Wednesday, January 25, 2012

E-Business Suite and APEX installation

Before doing the integration of Oracle Application Express (APEX) with E-Business Suite (EBs) you need to have both environments installed. The Oracle white paper talks about the installation of APEX, but not about installing E-Business Suite.


The white paper states; the prerequisites for the solution given are:

  • Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 or above
  • Oracle E-Business Suite Patch 12316083
  • Oracle Database 10.2.0.3 or above
  • Oracle Application Express 3.2 or above

The first thing I needed was an E-Busisness Suite environment. Oracle provides some VM Templates for E-Business Suite 12.1.3. I wanted a complete demo system, like for example the HR schema in the Oracle database or the Sample Application in APEX. The VM Template for E-Business Suite includes the Vision demo.

I never installed EBs before, so I did some research how to do that. Finally I didn't proceed with installing E-Business Suite on our servers, as MCX was happy to provide us with a complete Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Vision installation on their servers. The version of the underlying Oracle database is 11.2.0.2.0. I also asked them to apply patch 12316083.

APEX needs to be installed on the same Oracle database as the Oracle E- Business suite database server.
We went with installing the latest version of APEX at the moment: APEX 4.1.

Installing APEX is not that hard, basically running some scripts. The only bit you have to be careful with is the choice of web listener. APEX supports three web listeners: mod_plsql, EPG and the APEX Listener.
The mod_plsql gateway is disabled by default by EBs R12, so you shouldn't go with that. The EPG is not recommended either as it will add additional load on the database server, so the best choice would be the APEX Listener. The APEX Listener is the recommended choice in any circumstance anyway, regardless of EBs. (on a related note; I'm giving a presentation about my experiences moving to the APEX Listener at OGh and ODTUG.)

So after installing APEX and using the APEX Listener on an EBs configuration, the architecture looks like this:


So now all the prerequisites are met and we can concentrate on the real integration part in the next post.

Previous related posts:


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8 comments:

  1. Daniel Borgstrom1/27/2012 6:02 PM

    I know for a fact that many EBS customers does not allow you to install APEX in the same instance as EBS. I think this is the reality in most cases. I asked David Peake what is the Oracle supported way to handle this this but there was no answer...

    For EBS 11.5.10 there is a solution using a session cookie which works fine (have it in production at one of my customers for a couple of years now).

    If you have time and energy it would be interesting to see you solve that :)

    Thanks, Daniel

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dimitri Gielis1/27/2012 7:45 PM

    Hi Daniel,

    The white paper (and so Oracle) is clear on this, APEX should be installed in the database of EBS.
    But the support configuration only starts from EBS R12 and above.

    So as you are talking about 11.5.10 it's something different and is probably not "supported" by Oracle in the same matter as R12. So with 11.5.10 you could go with a standalone DB that runs APEX and than have a database link or another connection mechanism to EBS.

    Many customers have done it before, integrate EBS R11 with APEX, so if you need a solution I can put you in contact with some referencing customers. You can than share your concerns and they can tell you how they did it in their case.

    Hope that helps,
    Dimitri

    ReplyDelete
  3. Daniel Borgstrom1/27/2012 10:53 PM

    You are missunderstanding me. I have the 11.5.10 - APEX solutIon in productions since 5 years now, no problem there.

    What i'm saying is that a lot of EBS customers will not let you install APEX in the same instance. Then we need a solution where APEX is installed in a separate database (for R12) which is not described/supported by Oracle.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ashksngh1/31/2012 1:01 PM

    E-business has been used widely in business as there are many advantage of using E business like improved speed of response, cost savings, improved communications, information and knowledge sharing, improved efficiency and productivity, better transfer of best practices, gaining of new customers and increased sales and improved customer service.
    ____________________________
    Business for sale.

    ReplyDelete
  5. walter1/31/2012 1:38 PM

    thanks for sharing this information.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous10/04/2012 12:01 AM

    Daniel,

    Would you be able to share the APEX implementation procedure on EBS 11.5.10.2? I am looking to use the same HTTP server and extend the Oracle EBS.

    Thanks,
    Ramu

    ReplyDelete
  7. Unknown11/07/2012 8:10 AM

    hello,

    i was installed apex in r12 environment

    then configure to R12 i install apex listener by standalone installation in linux

    but i am getting error 503 service unavailable in apex listener by standalone installation in linux for
    http://testnode1ebs:8080/apex/listenerConfigure

    also get this error 404 service unavailable in apex listener by standalone installation in linux for
    http://testnode1ebs:8080/apex

    for installation i used standard oracle apex installation guide

    please help me to solve this problem

    Thanks in advance
    Kazi Rahil

    ReplyDelete
  8. Dimitri Gielis11/07/2012 1:36 PM

    Hello Kazi,

    I think it's best to log your issue on the APEX Listener forum at https://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=858&start=0

    Hope that helps,
    Dimitri

    ReplyDelete