1 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

13 E-Business Suite
Development Tips

DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

2 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

Table of Contents

1 EBS Development Processes

1 13 Best Practices for E-Business Suite Development

1 Standardize Naming Conventions

2 Use FNDLOAD for AOL Files

2 Track AOL Changes in Your SCM

2 Use SCM Systems and DevOps Tools to Manage Source Control Folders

4 Simplify Server Management and Reduce Problems with Automation

4 Improve Versioning for Package Migration

5 Structure Your Code

5 Know When to Use Patch vs. Run Edition

6 Understand Post-Refresh Processes

6 Create Reusable Frameworks

6 Reduce Manual, Repeatable Tasks with Idempotent Database Scripts

7 Avoid Hard Coding

7 Automate and Group Tasks Together

8 Use Standards and Automation to Improve Oracle EBS App Development

1 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

EBS Development Processes

The most effective development processes At Flexagon, we’ve been helping IT teams
are tailored to the company and the product integrate DevOps practices and tools into
IT teams are working with. The most effective their current processes for years - and
teams develop standardized processes that have deep expertise in Oracle technology,
help reduce errors and speed up the software including E-Business Suite. We’ve combined
delivery lifecycle, while increasing efficiency our experience with E-Business Suite with
for their specific product. general DevOps and development best
practices to create a list of 13 development
DevOps spans people, process, and tips for Oracle EBS.
technology and can be integrated into every
IT team. Combined with best practices for These tips will help developers standardize
each team’s technical landscape, it can their processes, save time, and reduce
create more effective processes that deliver errors throughout development, testing,
high-quality software to market in less time. and deployment to production. They may
even contribute to your efforts to shorten
That’s especially true for IT teams working the software delivery lifecycle, and will
on Oracle apps such as E-Business Suite. compliment continuous methodologies
Combining DevOps practices with specific like continuous integration and continuous
development tips for E-Business Suite delivery.
will make entire teams more effective and
produce greater results for end users.

Best Practices for E-Business Suite Development

1 Standardize Naming Conventions

Don’t waste time naming database objects based on standard conventions, then using ad hoc naming
for file system objects. Instead, come up with naming conventions that can be easily replicated in
scripts, executables, reports, forms and more. By taking this approach from the beginning, any out-of-
context coding, for example in a JIRA ticket, can be easily understood.
2 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

2 Use FNDLOAD for AOL Files

Oracle Application Object Library (AOL) is a collection of pre-built application components and
facilities, which consists of forms, subroutines, concurrent programs, reports, database objects,
messages, menus, responsibilities, flex field definitions, and various other library functions.

Virtually every EBS implementation will have AOL definitions and require synchronization of
the data across EBS instances. Oracle provides a concurrent program, FNDLOAD, for both
downloading and uploading AOL objects. This becomes the core building block for migrating the
data across instances. Other, less desirable options include manual synchronization (error-prone)
or RPA technology (complicated).

You can use FNDLOAD to download the source AOL definition as .LDT files from the source. You
can also use FNDLOAD to upload the .LTD files to the target instance, completing the migration.

3 Track AOL Changes in Your SCM

Development teams most often implement AOL changes in a shared EBS Development
environment. Since EBS does not keep track of revisions of changes, it is a best practice to
extract each AOL change to an .LDT and record the revision as a commit into your source
control system.

You can use DevOps tooling to automate the migration of the AOL changes using the
FNDLOAD program. As with any file, you will have visibility into which revisions of your AOLs
where deployed, when, where, and by whom.

4 Use SCM Systems and DevOps Tools to

Manage Source Control Folders
Source Control Management (SCM) Systems, such as Git or Subversion, provide a platform
for managing the lifecycle of documents and other files. Every change to a file is recorded with
a revision number and provides easy recall of any change. Other common features include
branching, merging, and revision history. A mature source control management practice is critical
for an effective DevOps implementation.
3 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

The key capabilities include:

Visibility into the full history of every change made to a file - what changed,
who changed it, and why

Easily revert to any previous revision of a file

No need to block all other users from updating a single file while you complete
your changes, since every change is a revision and you can easily merge
changes together

Teams can work against a single file repository, without a requirement of

explicitly keeping backups and keeping track of which files are the “latest”

DevOps tools provide lineage with the SCM to provide insight into your SDLC, right down to the
file level. After an issue is reported, you can easily identify who made a change to a configuration
file at what time, as well as when that change was deployed to production. In comparing the
change to the previous revision, you can see exactly what changed and view a description of
why the change was made.

DevOps tools often provide pipelines for managing how changes are propagated across
environments in your infrastructure, including capabilities for code reviews, approvals,
scheduling, and more. Integration with the SCM enables you to associate the deployment
requests to particular revisions of the source files, providing context for the request to support
an approval (e.g. code reviews). And, since the ultimate process prevents issues in the first
place, the lineage also arms operations teams with the data to satisfy IT auditors.
4 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

5 Simplify Server Management and Reduce Problems

with Automation
Oracle E-Business Suite consists of many different servers, services, and workflows. Each of
these components requires different handling to stop, start, restart, enable, or disable. Managing
these different server components is not an easy task.

Automating server management is critical for production

environments for the following purposes:

Determining which server/component to start instead of starting/stopping/

restarting all the servers

Reducing downtime by replacing manual processes with automation

Combining with deployment operations to ensure deployed changes go into effect

Adding approvals and/or notifications to increase control and visibility

6 Improve Versioning for Package Migration

Unfortunately, it’s common for IT teams to migrate packages, then find out that they aren’t
working with the latest version of the code. Not only is that frustrating, it wastes time and
extends your software delivery lifecycle.

