Beginner’s Guide : Administering Oracle Application - Part - I

Administrating Oracle application, its important to understand the core components.In oracle
application, lets take some of them start with some of the

 Responsibilities
 Menus
 Profile Options
 Concurrent Manager
 Security Concepts

 Responsibility

A responsibility defines and address these:


o What functions a user can use
o What data a user can access
o What “Set of Books” a user can access
 Normally in oracle application a “Set of Books” describes as
significant piece of the enterprise that has a different currency,
calendar, or chart of accounts
 Is the top level in the hierarchy that a responsibility is assigned to
o What “Organization” a user belongs to
 An organization is a sub-set of the “Set of Books”, which is used
to further restrict the data a user can access Multi-org ,which allows a
subsidiary ledger, such as AP, to process invoices that will reside in
multiple sets of books.
 Users normally are assigned to multiple responsibilities.
o The R12 there is concept called MOAC which describe the access over
different OU level. Will discuss this in details some other day.
 Menus
o A menu is a hierarchical arrangement of functions and menus of functions.
Each responsibility has a menu assig ned to it.

o You

should take a note functionality of a responsibility can be customized by

modifying the menu associated with the responsibility.
o The same menu can be used by many different Responsibilities.
o In oracle application,menus can not be copied. New menus have to be built
from scratch.
o While creating a new menu hierarchy, create the lowest-level menus first. A
menu must be defined before it can be selected as an entry on another menu.
o When a menu’s name is changed, the menu entries are not affected. Other
menus calling the menu by its old name, automatically call the same menu by
its new name.
o Menu structure can be documented by printing a Menu Report.
o Use the Define Menu Form in the System Administration responsibility to
create new Menus
o You can create and define Menu Form in the System Administration
responsibility to create new Menus.
  Profile Options

 These are a set of changeable options that affect the way your application runs.
 These can be set at different level, from 11.5.10 there are 6 different level
where you can make take the options.
 Further control security by assigning a set of books to a
responsibility,Application,or Site.
 Set of books is a company or group of companies that uses Oracle
Applications that share a common Chart of Accounts,Currency,and Calendar.

Profiles are established at six different levels:

1. Site Site level profile values are used when the profile option can have only
one value for the entire instance of Oracle. (example- EDI Input file path lets
say if the entire server is using one directory to accept inbound files from
EDI,then you would just set the profile option at the site level, then it flows
down to all levels, and there is no need to set this at other levels).
2. Application
3. Server
4. Organization
5. Responsibility
6. User


o If you are very new to oracle application , it should be noted that system
Profile Options are set by the System Administrator and affect the behavior of
the Application and its modules for everyone.
o Personal Profile Options are set by the individual user and cover that
individual’s interaction with the system.
 Concurrent Manager
o In Oracle Applications, concurrent processing simultaneously executes
programs running in the background with online operations. with system
Administrator, you can manage when programs are run and how many
operating system processes Oracle Applications devotes to running programs
in the background.
o When a user runs a report, a request to run the report is generated. The
command to run the report is a concurrent request. The program that generates
the report is a concurrent program. Concurrent programs are started by a
concurrent manager.
 o Every time your users request a concurrent program to be run, their request is
inserted into a database table, and is uniquely identified by a request ID.
Concurrent managers read requests from this table.
o Part of a manager’s definition is how many operating system processes it can
devote to running requests. This number is referred to as the manager’s
number of target processes.

A concurrent program actually starts running based on:


o
 When it is scheduled to start
 Whether it is placed on hold,
 Whether it is incompatible with other programs
 Its request priority
o The priority of a concurrent request is determined by application user name,
and is set by the System Administrator using the Concurrent:Priority user
profile option.
o The first available concurrent manager compares the request’s priority to other
requests it is eligible to process, and runs the request with the highest priority.
o When choosing between requests of equal priority, the concurrent manager
runs the oldest request first.
o Often, several programs may be grouped together, as in a request set.
Submitting the request set as a whole generates a request ID, and as each
member of the set is submitted it receives its own request ID. The set’s request
ID identifies the Parent request, and each of the individual programs’ request
ID identifies a Child request.
 Security Concept

In oracle application security can be classified in two broad area viz:

 Database Security
o Each Oracle application module database objects ( tables, views etc.,)
are owned by a different Oracle ID. For example, all General Ledger
objects are owned by the Oracle ID called GL, all Accounts Payables
objects are owned by AP and so on.
o All programs under a responsibility are executed using these Oracle
IDs. For example, the General Ledger responsibilities use the GL
database user-id.
o Custom tables created to interface with Oracle Applications should be
placed in a separate Oracle id to facilitate upgrading the application
when necessary.
 Function Security
o Function security is the mechanism by which user access to application
functionality is controlled. Function is a part of an application’s
functionality that is registered under a unique name for the purpose of
assigning it to, or excluding it from, a responsibility.
o Two types of functions: Form function ( known as a form) and non-
form function ( known as a sub-function).
 A form function invokes an Oracle Forms form. Forms appear in the
Navigate Window and can be navigated to. Forms can exist on their
own.
o A non-form function ( sub-function) is a function executed from within
a form. These are frequently associated with buttons or other graphical
elements in the form. Sub-functions do not appear on the Navigate
window.

AOL Integration

In AOL , Forms,
Menus,
Responsibilities,
Profiles, Users are inter
related. Here are
diagram which best
describe the
dependency among
each other.