FMW 11g PS4 (11.1.1.5) upgrade with Feature Pack on Windows 7 and Linux

With the Oracle Feature Pack for BPM being released just under 2 months ago which provides a variety of new BPM features and bug fixes, I have tried to provide a quick reference guide through this post.

Some new features (not exhaustive) below;

• Enhanced BPM Process Composer
• Report generation
• Instance Patching (Make your in-flight instances follow a new BPM definition)
• Manage attachments and documents by integrating with Oracle ECM
• Ability to generate simulation reports based on run-time data
• BPM workspace look & feel customization

For a exhaustive list of features refer to What's New in BPM Suite 11.1.1.5 Feature Pack

If you are currently on PS3 (11.1.1.4), then download the following patches to upgrade to PS4 (11.1.1.5) first before applying the feature pack;

Oracle SOA Suite  : 12395090

Oracle OSB          : 12395134

Oracle ECM Suite : 12395130

Oracle WebCenter : 12395099

(Note: These patches can be downloaded from My Oracle Support for customers)

Refer to Oracle® Fusion Middleware Patching Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.5.0) for installation instructions. This should be straight forward.


Now, time to upgrade your SOA/BPM PS4 with Feature Pack. Download the following Oracle patch from My Oracle Support;

12413651

This bundles the following patches/bug fixes;

12413651 - soa bpm 11.1.1.5.0 features pack
12319055 - soa bpm 11.1.1.5.0 features pack - em support
12614083 - policy binding getting removed from jrf policy cache on undeploy

Also contains the JDeveloper extensions for SOA and BPM PS4 (11.1.1.5) Feature Pack.

Few important things to note while applying Feature Pack.

1. Ensure that you religiously follow the readme document. For example, if the document requires you to create a folder to unzip 3 zip files into the PATCH_TOP folder, then don't try to unzip other patch files into this folder or keep other stuff. Consequence will result in failure of OPatch.

2. At the end of the installation, Feature Pack requires you to execute the psa (patch set assistant) to update the schemas. New features on 'Advanced Replication' is being introduced in this release which will not work if you are running Oracle XE 11g database as 'Advanced Replication' is not supported in express editions. However, this will still work on Oracle XE 10 release but not recommended as you may violate the license restrictions. Warning: Check your license terms.

Note: This is not a 'loss' of functionality/feature in Oracle XE 11g. Oracle has just ensured that the license restrictions are reinforced at the product level starting with 11 release.

Oracle documentation recommends use of a Oracle database enterprise edition

Instructions to apply feature pack on Windows: (For linux, the instructions are pretty straight forward and clear in the patch read me. Hence not reproducing it here.)

Pre-Requisites:

1. Stop all servers
2. Important: Back up your database and middleware home

Patching oracle_common:

1. Set ORACLE_HOME environment variable to $MW_HOME/oracle_common
2. Create a folder 'Patch_Top' in the file system
3. Copy p12413651_ORACOMMON_111150_Generic.zip, p12319055_111150_Generic.zip and p12614083_111150_Generic.zip into the 'Patch_Top' folder and extract them using a recommended unzip utility (for example: 7-zip)
4. Start the command prompt ('cmd') as an 'Administrator'. You can do this by right-click on cmd and select 'Run As Administrator'. This step if not performed would result in 'OPatch' failure.
5. change to the 'Patch_Top' directory and execute the following opatch command;

%ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch\opatch napply

6. Follow the on-screen instructions and wait till the message 'OPatch Completed Successfully'.

Patching Oracle_SOA1:

1. Set ORACLE_HOME environment variable to $MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA1
2. Create a folder 'Patch_Top_SOA' in the file system
3. Copy p12413651_SOA_111150_Generic.zip into the 'Patch_Top_SOA' folder and extract using a recommended unzip utility (for example: 7-zip)
4. Start the command prompt ('cmd') as an 'Administrator'. You can do this by right-click on cmd and select 'Run As Administrator'. This step if not performed would result in 'OPatch' failure.
5. change to the 'Patch_Top_SOA' directory and execute the following opatch command;


%ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch\opatch napply


6. Follow the on-screen instructions and wait till the message 'OPatch Completed Successfully'.

Updating the schemas using PSA:

1. Set ORACLE_HOME environment variable to $MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA1
2. Start the command prompt ('cmd') as an 'Administrator'. You can do this by right-click on cmd and select 'Run As Administrator'.
3. Execute psa.bat as follows

psa.bat -dbType  -dbConnectString -dbaUserName -schemaUserName

example: psa -dbType Oracle -dbConnectString //localhost:1521/ORCL -dbaUserName SYS -schemaUserName DEV_SOAINFRA

Finally, perform the post installation tasks as recommended under the following link to complete the feature pack upgrade;

www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/soasuite/documentation/bpm-postinstall-ps4fp-487857.pdf


Here we come to the end of this long post. Your environment is now ready with the latest PS4 Feature Pack. Enjoy. Write to me if you face any hurdles.