I have passed the 1Z0-233 exam "Oracle 11i Install, Patch and Maintain Applications"

Dear Friends,

I have taken an Oracle 11i Applications exam (1Z0-233 - Oracle 11i Install, Patch and Maintain Applications) yesterday, and passed that exam.

I would like to share my preparation for and experience with that exam.

Pre-requisite for 1Z0-233 exam is that one should have earned Oracle9i and 10g Database Administrator Certified Professionals can achieve an upgrade to the Oracle 11i Applications Database Administrator Certified Professional credential through passing the exam Oracle 11i Install, Patch and Maintain Applications - 1Z0-233.

Please visit the following URL for more information.
http://www.oracle.com/global/us/education//certification/appsdba.html

Please note if you are pursuing the Oracle 11i Applications DBA OCP certification based on your prior Oracle 9i DBA or Oracle DBA 10g OCP certification, it is not necessary to submit a Hands On Course Requirement Form or Waiver.

Note: Please register for all your exams with the same Prometric ID. Using multiple ID's can cause delay in your certification and the database will recognize you as two different candidates.

Preparation: I have gone through all the ILT (Instructor Led Training) materials of the course “11i Install, Patch, and Maintain Oracle Applications” which my friend has done this course from Oracle University. These guides have helped me greatly in passing this exam, as all of the questions came from these materials topics.

Questions came from the following topics.

• APPS Schema
• Shared APPL_TOP
• AutoConfig
• Validation and Compilation of APPS Schema
• Desktop Tier
• Worker status flow, Worker log file locations.
• Rapid Clone/Install
• Server process scripts of Database and Applications.
• Patching i.e AutoPatch (Got many questions from this topic)
• Applications Top Level directories – APPL_TOP, ORA_TOP,COMMN_TOP,DATA_TOP
• Applications Context File
• Single Node and Multi Node installation
• AdAdmin – Recreate grants and synonyms for APPS schema.
• Oracle APPS tablespace model
• Syntaxes of adpatch, admrgpch etc
• Apps Tier components
• Others i.e. Error messages, log files of the utilities, definitions etc.

Note: I would suggest them those who are willing to appear for this exam that read and go through the Instructor Guides on this exam course provided my Oracle Corp/University/Authorized Center. These materials would stand handy for passing this exam.

Update: Read my other post on "The books, guides, and materials used for my OCA/OCP/OCE Exam Preparation."

http://sabdarsyed.blogspot.com/2008/08/books-guides-and-materials-used-for-my.html

Happy reading!!!

Regards,
Sabdar Syed,
http://sabdarsyed.blogspot.com/

Oracle Applications Schema Password Change Utility - (FNDCPASS)

Changing passwords periodically helps ensure database security. Oracle Applications provides a command line utility, FNDCPASS, to set Oracle Applications schema passwords. In addition to changing the schema password in the database, this utility changes the password registered in Oracle Applications tables (FND Tables). This utility can also change Applications End User passwords.

FNDCPASS changes

• Oracle Applications Database System Users (APPS, APPLSYS)
• Oracle Applications Product Schema Passwords (GL, AR, AP, etc,)
• Oracle Applications End User Account Passwords (SYSADMIN, OPERATIONS etc)

Note: the utility, FNDCPASS, cannot be used for changing the database SYSTEM and SYS users. Only users that are registered in FND meta data tables need to be changed using FNDCPASS. Normally, the APPS database user password and APPLSYS password need to be the same. When changing the APPLSYS password using FNDCPASS, the APPS password is also changed.

Syntax of FNDCPASS command:

FNDCPASS logon 0 Y system/password mode username new_password

Where logon is username/password[@connect]
System/password is password of the system account of that database
Mode is SYSTEM/USER/ORACLE
Username is the username where you want to change its password
new_password is the new password in unencrypted format

Example:

$ FNDCPASS apps/apps 0 Y system/manager SYSTEM APPLSYS WELCOME

$ FNDCPASS apps/apps 0 Y system/manager ORACLE GL GL1

$ FNDCPASS apps/apps 0 Y system/manager USER VISION WELCOME

Note: The FNDCPASS has a new mode, "ALLORACLE", in which all Oracle Application schema passwords can be changed in one call. Apply the patch (Patch No# 4745998) to have this option, if not available currently with your Apps.

Syntax:

FNDCPASS 0 Y ALLORACLE

Example:

$ FNDCPASS apps/apps 0 Y system/manager ALLORACLE WELCOME

To change APPS/APPLSYS password, we need to give mode as SYSTEM
To change product schema passwords, i.e., GL, AP, AR, etc., we need to give mode as ORACLE
To change end user passwords, i.e., SYSADMIN, OPERATIONS etc., we need give mode as USER

Note: Till 11.5.9 there is bug in FNDCPASS, which allows FNDCPASS to change APPS&APPLSYS passwords. Doing so will corrupt the data in FND meta data tables and cause to the application unusable. Because of that it is recommend taking backup of the tables FND_USER and FND_ORACLE_USERID before changing the passwords.

After changing the APPS/APPLSYS or APPLSYSPUB user, following extra manual steps needs to be done.

