Tag: window7bugs

Migrating Oracle developer 6i applications to Windows 2008 R2

On By windows7bugsIn Oracle relatedLeave a comment

Hi guys

Even though my blog has reached 600k+ visits, I am one of those “lucky” tech bloggers who is hardly reached through emails for some specific tips and helps.

One of the recent were about migrating from Developer 6i developed web deployment to Windows 2008 R2, and the asker decided to approach me through email after reading my post about installing Developer 6i suite on Windows 7 and later OS

There were many emails until I realized they have a web deployment! Using Developer 6i & I was truly impressed. Developer 6i setup was one of the toughest, when I tried it by 2004-2005 period and I truly given up once after a number of failures to setup it properly and “googling” wasn’t as efficient as today when a single search fetches you hundreds of blog posts those explain such setups minutely so that a beginner can, without sweating much could, almost setup anything!

The hacks I posted with my blog towards installing Developer 6i on Windows 7/later and Windows Servers did have it’s own drawbacks. Many of the Oracle products like Oracle graphs doesn’t work with the .dll hacks & we experienced unexpected crashes and I have made sure that I did warn the enthusiasts about them with my blog. Did it stop people from taking risks? I don’t think so

Our legacy Oracle database server hardware was 14 years old when we decided to finally decommission it. Many places around the world businesses never listen to the Administrators complaining about the age of hardware and how difficult it is to maintain obsolete hardware and software. Oracle database(proprietary) must be one of the widely used database without proper licensing and I hardly believe many small organizations will ever pay the unbelievable prices Oracle tries to extract from customers when they want to do proper licensing. Many of those environments may have new admins and the entire development teams dispersed or the software company that has developed the software diversified and started selling fish. Anyway, my asker’s situation was not far different. His hardware was obsolete and the company has brought him a new hardware with 4GB memory and he was desperately looking for a method to migrate from his Windows 2003 server to Windows 2008 R2 server

Can you/should you take risks by trying to migrate to a newer OS because there are “few hacks” available over internet?

I work as information technology manager and I will not let it happen, knowing and after having bad experiences. Instead I will try to find better solutions, like converting your Windows 2003 physical machine into a Virtual Machine and going online from a newer hardware and OS

Mr. Asker’s scenario

Windows 2003 Server with Developer 6i Web deployment and Oracle database 10g and his hardware has just 2GB memory!

His requirement

Want to start using the new hardware and Windows 2008 R2. Can’t take risks

My suggestion to him

  1. Use VMWare’s P2V converter, Convert the legacy server into a VM
  2. From the new hardware, run the VM

While I am NOT at all happy with the 4GB physical memory, I will suggest anyone who wants to go with such an approach to upgrade their hardware to have minimum 8GB so that the Windows 2008 R2 can reserve 4GB for itself, 3GB maximum for the 32Bit Windows 2003 Server and tweaking the Oracle database SGA to 40% of from the 3GB reserved for the VM!

Let us consider the few advantages of converting legacy hardware to virtual machines quickly

  1. One can always take a full backup of the VM, based on mission criticality, in addition to the database backups. Such backups will help the administrators to restore the whole “machine”, if something goes drastically wrong
  2. No headaches to figure out how the deployment was made, especially when there are hardly any documentations available explaining the setups

My asker got so excited that he stopped answering my consequent mails checking about progresses. That’s the downside of free consultancy in most of the cases. Oh well, that was not my first experience anyway. This year itself I helped someone to setup a 12c environment and when he was online, he told me how he had tears in his eyes and later he stopped answering my calls Winking smile

I hope I made some sense with this post and if you are someone who is frantically looking for a way to “Migrate” without risking much, give it a try. Have comments or need more clarifications? Use the comments area to let me know about them.

 

regards,

rajesh

File Manager, File Picker for Windows Phone 8.1

On By windows7bugsIn Windows PhoneLeave a comment

 

Update: If you create your own folders in your phone using Windows Explorer, the same may not be listed under “Phone folders” service provider. We guess the API what provided by Microsoft restricts the access to a pre-defined list of folders as listed below

  1. Pictures
  2. Music
  3. Videos
  4. documents
  5. downloads
  6. ringtones

Anything other than the listed above, ie, folders created by the phone user will not be listed or available to attach with “Pocket File Manager” app!

 

I recall the furious arguments and personal level attacks over Microsoft tech forums about missing file manager over Windows Phone platform until recent days & joe belfiore during reddit AMA got all excited when one of the participants shot a question about “File manager”

joeredditama

We “heard” about it earlier, through some leaks, didn’t ? Anyway, the official app for the file explorer should be available by the end of May 2014, and the speculations are that, the file explorer will be bundled along with “OneDrive” application. let us wait and see how the implementation is going to happen.

Meanwhile let us assess couple of third party applications what are already available for managing your files (Music/Video/Documents/Downloads) in your phone!

During next few days we will be analyzing

  1. Pocket File Manager(Paid, you can try)
  2. Pocket Explorer(Paid, you can try)

apps which are already available in the Windows Phone store. We already bought Pocket File Manager (PFM as widely called by techies) and had few hands on exercises and very much pleased with the end results.

wp_ss_20140511_0001

We opted to keep the “Warning” (Should it be called as “Quick help”?) appearing each time while the app is restarted

wp_ss_20140511_0002

When the app is initially used, the “Root” has it’s own file system called “Local storage” with few sample folders and files. We will not be digging much into it as our primary aim is to see “what else we could do with the file manager”. The below image shows the couple of “Phone folders” we have added to the app by following instructions. Touch the + button and, you will be provided two options

“add image”(Capitalization standards)? Winking smile

“Add Provider”

wp_ss_20140511_0003

Now you can select a provider from total seven (7) available right now as on while this document is prepared (this list could grow with later versions)

For our exercise we will select “Phone folder” and proceed

wp_ss_20140511_0004

Once the “Phone Folder” selected, you will be provided a windows listing available Phone folders what you can attach with this little wonderful app!

wp_ss_20140511_0005

Now touch the folder name you want to attach with the app and touch the done (tick) button!

wp_ss_20140511_0006

The app may say the folder is empty, just ignore and complete the activity

wp_ss_20140511_0007

Touch the folder name you just attached with the app and wait few seconds…and the file listing starts building up! You can use the refresh button if you think the listing was not done completely (which is almost a never happening case)

wp_ss_20140511_0008

 

The beauty with such a listing is, you can almost do all file manipulations against the chosen file!

Have a look at the features

wp_ss_20140511_0010

wp_ss_20140511_0011

wp_ss_20140511_0012

So, if you were eager for a file manager, you may don’t have to wait until May 2014, you can start exploring the possibilities of these applications which will not burn holes in your pockets and start managing your files as you wished until recent days.

 

We hope you enjoyed another quality post from windows7bugs

for windows7bugs

rajesh

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 8.1

On By windows7bugsIn Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1Leave a comment

 

If you are a windows domain administrator, Microsoft “Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 8.1” would be a perfect companion which will assist you to carryout a major chunk of domain related activities without leaving the comfort of your chair, from a Windows 8.1 client box!

rat

Please note each version of Windows client (starting from Windows 7) requires platform supported update package from Microsoft for the installation, thus, you cannot download the remote administration package for Windows7 or Windows 8 and expect to get it installed on Windows 8.1

Further, You must have US English language installed (Keyboard language is not enough, less said). You must download and install the language pack before installing the remote administration update package.

You must run the Windows Update and make sure your box is patched with latest updates, to avoid any possible installation failures

 

for Windows7bugs

rajesh

Oracle Reports Developer 10g starts, remains minimized

On By windows7bugsIn Oracle related, Weblogic, Windows 7, Windows 819 Comments

 

(Not tested on Windows XP)

We came across a small annoyance with Oracle product Reports developer 10g. We are yet to pin point the exact reasons, however, if you are experiencing the same issue which is as elaborated below:

Start Reports Developer 10g

Flash Screen appears

image

Then gets automatically minimized to the taskbar (Windows 7/8/8.1), and pointing the mouse shows the preview, as in below image.

image

However, clicking the preview window doesn’t bring up the Reports Builder 10g to maximized mode and remains unresponsive

What has changed from the last time the software was used?

We uninstalled and re-installed Weblogic Server 10.3.6 & Forms & Reports 11g R2, which has added multiple entries into the PATH environment variable. Order of path variable and pointers towards the java libraries are very sensitive for multiple Oracle products. May this could be a problem? Not sure!

 

Solution:

Right click the Preview window

image

and select “Maximize”

image

Once maximized, exit the reports developer. Restart to confirm the builder starts in Maximized mode next time.

We hope it helps few out there :)

for Windows7bugs

rajesh

WhatsApp Can you live without it? #Windowsphone8

On By windows7bugsIn Offtopic, Windows PhoneLeave a comment

Update: The “last seen”, the innovative feature what “Whatsapp” protected dearly could be turned off, in case if you are using Android or iPhone. Wait, no party yet. As soon as you start typing or reading a message, you are seen as “online” to your contacts (If you want you can still use Whatsapp, else eff yaselp n die) and the catch is turning off the “last seen” is reciprocating! Less said, if you decided nobody should when you were last seen, you will not able to see that last seen time stamp of others either.

for Windows Phone users, the last update for Whatspp over this platform was by early January 2014 and it looks like the users are going to wait a long long time for the latest “feature”. However we have a hack for you! We transferred the SIM to an Android phone, activated the whatsapp account, turned off the “last seen” feature and transferred it back to the Windows Phone 8 device, activated the account from the device and viola! It did the charm! Remember you can’t turn on the “last seen” feature from the Windows Phone yet, hence you will be forced to go through the method explained above.

Windowsphone Whatsapp
Windowsphone Whatsapp

So hooked to WhatsApp? it is one of the fastest, almost free (0.99$) after the first year as claimed and a nitty-gritty app available across all known mobile platforms

Saudi Arabia had “issues” with how WhatsApp handles the privacy, personally I feel  WhatsApp could and should adopt certain privacy policies based on the user requests, which they were adamant NOT to until date. Seems like enabling the ability to let the users turn of the last seen “feature” breaks down their servers…

Ongoing discussions

http://www.ciol.com/ciol/news/174552/is-whatsapp-seen-functionality-getting-trouble

http://www.times.co.sz/entertainment/90491-that-monster-called-%E2%80%98last-seen%E2%80%99-on-whatsapp.html

and Google/Bing for “Whatsapp breaking relations last seen” bring up hundreds of threads discussing how the “last seen” is clearly causing troubles in relationships

 

The major concerns

As soon as someone installs the software, the entire contact lists are uploaded to WhatsApp servers and thus the software figures out who are you contacts to initiate a chat. Thus anyone happened to have your number could start sending you messages day and night, oh yes, puhless don’t forget you can “block” them

Highly controversial “last seen” feature, which is updated by WhatsApp server(s) allowing your contacts to know when the last time you were active over WhatsApp and thus come to conclusion that you didn’t reply/respond to them on time. How it affects me? Well loads. I manage IT department and there are suppliers who are adopting WhatsApp for anything and everything. Recently I started receiving requests for payments, even copies of invoices through WhatsApp with requests to “Please print and submit to your accounts department”. Then comes complaints from contacts who start feeling I am not responding to few of them purposely even when they saw me online? What the heck?

The alternatives?

Obviously, there are other companies who care and listen to user concerns like the above ones listed and tweak the apps to give what the users demand on the privacy domain

Based on personal usage, I have ranked couple of apps like below

  1. Line Messenger (has desktop client): Until date, no other apps I have tried out comes anywhere closer to line messenger while it is all about privacy. Let us have a look at the application from the privacy prespective
    1. On screen password: Yes, the app has a inbuilt password handler, setting up will request a password to be supplied every time when a user tries to open the application
    2. wp_ss_20140316_0003
    3. wp_ss_20140316_0002
    4. Notifications: You can completely disable the notifications or turn off the preview(which is buggy after the latest release for #wp8)
    5. wp_ss_20140316_0005
    6. Decide how one should add you as a friend
    7. wp_ss_20140316_0004
  2. Viber (has desktop client): A long waited app on #wp8 is slowly making sense (minimum to me) with 4.0.1 update, which allows a #wp8 user the following
    1. Allows users to turn off the “Seen” status completely
    2. wp_ss_20140316_0001
    3. Allows you to turn of the “Online” status completely, however the status could be updated only once in 24 hours
  3. Hike: Is an emerging Indian IM, widely used by Indians as it supports free SMS to India, ie, a user can send free SMS to devices which are not having Hike!, ie, to a regular mobile and receive replies against them and it adds up the free SMS left counter! truly sweet and a better business model. From the privacy perspective Hike supports the following
    1. Turn off Last Seen
    2. Turn of Location
    3. wp_ss_20140316_0006