Instead of struggling to identify which version of code you’re working with, make reviewing
package versions easier by adding a version code right after the header revision comments
in your PL/SQL package. This can be done manually by the team, or using DevOps tools and
continuous processes to ensure this is done each time code is migrated.

While some companies use version codes, DevOps tools are by far the preferred choice. The
best DevOps tools allow you to clearly see what revisions of the source are included with the
build and how they tie back to the source control system. Not only do they improve visibility, but
they eliminate the manual versioning tasks that many teams without DevOps tools do regularly.
5 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

7 Structure Your Code

All coding – not only packages being readied for migrations – should follow standard protocols.
The aim here is to make the application’s code as simple and readable as possible. Use the case
function or indent code consistently to make code fragments easy and predictable to read.

Whatever code structure you use, keep it consistent throughout your organization. Everyone
should be able to easily view and understand code using the same system.

8 Know When to Use Patch vs. Run Edition

Oracle E-Business 12.2 and above comes with editions (Run and Patch). You can deploy your
customizations directly to Run Edition or apply to Patch Edition (Online Patching) by following
ADOP patching phases.

Online Patching cycle consists of the following major phases:

PREPARE APPLY FINALIZE

CUTOVER CLEANUP

Online patching reduces downtime and is also called 0 downtime deployment. You can also deploy
changes directly into the run edition. This option should be used when changes are small or when
the new online patching options are not adopted.

It’s also important to note that while you can deploy the patch edition without runtime, applying it
to the live system requires a cutover process that can take a significant amount of time, especially
for large patches. For example, FlexDeploy customers typically deploy all customizations directly
to the run edition.
6 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

9 Understand Post-Refresh Processes

Cloning/refresh is a process used to create an identical instance from an existing instance. It is
also used to refresh an existing instance, (mostly a non-production EBS instance,) from another,
(mostly production EBS,) instance. It is normal practice in the EBS-world to copy/refresh the
EBS instance from production to one or all the non-production instances every few months. In
the normal cloning process, the cloned instance’s file system and DB gets replaced from source
instance (prod).

Due to the clone/refresh all the files that were deployed recently (that are not in production yet)
will get replaced with whatever is in production. Developers need to re-deploy all the lost files.

10 Create Reusable Frameworks

Your IT team doesn’t need to spend time learning new development frameworks and standards
unless there’s a specific need. So, as you create frameworks to develop your current Oracle
applications, be sure they can be replicated in future implementations.

For example, you can develop a standard set of 20 inventory categories that follow a set of
naming conventions that can be used across projects. Use these frameworks across teams
and with all your Oracle EBS development tools to create in-house standards that save time.

11 Reduce Manual, Repeatable Tasks with Idempotent

Database Scripts
EBS implementations are composed of large volumes of database objects and PL/SQL
programs. Like any EBS object, these definitions must be synchronized across many
environments in your topology. Often, these objects are migrated across environments by the
DBA by executing DDL/SQL scripts provided by the development team.

One of the biggest challenges in automating the process is managing updates to existing
Oracle database objects. This is pretty simple for objects which have CREATE OR REPLACE
objects, but that is not the case for many of the object types (e.g. tables, indexes, sequences,
etc.). For example, you cannot execute a create table statement if the table already exists. This
is most often managed by writing scripts that are dependent on the state of the object in the
target environment. When it comes to automating the process, this becomes a challenge.
7 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

One technique is to create all DDL/SQL scripts to be idempotent, yielding the same result
even when applied several times. If you follow this practice, you can maintain a single script
that is used to apply changes across all environments, track the revision of the script across
environments, and foster healthier relationships between developers and DBAs.

There are different techniques used, which vary by object type. In most cases, however, the
scripts must check the current state and adopt its behavior. For staging tables or stateless
objects, simply dropping and re-creating the object is the best method (taking care not to fail if
the object does not exist). For stateful objects, such as permanent tables and sequences, you
must handle insert/update conditions, all while preserving any state.

12 Avoid Hard Coding

Hard code or configure? The choice seems obvious, but it bears repeating: always configure to
avoid complications and additional work down the road.

In times when you feel inclined to assign values to your code – either strings or numeric –
consider where else you can get this data. If it’s not available elsewhere, it is best to take the
time to developing custom profile options, descriptive flex fields (DFF) or key flex fields to more
effectively itemize categories.

13 Automate and Group Tasks Together

Most organizations have a few environments for various purposes like development, system
testing, performance testing, production, etc. For successful delivery of features to production, it is
essential that development teams adopt automation practices.

Automation can be employed to do various mundane tasks like configuration and code
deployment, quality testing, and more. Automation should help avoid errors and force consistency,
which means a reduction in downtime and outages. In cases where tasks need to be done during
late night or weekend hours, automation and scheduling can also help improve work-life balance.

As organizations adopt automation, it is good idea to provide tools for visibility into automated
changes to diagnose problems or for audit tracking for various compliance processes. Tools
that make it easy to group changes together for promotion may also help you manage your EBS
software delivery lifecycle that spans anywhere from a few days to weeks or months.
8 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

Use Standards and Automation to

Improve EBS App Development

Oracle products are highly specialized, and IT teams working on them typically develop their
own in-house processes based on guidelines from Oracle and experience with E-Business Suite.
Framing that into standards and automating processes to reduce manual, repeatable tasks and cut
down on errors can greatly improve app development.

DevOps tools often provide pipelines for

managing how changes are propagated
across environments in your infrastructure,
including capabilities for code reviews,
approvals, scheduling, and more.
To supplement your in-house processes and best practices, you can also consider adding DevOps
tools with application release automation and other functionality to your IT toolset. These tools
will further alleviate the burden of manual work on your team, helping streamline processes and
mainstreaming the best practices that are already in your processes.
9 | DEVOPS FOR ORACLE APPS

13 E-Business Suite Development Tips