicate the actual duration of conducting the upgrade
tasks and estimates for time required to further investigate impacts.
The
critical success factor for the upgrade is to create a repetitive process. In
order to achieve a repetitive upgrade process in an ever-changing environment,
centralise the documentation for all upgrade activities. The central database
repository acts as a hub, which allows you to record specific activities,
identify anomalies, and highlight issues. This assists in reducing risks
associated with the upgrade process. A structured and centralised approach is
the major factor in reducing the down-time during that all-important upgrade
window. The Toolkit provides the mechanism to capture and retrieve this
information in standard documentation templates. It is important to be able to
track the status of all upgrade activities, highlighting any that are an issue.
The
upgrade process requires significant input by the technical resources. It
requires a number of DBAs who are experienced in upgrading Oracle Applications.
The DBAs must be able to understand and organise the multitude of tasks that
make up the upgrade process.
Your
Application Developers should have a thorough working knowledge of the schemas
that are being upgraded. They must know reports and Forms 6 and be capable of
making the necessary changes to your customised code in order to accommodate the
new schema. The new database is cost based optimised (Rule Based in 10.7), so
performance tuning of customised code is required.
A
structured approach supported by an easily maintainable documentation system
helps assist the functional impact analysis. Involve key users in the upgrade
process well before the testing phase in order to assist with the impact
analysis. The Toolkit provides an online repository to record these functional
processes. The central repository provides essential documentation and
references that you will use repeatedly to reduce analysis activity. They also
act as an important source of information as the upgrade moves into the
production phase.
The
finalised version of the R11i Toolkit allows the identification, access, and
control of key information during the R11i Upgrade process. It provides the
following:
Recommendations
We
recommend the following for your R11i Upgrade Process:-