FlexDeploy supports the automation of E-Business Suite (EBS) extension and customization migrations. In this post, let’s take a look at the support of Application Object Library (AOL) objects. You can extract these along with any other desired artifacts from your Development EBS instance and migrate them to other EBS instances, including Production.
FlexDeploy supports complete automation, with controls and visibility to increase speed of delivery, and with high productivity.
FlexDeploy fully supports the following AOL types:
- Concurrent Programs (PROGRAM)
- Lookups (FND_LOOKUP_TYPE)
- Request Groups (REQUEST_GROUP)
- Request Sets (REQ_SET)
- Request Set Links (REQ_SET_LINKS)
- Descriptive Flexfield with all of specific Contexts (DESC_FLEX)
- Key Flexfield Structures (KEY_FLEX)
- Menus (MENU)
- Printers (PRINTER)
- Printer Styles (PRINTER_STYLE)
- Profile Options (PROFILE)
- Users (FND_USER)
- Responsibilities (FND_RESPONSIBILITY)
- Message (FND_NEW_MESSAGES)
- Attachments (FND_ATTACHMENT_FUNCTIONS)
- Currency (FND_CURRENCY)
- Languages (FND_LANGUAGE)
- Territory (FND_TERRITORY)
- FND Dictionary – tables used by ALERT, Flexfields etc(FND_TABLE)
- FND Dictionary – views used by ALERT, Flexfields etc(FND_VIEW)
- Grants (GRANT)
- FND Dictionary – Sequences used by ALERT, Flexfields etc (FND_SEQUENCE)
- Document sequences (FND_DOC_SEQUENCE_CATEGORIES)
- Value Sets (VALUE_SET)
- Value Sets with values (VALUE_SET_VALUE)
- Value Security Rules (VALUE_SECURITY_RULE)
- Value Hierarchies (VALUE_ROLLUP_GROUP)
- Concurrent Program Schedules (SCHEDULE)
- Rule for a Function – Form Personalization (FND_FORM_CUSTOM_RULES)
- Forms (FORM)
- Functions (FUNCTION)
- Alert (ALR_ALERTS)
- Roles and Role Assignment data (WF_ROLE)
- Data Definition (XDO_DS_DEFINITIONS)
- JTF Meta data (JTF_GRID_DATASOURCES)
Configuration of AOLs
With FlexDeploy you can extract AOLs from your EBS Development instance and deploy/migrate to other EBS instances, or you can choose to add the extracted files to source control. The screen below shows how to add a Concurrent Program. The process is the same for adding any other type.
Open an EBS partial Deploy project, go to the project files tab, choose AOLs, and click “Create“.
On the Create New screen, enter the File Name as per your naming standards. Select “EBS” as source to pull this AOL from the configured EBS instance. Select type as “PROGRAM” for this example. You can select your desired AOL from the list. Click on the “Evaluate” button to populate all other values.
FlexDeploy populates all other attributes required to extract and deploy this AOL. You can review these attributes and update if needed. Then click OK at the bottom of the screen.
You can add all the AOLs as described. The files screen below shows the list with all the attributes.
Once you have completed adding these files under the Project Files screen, click the “Save” button to save the newly added files. Once these files are added, you can pull from EBS and deploy to other instances any number of times with a few simple clicks.
Migrate from Development to Other EBS Servers
Select one or more files to build a package. You can also choose to add other EBS object types into this package as well. The extract process is called Build in FlexDeploy. To start the Build process, click on the “Build with Selected” button. The number of selected files is displayed inside the button.
Once you click on the Build with Selected button, the Build Request Form will be displayed with the selected files. In this form, you can select the Environment from where you want to extract these files and click “Submit Request”. You can change the order of the files, add more files, remove files, etc.
This build step creates the package with selected files by extracting the files from your Development instance of EBS. Once the Build is complete, the Project Execution screen shows the status of your Build step as shown below. You can click on the Execution Id to view more details or to view the files it extracted.
Adding these files under the Project Files screen in FlexDeploy is a one time setup. If you change these files at any time, it is simply a few clicks to Build and Deploy. Simply click on the 
 icon next to the Version to re-build with the same set of files. You can deploy to one or more EBS instances by simply clicking on the “Deploy” button. Clicking the Deploy button displays the Deploy Request Form.
To view the files which are included in the package, click on the icon as shown below.
Simply select the Environment you want to deploy to and click “Submit Request”. By default, this form adds the latest package for deployment. If you need to change or add more packages, you can do so by clicking the “Select More Packages” button. The Project Execution screen shows the status of the Deploy step.
Click on the Execution Id for the Deploy step to view details of the execution. By clicking on the Deploy Step, you can view complete log details of the deployment of your AOL file from EBS.
Click on the Files tab to view the status of individual files in the package. FlexDeploy only deploys the files that are changed. If the same version of the file is already deployed to the target environment it will skip the file (unless forced). The status would be Skipped for those files that are not deployed as they already match the target environment.
With FlexDeploy’s EBS support, you can forget about writing complex commands or scripts to migrate any of your EBS objects. Streamline your EBS deployment with ease.
Additional resources on FlexDeploy’s solution for E-Business Suite: