Applying EPM maintenance release 11.1.1.1 to 11.1.1.0

Well it is here the next release of EPM is available from edelivery; I have been wondering why no patches have been released in metalink3 to combat all the bugs in version 11, obviously Oracle decided to wait and release all the fixes together.

Looking through the readmes it looks like they have resolved some of the major issues especially with the configuration, I am not going to dwell on the fixes as there are so many and I am sure you will enjoy sifting through them all. I just wish Oracle would put together an easier way of going through all the different releases and patches to find out what gets fixed when and why, maybe they could try putting it in a database or is that metalink3 is meant to be?

It looks like the documentation has been updated at :- http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12825_01/index.htm

From the documentation it says you can move directly from 11.1.1.0 to 11.1.1.1 by using the “Apply maintenance release” option, so no time like the present to give it a go.

First of all, I will have to download all the installation files again, which may take a while.

Once all the files are downloaded extract them into the same folder and you should have all the product components inside the assemblies folder.



Make sure all the EPM windows services are not running or you will no doubt enter problems, double click InstallTool.cmd



The Installer should give you the option to “Apply the maintenance release”



I chose to “Choose components by tier” and kept everything selected, as I want to update every product I already have installed.



The install types will be all set to Maintenance, the next screen will start the maintenance upgrade, this is a good time to go and do something far more interesting for a while than watching a % complete screen.



On your return you should hopefully be greeted with a summary screen with everything completed successfully.

Ok, on to the configuration, the components that need reconfiguring should be highlighted once the configurator is running, this will be mainly re-deploying the web application servers.



From the documentation

“If you are applying the maintenance release, you do not need to configure the database, and
registration with Shared Services is not performed. (Essbase Studio is an exception. For Essbase
Studio, configure the database if you are applying the maintenance release, and select “Connect
to a previously configured database.”)"

You will need to manually tick the “Configure Database” for Studio as it will not be selected.



The web server components should be all populated.



Once again the workspace components should be all pre-populated picking up the details from your previous install.



After that the configurator will redeploy the application servers and if selected configure essbase studio database.

Once completed it will annoyingly start up many of the windows services and set the startup type to automatic even if you previously had it set to manual.

After a reboot I had a quick scout around to see if everything was working as expected, all looked pretty good.

If you have planning applications you will need to log into each application and upgrade it to 11.1.1.1



Well that went really smooth and Oracle are definitely moving in the right direction for applying maintenance releases, I know people have had issues installing and configuring 11.1.1.0 but maybe they will have more success with this release.

I just hope it is going to be like this when Oracle start releasing patches for EPM and we don’t have to go through all the hassle like with previous versions.