Month: October 2018

Notepad++ 7.5.x | Plugin Manager

On By windows7bugsIn Windows 10Leave a comment

Hi guys

Starting from Notepad++ 7.5.x “Plugin Manager” is not bundled with this editor & you would find why and associated reasons here

So how do we have this “Plugin” configured for managing the plugins? Well the solution is pretty straight forward, download the latest version of the plugin manager from here

Please note, after downloading the plugin which is a zip archive, you need to extract it and there will be two folders, one for the Plugin Manager plugin & other one for the updater. Check the below image:

npplus-pm

Note: The instructions given below are specific to 32-Bit version of Notepad++

Now, copy “PluginManager.dll” from plugins folder to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins” (default installation location, adjust to suite your environment)

Copy “gpup.exe” from “updater” folder to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\updater” (Mandatory)

Now you are all set to start using Plugin Manager once again.

regards,

rajesh

Oracle Application | Inventory | Cannot Create Locators Using The INV_LOC_WMS_PUB API

On By windows7bugsIn Oracle Applications(R12)Leave a comment

Hi guys

Currently we are developing a small custom module better controlled sub-inventory transfers. This solution involves an approach as described below:

Our engineering division technicians will receive tools from main warehouse & each technician will have a store locator automatically created when the tools are issued against them for the 1st time.

So the requirement was to create stock locators under the main sub-inventory automatically while the issue happens.

We opted to use INV_LOC_WMS_PUB public API to create stock locators and came across an error, that keep on giving us the below error:

‘Could not create locator.’ and the return status was ‘U’. It looks like the API is not widely used, hence there were hardly many references available online & all we had was the Oracle support knowledge base. Unfortunately most of the documents were not referring obsolete versions like 12.0.x & we decided to go through each and every other document that was dealing with the API.

The we came across a document “Cannot Create Locators Using The INV_LOC_WMS_PUB API (Doc ID 283472.1)”, which had the correct solution for the issues we were facing with the API.

Please note, the below instructions ONLY deal with the situations when the return status from the API is “U”

Using one of the INV super user responsibilities, navigate to:

  1. Setup -> Flexfields -> Key -> Segments
  2. Query for “Stock Locators” Flexfield title
  3. Check whether “Allow Dynamic Inserts” checkbox is selected. If not, select it and save. Now onwards you should able to run the API successfully.

stocklo

Sample API Script (Adjust to your environment, tested against R12 12.0.6, Database:11gR2)

[code language=”sql” gutter=”false”]

SET DEFINE OFF;
SET SERVEROUTPUT ON SIZE UNLIMITED;

Declare

— Common Declarations
l_api_version NUMBER := 1.0;
x_return_status VARCHAR2(2);
x_msg_count NUMBER := 0;
x_msg_data VARCHAR2(2000);

— WHO columns
l_user_id NUMBER := -1;
l_resp_id NUMBER := -1;
l_application_id NUMBER := -1;
l_row_cnt NUMBER := 1;
l_user_name VARCHAR2(30) := ‘ABC’;
l_resp_name VARCHAR2(50) := ‘XYZ INV Super User’;

— API specific declarations
x_inventory_location_id NUMBER := NULL;
x_locator_exists VARCHAR2(1) := NULL;

BEGIN

— MTL_ITEM_LOCATIONS

— Get the user_id
SELECT user_id
INTO l_user_id
FROM fnd_user
WHERE user_name = l_user_name;

— Get the application_id and responsibility_id
SELECT application_id, responsibility_id
INTO l_application_id, l_resp_id
FROM fnd_responsibility_vl
WHERE responsibility_name = l_resp_name;

FND_GLOBAL.APPS_INITIALIZE(l_user_id, l_resp_id, l_application_id);
dbms_output.put_line(‘Initialized applications context: ‘|| l_user_id || ‘ ‘|| l_resp_id ||’ ‘|| l_application_id );

— call API to update material status
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(‘=======================================================’);
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(‘Calling INV_LOC_WMS_PUB.CREATE_LOCATOR’);

—fnd_profile.put(‘MFG_ORGANIZATION_ID’,245) ;