That’s all folks, regardless the counter arguments about what one should not do online, being a bit careful about what app you use in your mobile phone saves loads of troubles in real life scenarios. We hope that you enjoyed another post from us, which is off-topic this time.

regards,

rajesh

Upgrade your 11g Forms/Reports [32 Bit] Version 11.1.2.1.0 to 11.1.2.2.0

On By windows7bugsIn Weblogic, Windows 8Leave a comment

Upgrading Forms & Reports developer 11g could be equally confusing & interesting, as there are not many documents explaining a how to. Recently we were closely following up an “issue” raised by one of the visitors and opted to “upgrade” the development machine to check the feasibility of Forms & Reports 11g over Windows 8.1 64Bit

We were able to complete the upgrade process without much issues and the steps followed were described as below

Download the required software

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/forms/downloads/index.html?ssSourceSiteId=null

image

As we were on 32Bit environment for the Weblogic, we downloaded the 32Bit packages for the upgrade. The total download should be roughly around 1.8GB

Once the downloaded archives are extracted, you can start with the upgrade process.

Prior the upgrade process, please make sure you stopped both Weblogic Admin server service & Weblogic Node manager service to avoid any kind of failures with the process.

 

image

image

You can kick start the upgrade process by executing the “setup.exe”

start

1

You should “Skip” the software update, as usual :)

2

Select “Install software – do not configure”

There could be multiple warnings about incompatible setups, you can “Safely” ignore and continue with the installation. We warn you, you shouldn’t install uncertified Oracle products on any OS, in case if you are going to use such setups for Production purposes

Setup should automatically pickup the “Middleware Home & Oracle Home Directory”

6

Going ahead will produce an error stating another installation is available in the selected location, ignore and continue

7

Unless you have a valid Oracle support contract, uncheck “I wish to receive…” and continue with the upgrade process

8

9

We got an error at 19%, all about certain java components. If you are familiar with LINUX, most of the times you could monitor a log file, as it is being updated using “tail” command. With latest versions of Windows OS you can use powershell to monitor the log file online.

Open up powershell and copy the installation log name like following

get-content “C:\Program Files (x86)\Oracle\Inventory\logs\install2014-02-24_12-59-08PM.log” –wait

It does the job and if errors are found, go ahead and cancel the installation and start over, which should deal with the java related errors. The total installation will be stuck unless.

image

10

11

12

 

13

14

You may save the setup steps and try out your upgraded forms & reports now. The only one element what we have noticed as “created” new as part of the installation was

image

Start Forms designer and check the about window and you must having the following information.

Forms [32 Bit] Version 11.1.2.2.0 (Production)
Oracle Toolkit Version 11.1.2.2.0 (Production)
PL/SQL Version 11.1.0.7.0 (Production)
Oracle Procedure Builder V11.1.2.2.0 – Production
PL/SQL Editor (c) WinMain Software (www.winmain.com), v1.0 (Production)
Oracle Query Builder 11.1.2.2.0 – Production
Oracle Virtual Graphics System Version 11.1.2.2.0 (Production)
Oracle Tools GUI Utilities Version 11.1.2.2.0 (Production)
Oracle Multimedia Version 11.1.2.2.0 (Production)
Oracle Tools Integration Version 11.1.2.2.0 (Production)
Oracle Tools Common Area Version 11.1.2.2.0
Oracle CORE 11.1.0.7.0 Production

That’s it folks. Give it a try and post us your issues, success notes.

for Windows7bugs

rajesh

Oracle Applications R12, Re-assign PR/PO stuck in the workflow (awaiting approval)

On By windows7bugsIn Oracle Applications (R12.0.4), Oracle Applications(R12), Oracle relatedLeave a comment

 

Handling Purchase Orders stuck in the work flow.

Logon to the instance as “SYSADMIN”

1

Select “Workflow Administrator Web Applications” and Select the function “Status Monitor”. This opens a jsp page show below.

2

For the purchase orders stuck in the flow, please locate “PO Approval” workflow using search function. This windows provides multiple choices to limit the amount of data retrieved. Apply it whenever it is possible to reduce the time collecting and producing data.

Image: Finding the correct workflow (for Purchase requests stuck in the workflow)

3

For Purchase Requests stuck in the work flow, please use the following query

select requisition_header_id, segment1, wf_item_type, wf_item_key, authorization_status, org_id from po_requisition_headers_all where segment1 = ‘1980’ and org_id = 105;

for Purchase order change the table name to PO_HEADERS_ALL

to find the wf_item_key which is referred as “item key” with the JSP form.

4

Once the desired information derived

Click on “Activity History” button

5

Now you may use “Reassign” function (Shown within green rectangle) to reassign the Purchase Request for approval by next immediate subordinate.

You may use the “Rewind” button to rewind the workflow to an earlier stage as well

Hope you enjoyed another quality solution from us

for Windows7bugs

rajesh

Oracle Application R12, 7 Buckets Supplier Aging SQL

On By windows7bugsIn Oracle Applications (R12.0.4), Oracle Applications(R12)Leave a comment

 

[sourcecode language='sql'  padlinenumbers='true']
Select supplier_number, vendor_name,
sum(amount_remaining) amount_remaining,
sum(b0) "<=30",
sum(b1) "31-60",
sum(b2) "61-90",
sum(b3) "91-180",
sum(b4) "181-270",
sum(b5) "271-360",
sum(b6) ">360"
FROM(
SELECT i.invoice_date,
         round(nvl(ps.amount_remaining,0)*nvl(i.exchange_rate, 1),3) amount_remaining,
         i.vendor_id, supp.vendor_name, supp.segment1 supplier_number,
         CASE
         when trunc(trunc(sysdate))-i.invoice_date <= 30 then
         NVL(round(nvl(ps.amount_remaining,0)*nvl(i.exchange_rate, 1),3),0) 
         END b0
         ,
          CASE
         when trunc(sysdate)-i.invoice_date BETWEEN 31 AND 60 then
         NVL(round(nvl(ps.amount_remaining,0)*nvl(i.exchange_rate, 1),3),0) 
         END b1,
             CASE
         when trunc(sysdate)-i.invoice_date BETWEEN 61 AND 90 then
         NVL(round(nvl(ps.amount_remaining,0)*nvl(i.exchange_rate, 1),3),0) 
         END b2,  
             CASE
         when trunc(sysdate)-i.invoice_date BETWEEN 91 AND 180 then
         NVL(round(nvl(ps.amount_remaining,0)*nvl(i.exchange_rate, 1),3),0) 
         END b3  ,   
             CASE
         when trunc(sysdate)-i.invoice_date BETWEEN 181 AND 270 then
         NVL(round(nvl(ps.amount_remaining,0)*nvl(i.exchange_rate, 1),3),0) 
         END b4  
          ,   
             CASE
         when trunc(sysdate)-i.invoice_date BETWEEN 271 AND 360 then
         NVL(round(nvl(ps.amount_remaining,0)*nvl(i.exchange_rate, 1),3),0) 
         END b5     ,   
             CASE
         when trunc(sysdate)-i.invoice_date > 360 then
         NVL(round(nvl(ps.amount_remaining,0)*nvl(i.exchange_rate, 1),3),0) 
         END b6    
             FROM ap_payment_schedules ps, ap_invoices i, ap_suppliers supp
   WHERE     i.invoice_id = ps.invoice_id
         AND ps.org_id = :P_ORG_ID -- Security takes care of this part, only for other reporting reqs
         AND i.vendor_id = supp.vendor_id
         AND i.cancelled_date IS NULL
         AND ps.amount_remaining <> 0
         )
GROUP BY   supplier_number, vendor_name       
ORDER BY  vendor_name
[/sourcecode]

And as usual, the main view is a protected repository, hence you have to initialize the security part in order to fetch data

[sourcecode language='sql' ]
begin
MO_GLOBAL.SET_POLICY_CONTEXT('S',:P_ORG_ID);
end ;

begin
--fnd_global.apps_initialize(:P_USER_ID,:P_RESP_ID,:P_RESP_APPL_ID);
fnd_global.apps_initialize(1353, 50854, 200);
end;


begin
MO_GLOBAL.INIT('SQLAP'); --Payables
--MO_GLOBAL.INIT('PO');
end;
[/sourcecode]

Now enjoy another quality stuff from us :)

PS for Kuwait requirements, we have rounded the figures to 3 digits, alter the script to suite your reporting requirements.

regards,

admin