Applying EPM maintenance release 11.1.1.2

As many will be aware the next release of the Oracle EPM system is available, the main reason for this release is to add localization, if it was solely for that reason then I probably wouldn't be applying the release. I am going to be applying the release due to the amount of defects that have been addressed and I am sure some others will be also considering applying it so I thought I would give a heads up to see if any issues are encountered. It is getting to a stage though if you have deployed version 11 then it is worth checking through the list of defects addressed and judging whether it worth going through the whole upgrade process and not just jumping into upgrading because a newer version is available.

Now there may be many defects fixed but what is quite startling is the ever growing size of the known issues, I don't know if Oracle are now being more open about the issues than Hyperion were but you could be spending a long time reading through them if you use the full suite of products. If you are a user of EPMA then you will have a fair few known issues to read through, I dread to think what the list will grow like when the take up of the product increases.

First of all be ready to download an even bigger set of files, this is because Oracle is going down the route of one-size fits all, so it doesn't matter if you are downloading 32/64bit or from Windows to linux it is all grouped together. I am sure it is filling you with joy if you want to just install the essbase client.

If you only intend on updating partially then you will still need to download the installer and the foundation components plus the products you want to upgrade.

Once you have taken up the bandwidth for a small community and downloaded the entire product set extract all the files into the same base directory.



I would make sure that no EPM services are running and you have backed up everything first and then execute the InstallTool file and all being well the prerequisites will have been met and a new window should appear allowing you to select a language, this is a new feature which is part of localization being added.



Once the welcome screen has appeared do check that hostname has resolved correctly and not to an ip address, if you do then check your network configuration before proceeding.



At the “Installation Type” section choose “Apply maintenance release”



The next stage you can define which products you want to upgrade, I kept the default selected, as I want to upgrade everything. It is a good time to check that everything you are planning on upgrading appears in the list, if it doesn’t then you have a missed a download or not extracted all the components into the correct directory.



The list of products to upgrade should be displayed as “Maintenance”



Now go and do something far more interesting as it can take a while to upgrade depending on what has been selected and the performance of the machine.



All being well everything should complete without any issues and you can move on to configuring the products.



All the products that need configuring will be highlighted; in most cases it will be just the application server that needs redeploying with exception of EAS where the database also needs reconfiguring.



After everything was configured I went through and checked each product was operating as expected, I couldn’t spot any obvious problems though that is not saying there might not be. I had to go through each planning application and migrate from 11.1.1.1 to 11.1.1.2



Update 11th April 2009 :- I did experience a problem after upgrading to the latest maintenance release, it does look like a known issue but I thought I would point it out because I know it will affect anybody who uses business rules.

After upgrading no users could access business rules, after looking in Shared Services I did notice there was a new element under the Business Rules Application groups (HBRAPP)



Any provisioning against the original server was no longer valid and had to be applied to the new HBRAPP, so if you are planning on upgrading and have a large numbers of users/groups provisioned for business rule roles then you will need to use LCM or the CSSImportExport utility to migrate the provisioning.

Here is documented known issue in the Business Rules 11.1.1.2 Readme :-

If you install this release of Administration Services on top of a prior release, after you complete the upgrade configuration and log on to Shared Services, there may be two instances of the relational database host in the Business Rules project. In addition, there may be provisioned roles for administrators for the previous release only, not the current release. To work around this, delete the instance for the previous release and provision the users against the current release instance (7185251).