INV_LOC_WMS_PUB.CREATE_LOCATOR
( x_return_status => x_return_status
, x_msg_count => x_msg_count
, x_msg_data => x_msg_data
, x_inventory_location_id => x_inventory_location_id
, x_locator_exists => x_locator_exists
, p_organization_id => 309 –245
, p_organization_code => ‘202’ — ‘KWH’
, p_concatenated_segments => ‘EMP.2716.’ –‘A5.A5.A5..’
, p_description => ‘RAJESH VARGHESE’
, p_inventory_location_type=> 3 –Type Storage Locator
, p_picking_order => NULL
, p_location_maximum_units => NULL
, p_SUBINVENTORY_CODE => ‘TOOLS’
, p_LOCATION_WEIGHT_UOM_CODE => NULL
, p_mAX_WEIGHT => NULL
, p_vOLUME_UOM_CODE => NULL
, p_mAX_CUBIC_AREA => NULL
, p_x_COORDINATE => NULL
, p_Y_COORDINATE => NULL
, p_Z_COORDINATE => NULL
, p_PHYSICAL_LOCATION_ID => NULL — required when creating logical locators
, p_PICK_UOM_CODE => NULL
, p_DIMENSION_UOM_CODE => NULL
, p_LENGTH => NULL
, p_WIDTH => NULL
, p_HEIGHT => NULL
, p_STATUS_ID => 1
, p_dropping_order => NULL
, p_attribute_category => NULL
, p_attribute1 => NULL
, p_attribute2 => NULL
, p_attribute3 => NULL
, p_attribute4 => NULL
, p_attribute5 => NULL
, p_attribute6 => NULL
, p_attribute7 => NULL
, p_attribute8 => NULL
, p_attribute9 => NULL
, p_attribute10 => NULL
, p_attribute11 => NULL
, p_attribute12 => NULL
, p_attribute13 => NULL
, p_attribute14 => NULL
, p_attribute15 => NULL
, p_alias => NULL );

DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(‘=======================================================’);
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(‘Return Status: ‘||x_return_status);

DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(‘x_locator_exists: ‘||x_locator_exists||’ x_inventory_location_id:’||x_inventory_location_id);

IF (x_return_status <> FND_API.G_RET_STS_SUCCESS) THEN
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(‘Msg Count:’||x_msg_count||’ Error Message :’||x_msg_data);

IF ( x_msg_count > 1 ) THEN
FOR i IN 1 .. x_msg_count LOOP
x_msg_data := fnd_msg_pub.get ( p_msg_index => i , p_encoded =>FND_API.G_FALSE ) ;
dbms_output.put_line ( ‘message :’ || x_msg_data);
END LOOP;
END IF;
END IF;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(‘=======================================================’);
END;

[/code]

 

Upgrade or replace your computer?

On By windows7bugsIn Hardware, Windows 10Leave a comment

Hi guys

My last build was 6+ years back. I did many upgrades, mostly with the memory & storage as I have a number of virtual machines through Oracle VirtualBox & from last three years I stopped taking office work to home, in order to have a better family life. So the PC is mostly used for YouTube & studies related activities by my kids. Once in a while (when I am allowed to use), I use it for work.

I’ve been thinking about an upgrade dearly, as the desktop started giving me a feeling that it was lagging, especially during the Windows startup.

I did a quick assessment and realized that the Intel OEM motherboard supports DDR3 32GB memory (Currently I have 16GB memory) and has SATA standard 3. I already have 5TB+ storage and one 850W PSU. A studio standard sound card from Creative and supported by an Intel i7 generation 2 processor which made the an “Awesome” unit when I built it initially.

From the investment point (both money and efforts), a new PC (Assembled) would cost me approximately 250-300 Kuwaiti Dinars (800-950$) & as the Desktop accessories market is slowly dying, the chances of finding all the items for assembling would be kind of time consuming and tiring activity.

Although a new motherboard and latest processor & memory means support and performance that existing PC could never offer after any number of upgrades, I decided to “upgrade” my current PC for one last time.

This upgrade included a single item and the total expense expected was 36.5KDs (36.5*3.2 = 116USD approximately), and the item was a Crucial MX500 500GB SSD!

cmx500

I used EaseUS ToDo Backup free’s  cloning utility to clone my existing 512GB mechanical drive (approximately 220GB data) which took around 1.5 hours & realized that I never felt my desktop PC such fast and responsive.

