V.J. Jain

After dealing with several challenges during the installation, I have successfully installed Oracle Apps on Oracle Enterprise Linux.  I’ve spent some time on the post-installation checks.

One of my specific challenges was that I already had the Oracle database installed previously.  This was causing some conflicts as the environment was not getting setup correctly.

Another issue that I faced was a problem with libdb.so.2.  This required creating a symbolic link as shown below:

root@localhost ~]# ls /usr/lib/libdb.so.2
ls: /usr/lib/libdb.so.2: No such file or directory
[root@localhost ~]# ln -s /usr/lib/libgdbm.so.2.0.0 /usr/lib/libdb.so.2
[root@localhost ~]# ls /usr/lib/libdb.so.2
/usr/lib/libdb.so.2

The next issue I faced was to do with creating the Login Page.  I kept getting an error…

checking URL = http://localhost.localdomain:8000/OA_HTML/AppsLogin

RW-50016: Error: – {0} was not created:
File = {1}

I got around this by unlocking the Oracle accounts, running autoconfig, and bouncing the services.

Finally, I was able to see the login page and login as sysadmin.  I went to open the Applications by clicking on one of the forms and I faced another problem.  When opening the forms I received another error.

FRM-92101: There was a failure in the Forms Server during startup. This could happen due to invalid configuration
Please look into the web-server log file for details

Details…
Java Exception
oracle.forms.net.ConnectionException:Forms sessionfailed during startup:no response from runtime process
at oracle.forms.net.ConnectionException.createConnectionException(Unknown Source)
at oracle.forms.net.HTTPNStream.getResponse(Unknown source)
at oracle.forms.net.HTTPNStream.doFlush(Unknown Source)
at oracle.forms.net.HTTPNStream.flush(Unknown Source)
at java.io.DataOutputStream.flush(Unknown source)
…………………………………………………………..

I looked into the forms server log file which is given below
$LOG_HOME/ora/10.1.3/opmn/forms_default_group_1/formsstd.out

and found the following error

testMode: false
09/04/09 08:12:17 Oracle Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.3.0.0) initialized
09/04/09 08:14:27 ListenerServlet init()
09/04/09 08:14:28 Forms session aborted: runtime process failed during startup with
errors /u03/oracle/VIS/apps/tech_st/10.1.2/bin/frmweb: error while loading shared libraries:
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.so.2: ELF file data encoding not little-endian

This required installing the openmotif package from Oracle’s download site http://oss.oracle.com/projects/compat-oracle/files/Enterprise_Linux/  The following package was missing: openmotif21-2.1.30-11.EL5.i3861.rpm

After trying again, a similar error appeared:

09/12/04 11:55:22.317 formsweb: Forms session <1> aborted: runtime process failed during startup with errors /u01/oracle/VIS/apps/tech_st/10.1.2/bin/frmweb: error while loading shared libraries: libXp.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Metalink says the following about the libXP package…

The  i386 version of the libXp package is missing. The Oracle Universal Installer ( OUI  ) requires the file libXp.so.6 and this file is installed with the package libXp in RHEL 5 and OEL 5.

Issue the following to confirm the missing rpm:

% rpm -qa –queryformat “%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE} (%{ARCH})\n” | grep libXp

The package libXp was not installed in RHEL 5/OEL 5 with default RPM packages, so it will need to be installed manually.   In RHEL 4 this file was provided by the package xorg-x11-deprecated-libs which is installed with default package installation but this is not the case for RHEL5/OEL5 and is now provided with a different rpm, the libXp rpm.

Install the package libXp by the command:

# rpm -ivh </path/to/>libXp.<version>.i386.rpm

Unfortunately, I did not have the DVD in front of me, so I found the RPM on http://rpm.pbone.net

[root@localhost tmp]# rpm -ivh libXp-1.0.0-8.1.el5.i386.rpm –nodeps
warning: libXp-1.0.0-8.1.el5.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID a7048f8d
Preparing…                ########################################### [100%]
1:libXp                  ########################################### [100%]
[root@localhost tmp]# rpm -qa –queryformat “%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE} (%{ARCH})\n” | grep libXp
libXp-1.0.0-8.1.el5 (i386)

After installing the libXp, my Apps Forms opened up at last.

At Last, I have my Vision instance up and running.

One user posted a question on OTN forums for Payables – http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=3785430#3785430

–

Hi all,

I have a scenario involving discount on the purchase of an Item. My invoice, as received as the supplier is as follows:

$
Item xxx 100
Discount (10)

When I make payment for the above invoice, a pop-up appears indicating discount will be applied. But the Payment amount is $105 (Invoice header amount minus discount).

Is this the only way to treat discount in AP?
I need the payment amount to be $103.50 after applying discount.

–

My response was:

If I understand correctly, it seems like you are manually calculating the tax and entering it to the invoice amount. If you configure your taxes in Oracle, and then enter the invoice for the actual amount, then Oracle will know the true invoice amount which is the discount basis and create the tax line according to the configurations (the way you want it). What you are doing now is adding the tax outside Apps configuration and then expecting Apps to calculate the appropriate discount. If you want to use the standard functionality, you need to set up all dependent parts of that functionality. If tax calculation is a dependency of the discount basis, which is certainly a dependency of discount payment terms, then you need to set it up properly.

–

This really demonstrates one major theme that I consistently encounter with Oracle Apps consultants.  There is a lack of true understanding of the fundamentals behind the applications.  I’m not saying that is the case for this particular user because I don’t know him/her but it is the case for the majority of consultants that are staffed into most projects.

Everything in the ERP system is part of a business flow.  For a company that sells products, it is something similar to
- Leads to Quotes to Sales to [PO|Manufacturing to] Shipping to Invoice to Receipt to Cash to Financials

For Payables it is something like
- Purchasing to Receipt to Accrual to Invoice to Payment

For Discount Payment Term it is going to be
- Invoice /w Discount Terms to Payment with Discount Taken

Most vendors are going to exclude tax and freight from the discount allowed by prompt payment of the invoice.  So obviously if you want Oracle to calculate the amount to take on an invoice with discount terms, it is going to need to know what portion of the Invoice is for freight and tax.  Expecting the discount to be applied to only the $100 of a $115 ($15 from tax) invoice when the invoice is entered as $115 invoice is not going to work.  Have you ever heard of a tax line?

R12 does complicate the management of taxes with the E-Business Tax module.  I know of several consultants who are “experts” in R12 E-Tax and are getting great bill rates as they help setup the new module.

I learned R12 EBTax but not without several weeks of continuous headaches.  I won’t take projects to setup the R12 EBTax because it is tedious.  Regardless, it is important for Oracle apps consultants to be aware of how taxes work in R12 or you run into situations where things are not working the way you want and you don’t know why.  To someone who understands the applications, it jus seems like you lack common sense.

I’ve been wanting to create a blog for a long time now and I’m finally getting around to it.  Originally, I was hoping that the Oracle Forums would be an interactive resource but with almost 20,000 registered members, it is too difficult to moderate.

So here it is, my new blog.  Feel free to join and comment!

- V.J. Jain