If you changed the APPS (and APPLSYS) password, update the password in these files:

• iAS_TOP/Apache/modplsql/cfg/wdbsvr.app
• ORACLE_HOME/reports60/server/CGIcmd.dat

If you changed the APPLSYSPUB password, update the password in these files:

• FND_TOP/resource/appsweb.cfg
• OA_HTML/bin/appsweb.cfg
• FND_TOP/secure/HOSTNAME_DBNAME.dbc

Note: I would you suggest you to first try changing the passwords using FNDCPASS on your test Apps Instances, once you are done with this without any errors or issues then you can move this to production, and also request you to search in metalink for more information about FNDCPASS utility and it's usage.

Happy Reading !

With Best Regards,
Sabdar Syed,
http://sabdarsyed.blogspot.com

Oracle Database 11g Whitepapers and Data Sheets are available on OTN.

Dear friends,

There are many whitepapers and data sheets on Oracle Database 11g.

Oracle has published many whitepapers and data sheets on Oracle Database 11g. These are available in OTN, below is an URL for the same.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/oracle11g/index.html

Best Regards,

Sabdar Syed,

http://sabdarsyed.blogspot.com/

Installing & Configuring Oracle ASM on Linux – Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0

Dear Friends,

We have set up the ASM (Automatic Storage Management), a new feature of Oracle 10g, on Linux server. In this article, I would like to share the installation and configurations steps what I have followed.

System Details:

Operating System: Linux – Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0
Kernel Version: 2.6.9-42.ELsmp
Architecture: 32 bit x86
Database: Oracle 10g
Version: Release 2 (10.2.0.1)

Following are the steps I have followed.

1) Download the ASMLib software packages from the Oracle Technology Network, below is an URL for the same.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/linux/asmlib/rhel4.html

2) You may see 4-6 packages for your Linux platform; the oracleasmlib package provides the actual ASM library. The oracleasm-support package provides the utilities used to get the ASM driver up and running. Both of these packages need to be installed.

oracleasm-support-2.0.3-1.i386.rpm
oracleasmlib-2.0.2-1.i386.rpm
oracleasm-2.6.9-42.ELsmp-2.0.3-1.i686.rpm

Note: Download as per your OS Kernel and Architecture
# uname -r
2.6.9-42.ELsmp
# uname -i
i386

3) Upload the above 3 packages using ftp in Linux server, and log on to the server as root , and install them as below.

$ su – root
Password:

Go to the rpms directory where rpms are downloaded.

# rpm –Uvh oracleasm-support-2.0.3-1.i386.rpm \
oracleasmlib-2.0.2-1.i386.rpm \
oracleasm-2.6.9-42.ELsmp-2.0.3-1.i686.rpm

Preparing...########################################## [100%]
1:oracleasm-support################################### [ 33%]
2:oracleasm-2.6.9-42.ELsm############################# [ 67%]
3:oracleasmlib######################################## [100%]

ASMLib software packages are now installed successfully.

4) Run the following command to configure ASMLib, outputs of the commands are the self explanatory.

To Configure

# /etc/init.d/oracleasm configure
Configuring the Oracle ASM library driver.

This will configure the on-boot properties of the Oracle ASM library driver. The following questions will determine whether the driver is loaded on boot and what permissions it will have. The current values will be shown in brackets ('[]'). Hitting without typing an answer will keep that current value. Ctrl-C will abort.

Default user to own the driver interface []: oracle
Default group to own the driver interface []: dba
Start Oracle ASM library driver on boot (y/n) [n]: y
Fix permissions of Oracle ASM disks on boot (y/n) [y]: y
Writing Oracle ASM library driver configuration: [ OK ]
Creating /dev/oracleasm mount point: [ OK ]
Loading module "oracleasm": [ OK ]
Mounting ASMlib driver filesystem: [ OK ]
Scanning system for ASM disks: [ OK ]

To Start and Stop ASM

# /etc/init.d/oracleasm disable
Writing Oracle ASM library driver configuration: [ OK ]
Unmounting ASMlib driver filesystem: [ OK ]
Unloading module "oracleasm": [ OK ]

# /etc/init.d/oracleasm enable
Writing Oracle ASM library driver configuration: [ OK ]
Loading module "oracleasm": [ OK ]
Mounting ASMlib driver filesystem: [ OK ]
Scanning system for ASM disks: [ OK ]

5) Making Disks Available to ASMLib

To create a Disk Group

# /etc/init.d/oracleasm createdisk VOL1 /dev/sda2
Marking disk "/dev/sda2" as an ASM disk: [ OK ]

To Delete a Disk Group

# /etc/init.d/oracleasm deletedisk VOL1
Deleting Oracle ASM disk "VOL1" [ OK ]

To query the disks

# /etc/init.d/oracleasm querydisk /dev/sda2
Disk "/dev/sda2" is marked an ASM disk with the label "VOL1"

# /etc/init.d/oracleasm querydisk /dev/sda1
Disk "/dev/sda1" is not marked an ASM disk

To list and query the existing disks

# /etc/init.d/oracleasm listdisks
VOL1

# /etc/init.d/oracleasm querydisk VOL1
Disk "VOL1" is a valid ASM disk on device [8, 2]

We are now done with installation and configuration of ASMLib on Linux platform.

Conclusion: This article is specific to one of our Linux boxes, I would request you to refer other documents in Oracle or Google for respective Operating Systems i.e. Windows and Unix.

Reference:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/linux/asmlib/install.html

With Best Regards,
Sabdar Syed,
http://sabdarsyed.blogspot.com