10-July-2020. Now crucial has their own Acronis based clone software for the cloning. Please visit this link and watch all their videos to understand how to install the SSD, clone and switch. https://www.crucial.com/support/ssd/ssd-install/ssd-install-steps/part-2-copy

From my last 48+ hours assessment, following are few of the changes I have noticed.

  1. My Windows 10 Pro 64Bit OS (Build 1809) starts and ready in 5-10 seconds time (Fast boot enabled), which was approximately 4-5 minutes prior the SSD inclusion.
  2. My desktop machine shuts down within a time frame of 2-3 minutes, which was never less than 10 minutes (with almost no active database services other than an instance of MySQL and Google’s drive sync software. I found the later being one of the culprits)
  3.  The overall responsiveness has tremendously improved & the constantly nagging delays with starting software like Microsoft word & Excel are not anymore existing.

I know from my previous experiences with SSDs that, after a while, I would start feeling the PC turning slow, which is more psychological than technical.

So, if you WERE planning to replace your PC that’s is less than four years old, for it being “too slow”, “lagging” consider a SSD or NVMe M.2 (if supported). One of the major realities you should be considering when opting for a SSD is whether the OS & Processor support the SSDs. I’ve read somewhere that Windows 10 OS, starting from build 1703 has patched up with better support for SSDs and flash based storage.

One important note for Laptop users. Yes, you can also replace your mechanical drive with a SSD and enjoy the above said performance gains. Just make sure that your Laptop supports an SSD (read manuals, ask manufacturer forums or write to their support).

All the best with an upgrade & saving some real money folks!

regards,

rajesh

Oracle Application R12|Payables|FRM-40735 WHEN-VALIDATE-ITEM trigger raised unhandled exception ORA-01403

On By windows7bugsIn Oracle Applications (R12.0.4), Oracle Applications(R12), Oracle database 11g, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Hello guys

Recently one of our accountants forwarded me a screenshot, that was showing “FRM-40735 WHEN-VALIDATE-ITEM trigger raised unhandled exception ORA-01403” while he was trying to enter invoices against a “NEWLY” created vendor/supplier.

posterror

Our Oracle Application R12 (12.0.6) is considered 99.99999% stable, without a single technical or functional issue that really become a show stopper throughout last many years.

Well, this particular issue looked perplexing as it was not dealt by Oracle Application’s error reporting & slowly we started dwelling Oracle support documents those were dealing with the given forms error “FRM-40735 WHEN-VALIDATE-ITEM trigger raised unhandled exception ORA-01403”

Most of the documentations where mentioning about IBY duplicate pay party, which was not our case. Hence, I decided to open the associated form APXINWKB.fmb & located the WHEN-VALIDATE-ITEM trigger associated with the column “Purchase Order Number”. I couldn’t find any irregularities between an order that didn’t raise the error and this particular Purchase order did raise the exception, which was unhandled.

After two days of continuous attempts, I remembered that such errors happen in other forms modules when we had missing information for new vendors/suppliers. Must be due to a bug, there were times when site level details were NOT populated to organizations level details for a vendor/customer & I decided to go through all mandatory elements those were expected while creating a new vendor/supplier.

I sat with my colleague and we reached to “Payment Method”, and realized that the default payment method was not set for this particular vendor against the organization where we were getting this unhandled exception.

Once the payment method was set, the invoice was posted for the vendor successfully! So, if you come across these kind of unhandled exceptions across Oracle’s proprietary forms those deal with payments/invoices, prior exhausting yourself with cloning and patching, make sure you have all the mandatory elements for customer/vendors are properly filled in and assigned to all the organizations.

Hope this finding helps few consultants out there!

regards,

rajesh

Oracle EBS | Restoring database from RMAN backup

On By windows7bugsIn NOT a DBA, Oracle Applications(R12)Leave a comment

Hi guys

I always wondered how the heck a RMAN backup could be restored to Oracle EBS environment. Last two years, I spent considerable time learning Oracle database technology, especially about the backup and restore procedures (learning a lesson after a disaster)

We have the following approach towards Oracle EBS backup:

Daily RMAN hot backup (Friday’s exempted as we do a full cold backup), with 7 days retention policy.

