Automate Oracle E-Business Suite Deployments with FlexDeploy 3.0

Many organizations with Oracle EBS need to make customizations to meet their business requirements. Deploying these changes in test and production environments can be tedious, error prone, and time consuming due to the nature and complexity of the change process. There has been a strong demand from our FlexDeploy customers to improve the EBS deployment process, including the overall quality, cost, and speed of making the EBS related changes. To meet the demand, we are delivering an EBS plugin in FlexDeploy 3.0, after working closely with customers to understand the details of their challenges and requirements. This included a beta of the EBS plugin on FlexDeploy 2.1, which resulted in very positive feedback and ultimately the general availability of the plugin as part of our FlexDeploy 3.0 release. Using the EBS Plugin you can build and deploy your EBS extensions, customizations and personalizations with one click!

FlexDeploy helps streamline the deployment process of EBS changes by applying best practices and DevOps techniques. This article provides an overview of the EBS plugin features and explains how easily you can build and deploy EBS changes using FlexDeploy.

Core Features of EBS Plugin

• Supports all object types including Database, Forms, Reports, AOL, OAF, MDS, Workflows, Publisher files, Java, Java Stored Procedures, XDFs & many more.
• Provides operations to manage all EBS server/service components.
• Supports Database customizations
• Supports SQL files execution order
• Compile Invalid DB objects
• Supports ADOP online patching phases for R12.2 and above
• Change detection
• No manual scripting
• Works with all kinds of Custom Top practices
• Automated backup before deployment; Allowing Rollback capability
• Refresh environments with ease.
• Compiles objects if required (e.g. Java and form libraries)
• Easy configuration. Your target EBS environment is ready to deploy using FlexDeploy in 5 mins.
• Version control support

Building Changes

FlexDeploy starts with pulling the EBS objects from a source control repository. During the build process FlexDeploy identifies all EBS objects based on the file type and contents of the file. It determines all required attributes for deploying the object. Things like control file for AOLs and schema users for XDFs are managed by the plugin. This eliminates a lot of manual work in finding out all the attributes and commands required for deploying EBS objects. The Build operation provides options such as excluding the files if you have specific files which do not need to be deployed. As shown below, the plugin removes many of the complexities and the processes can be modeled as simplified workflows.

Other FlexDeploy core features such as Continuous Integration, Artifacts Repository, Change Log, Dashboards, and Reporting are available for EBS as well. You can perform continuous build if desired and automate post build deployment steps as needed.

Deploying Changes

Multiple options are available for deploying EBS changes, including on-demand with a click as well as scheduled deployments to fully automate the process.

The plugin Build process manages the complexities of what is required for deploying the changes and the Deploy process further simplifies the process by comparing the objects with the target before deploying and deploys only if changed. FlexDeploy determines the target folders and commands needed, and executes them on the target EBS components. The sequence of changes is also managed by FlexDeploy as needed. The Deploy operation is highly-configurable (e.g. retry count, stop on error, destination folders).

This plugin operation keeps a backup of all the objects before deploying and is used to restore the state if a failure occurs. The plugin provides all the operations required to stop and start servers based on the deployed objects. The Deploy process returns a deployed files list which can be used to control your server restarts instead of restarting every time as shown below:

 

Here are the server management operations which the EBS Plugin makes available for use with your workflow. For example, operations are provided to restart different components as needed in the workflow, providing complete flexibility and control within the workflow process.

Submitting Requests

After your workflows are configured, it’s a simple matter of submitting on-demand requests or scheduling the requests using the flexible scheduling features within FlexDeploy.  FlexDeploy’s core features like Deployment Windows, Approvals, Notifications, Security can be leveraged to manage and control the build and deploy processes.

 

Once you submit the deployment to your target environment, you can check the details in FlexDeploy by clicking on the execution ID. The details of all steps executed by the workflow are provided as shown below:

The outputs tab provides the list of the objects deployed, as well as the objects which were skipped because they are already on the target system, and therefore do not need to be deployed. The Deploy step has a link to the detailed execution log, which includes the commands which are executed and the output from the EBS sever.  FlexDeploy extracts all the required information from the various EBS logs and makes it available directly within the FlexDeploy log window.  When troubleshooting, this eliminates the need to access different servers and logs. Developers have the information they need at their fingertips and can quickly fix and deploy the changes as needed.

Test Your changes

FlexDeploy 3.0 offers robust test automation support which can be used as part of the EBS deployment process.  A high level review of the test automation features were provided in the following blog article after hands on beta testing by a FlexDeploy user:  http://adfpractice-fedor.blogspot.com/2015/10/automated-software-testing-of-fusion.html

Summary and What’s Next

The EBS support within FlexDeploy 3.0 provides significant benefits for EBS users and helps improve quality, speed, and cost associated with managing changes related to EBS extensions, customizations and personalizations.

In my next blog I will explain how we can deploy these extensions, customizations and personalizations to EBS 12.2 environments by taking complete advantage of ADOP online patching operations using FlexDeploy.