R12 New Techstack and Directory Structure Changes
R12 New Techstack
There has been a specific directory structure and file structure that is followed in Oracle application. In the previous release till 11iCU2, there was some standard naming convention
that is following. Each directory whether it’s a product top or form directory was having an organized path.
In the new oracle application release, E-Business suite R12, the file directory structure is changed. This doesn’t mean that there is no specific organization of files and directory. Off
course the pattern for directories and file system is organized well, but it is different then the directory structure for the previous releases.
In this post we will check the changes in the directory structure organization and also the techstack level changes.
Why new structure
Lets us first answer to the question, as to why the new directory structure and file system was introduced, if at all, old file system and directory structure was flaw less and been
working fine. And the answer to this is the need to separate E-business suite into three parts
Data
Code
Configuration
In many cases, configuration changes more frequently than code and data. So keeping it separately would result in easy maintenance.
Also, in a shared file system, MUTEX files, related to Apache, cause access related problems as IAS_ORACLE_HOME is mounted on NFS. With the new file structure, this issue is
also resolved as all the configuration files can be stored on the local server instead of NFS.
Directory Structure Changes
In R12 the directory structure is as given below. Just after HOME, we have APPS directory and INST directory. APPS directory contains the APPL_TOP and also the installation of
forms OH and application server 10g. The version for forms that is used in E-Business suits is 10g and also the application server used is 10g. The directory 10.1.2 belongs to form
oracle home and directory 10.1.3 belongs to application server oracle home. Since these are the underlying technology they are grouped under TECH_ST. APPS_ST contains the
APPL_TOP and COMMON_TOP. In apps11i the APPL_TOP directory used to have format <SID>appl, where as in R12 this has been changed as simply appl directory
Other then this there is one more directory at this level (INST). This is instance directory. We have a new environment variable in R12 called as INST_TOP, which points in this
directory.
Instance top contains all the config files, log files, ssl certificates, document root etc. This is a new directory introduced in R12TS. Addition of this directory makes the middle-tier more
organized, since data is kept separate from config/log files. Another advantage is that, multiple instances can easily share the same middle tier / DB. To create a new instance that
shares an existing middle-tier, just create a new instance_top with proper config files and nfs mount the middle tier in the server
The directory structure for apps11i is also shown. Here we have 3 top directory under HOME directory. These are <SID>appl (APPL_TOP as discussed previously), <SID>comn
(COMMON_TOP) and <SID>ora (IAS_ORACLE_HOME for 9i Application server and forms ORACLE_HOME). Inside <SID>ora directory we have 8.0.6 directory, which is the
ORACLE_HOME for forms, and iAS directory which is ORACLE_HOME for 9i Application server.