Weekly cold backup for both application and database tiers

Cold backup is written to a backup server, then copied to an external drive (USB attached). This way the cold backup remains in 3 different places.

Usually whenever a fresh clone requested, we were building them against the latest cold backups. Many cases a Friday cold backup clone is NOT what the consultants want, they need much recent data on a Thursday! This has forced me to start pondering over google to find a properly written document to support my own experiments and not like other areas of database, the availability of decent documents were scarce!

So I approached one of my APPS DBA friends, who was always there to help me & readily made me available with a document that he used for his specific environment. After some tweaks I was able to successfully restore the RMAN BACKUP to Oracle EBS environment without troubles (Well, the time it took were much more than that from a cold backup cloning)

I assume, if you are going through this write-up, you have the below setups:

  1. Single instance Oracle EBS R12 Deployment
  2. You are using Oracle 11g R2
  3. You are on LINUX
  4. You already have a cloned instance, properly configured SPFILE & listener services
  5. You have environment parameters set and called through .bash_profile(s)

Steps

copy RMAN files from Production server to TEST server using SCP. The document asks me to create the same path structure, haven’t tried other options yet. For example, the Production server has /u03/RMAN/DAILYBKP for the daily RMAN backups, hence I made the same available with TEST instance as well. The below command copies the RMAN backups those are one day older from the current date to TEST instance.

time scp `find -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime -1` root@erptest.xyz.com:/u03/RMAN/DAILYBKP

Once the files are copied, shutdown both application and database instances respectively.

Delete the .dbf files (data files) from the “apps_st/data/” folder.

Example, my TEST server has the data files here “/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data”, so I did a rm -rf * here to remove all the files available in this folder. We’ve approximately 500GB data files in this folder.

Once the files are deleted, open a terminal and switch to Oracle database user. Source the environment incase if the .bash_profile is not set to.

Issue “sqlplus / as sysdba” command

Startup the database in not mounted state

startup nomount

Start another terminal and switch to Oracle database user. Now let us start RMAN recovery

Before attempting the RMAN duplicate, make sure the ORACLE user has full ownership on the backup folder. If not, RMAN will start reporting the controlfile not found & other associated errors and the duplication will fail.

I’ve a cronjob, executed as root to copy the rman files everyday to TEST instance, hence the default ownership on the backup folder is set to root, that I realized today (4th Feb 2019) while trying to duplicate the database!

rman auxiliary /

That should connect you to RMAN duplicate database mode.

Now, the most important few things. The RMAN backup will have datafile names associated with path information. For example, my production server keeps the datafiles in the absolute path “/u05/oraprod/PROD/db/apps_st/data/”, where in my TEST server has the cloned database instance over “/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data”. So we will have to rename the database files prior they are restored. The RMAN run command set that you will create will take care of renaming the files.

Create a RMAN command set like below (adjust accordingly)

My production instance database name is “PROD” and my TEST instance name is “TEST”, so the duplicate database command should be adjusted accordingly.

run
{
ALLOCATE AUXILIARY CHANNEL c1 DEVICE TYPE disk;
ALLOCATE AUXILIARY CHANNEL c2 DEVICE TYPE disk;
ALLOCATE AUXILIARY CHANNEL c3 DEVICE TYPE disk;
ALLOCATE AUXILIARY CHANNEL c4 DEVICE TYPE disk;
duplicate database to "TEST" backup location '/u03/RMAN/DAILYBKP' nofilenamecheck
db_file_name_convert=('/u05/oraprod/PROD/db/apps_st/data/','/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/')
LOGFILE
GROUP 1 (
'/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo01a.log',
'/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo01b.log'
) SIZE 1000M ,
GROUP 2 (
'/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo02a.log',
'/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo02b.log'
) SIZE 1000M ,
GROUP 3 (
'/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo03a.log',
'/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo03b.log'
) SIZE 1000M ,
GROUP 4 (
'/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo04a.log',
'/u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo04b.log'
) SIZE 1000M ;
RELEASE CHANNEL c1;
RELEASE CHANNEL c2;
RELEASE CHANNEL c3;
RELEASE CHANNEL c4;
}

You may keep the RMAN RUN commands saved in a text file for future use!

At the RMAN prompt execute the newly created RMAN RUN command set. It is going to be a long wait, the bigger the database, the more time you wait for the restoration to happen.

