Subscribe to HRMS Notfications

APPS DBAs who support Oracle systems that run payroll are aware of numerous patching requirements for those instances. There are quarterly patches as well as several phases of year end patches which need to be applied in a timely manner.

Oracle provides an email list to notify customers when these patches are released. The email list is the best way to quickly receive information about these patches. An email will be sent from Oracle North American Payroll with a subject line similar to "ATTN: US & Canadian HRMS Customers: End of Year Phase 2 2009, US Q4 2009 and Year Begin 2010 Statutory Updates Released!" The body of the email will contain patch number information for different versions of the software. There will also be other sections in the email with important information for payroll customers.

To subscribe to the email distribution list described in this blog, send e-mail with the following:

To: cshrdev_uk@oracle.com
Subject: Oracle North American Payroll World Contact Update
Body: your contact name, CSI number, and company name

To ensure that information is received and acted on in a timely manner have multiple people subscribe to this distribution list. Functional users, lead developers, DBAs and managers should have subscriptions so that the information is available for the entire organization even if a key person is out of the office when the email is sent.

Advanced Patch Search Options With Oracle Support

With Oracle's Patch search there are several useful Advanced Search options which extend the flexibility of the support tool. This feature can be used to locate Oracle Application patches that meet a wide variety of criteria. I've used this feature several times to quickly find patches needed to resolve a specific problem.



This search feature is not available on the Patch Search section under the My Oracle Support Patches & Updates tab. The feature is listed in the Patching Quick Links section under the heading Advanced "Classic" Patch Search. In the Patching Quick Links section there are several other links that are useful for an APPS DBA. There are links for recommended patches and latest packs for both releases 11i and 12. Per Oracle's help screen the Classic Advanced Search feature will eventually be moved into the Patch Search section, but is currently unavailable from there.



Under Classic Advanced search the APPS DBA has the ability to search for patches that have specific file versions. This option has been useful to locate a patch which includes a certain version of a file. Sometimes Oracle Support notes will list file versions that resolve a known problem. If you do not have the latest file, the search feature will list the patches that contain that file.



Spend some time using the advanced patch search features and the Patching Quick Links. Developing an understanding of the options available will allow for quicker searches in the future. This can help lead to faster problem resolution.

APPS Schema security changes delivered with HR EOY Phase I patch 8947666 for R11i

As an APPS DBA, there are occurences where an application patch will do things you don't expect. That is why reviewing the readme document and performing regression testing is important.


Some odd behaviour was seen when applying the HR EOY Phase I patch (8947666) for 2009. A customization in place that required the APPS account to access a data dictionary table stopped working after the patch was applied. After a little research the issue was traced to some security changes Oracle bundled with the EOY Phase I patch.

The EOY Phase I patch includes a call to adrevdba.sql in the directory $AD_TOP/patch/115/sql. This script will revoke some grants from the APPS user. The specific commands run are:


revoke dba from apps;

revoke select any dictionary from apps;


These grants are not required for functioning of the application. The grants are being revoked by Oracle to help secure the application. If these grants used by any custom work, they will need to be granted after the patch has been applied. Future patches may also revoke the grants, so they will need to be monitored after patching to validate they still exist.

The custom code using these grants should be reviewed to determine if the grants are neccessary. Changes should be made to the code to work around the requirement for the grants. This will allow for a more secured application.