Wait until the RMAN processes are finished. You should be back to RMAN prompt

From a SQL Plus session, shutdown the database

Now restart the database at mount state.

startup mount

Disable Archive logging prior doing anything else

SQL> alter database noarchivelog;

Shutdown the database. Now we will do the post cloning activities against the database instance.

Switch to the appsutil/clone/bin over $ORACLE_HOME path. Example “/u01/oratest/TEST/db/tech_st/11.2.0/appsutil/clone/bin”

Issue the following:

perl adcfgclone.pl dbTechStack

Input details for your instance and complete the post cloning activities. This shouldn’t take much time!

Once the post cloning activities are completed, switch to ..install/TEST_erptest folder, example: “/u01/oratest/TEST/db/tech_st/11.2.0/appsutil/install/TEST_erptest”

Start SQLPlus from this location and execute “adupdlib.sql”

SQL> @adupdlib.sql so

Once the procedure run finishes, issue COMMIT

Commit;

Run Autoconfig for your Application instance and you should be online soon.

Oracle | Thread 1 cannot allocate new log, Private strand flush not complete

On By windows7bugsIn NOT a DBA, Oracle database 11g, Oracle database 12cLeave a comment

Hello guys

Okay, I was silent for couple of months. I took a much needed break and back to work now. As few of you may already know, I am not a DBA (Certified), yet I have dealt with Oracle databases throughout my career & today was “another day” when I came across something new after restoring RMAN backup to a TEST environment.

Actually the entire “how to document” was provided by a APPS DBA friend (thanks to such geeks who are never bothered about someone else “learning the tricks” and challenging them! Geeks remain geeks) & without giving much attention to few elements, I “successfully” duplicated the 11g R2 database. Once after the database came online, I realized that the instance was pretty slow & immediately monitored the alert logs.

I started reading few entries like following:

Thread 1 cannot allocate new log, sequence 56
Private strand flush not complete
  Current log# 3 seq# 55 mem# 0: /u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo03a.log
  Current log# 3 seq# 55 mem# 1: /u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo03b.log
Beginning log switch checkpoint up to RBA [0x38.2.10], SCN: 5986177240123
Thread 1 advanced to log sequence 56 (LGWR switch)
  Current log# 4 seq# 56 mem# 0: /u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo04a.log
  Current log# 4 seq# 56 mem# 1: /u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo04b.log
Completed checkpoint up to RBA [0x38.2.10], SCN: 5986177240123
Thu Oct 04 12:14:14 2018
Beginning log switch checkpoint up to RBA [0x39.2.10], SCN: 5986177240998
Thread 1 advanced to log sequence 57 (LGWR switch)
  Current log# 1 seq# 57 mem# 0: /u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo01a.log
  Current log# 1 seq# 57 mem# 1: /u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo01b.log
Thread 1 cannot allocate new log, sequence 58
Private strand flush not complete
  Current log# 1 seq# 57 mem# 0: /u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo01a.log
  Current log# 1 seq# 57 mem# 1: /u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo01b.log
Thu Oct 04 12:14:25 2018
Beginning log switch checkpoint up to RBA [0x3a.2.10], SCN: 5986177241136
Thread 1 advanced to log sequence 58 (LGWR switch)
  Current log# 2 seq# 58 mem# 0: /u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo02a.log
  Current log# 2 seq# 58 mem# 1: /u01/oratest/TEST/db/apps_st/data/redo02b.log
Thu Oct 04 12:14:47 2018
Thread 1 cannot allocate new log, sequence 59

I landed over a discussion at https://community.oracle.com/thread/364032?start=0&tstart=0 & few others, and at many places I read suggestions towards the redo log files getting filled too fast because of the smaller sizes allocated. I check the production instance, the redo log files were of size 1000M when the TEST instance log files were of size 100M!

So my next requirement was to resize the redo log files without damaging the database.

I came across an excellent post here https://uhesse.com/2010/01/20/how-to-change-the-size-of-online-redologs/ that explains how to create new redo log files and to drop the old ones without affecting the database (or users). The best part is, you don’t even have to take the database offline for any of the suggested activities.

So if you ever face such a situation, give it a try. You would be happy like me :)

regards,

rajesh