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FlexDeploy provides broad and flexible support for managing the build and deployment of customizations across Oracle E-Business suite implementations. To name a few, FlexDeploy has support for:
  • EBS 11.5.10, 12.1.x, and 12.2.x (with or without online patching)
  • One or many custom EBS Tops
  • Source your customizations from either an SCM repository or a development EBS instance. 
  • Automated change detection on deployment
  • Continuous Integration
  • Flexible Build options
  • Integration with FlexDeploy Pipeline & Release features
While this tutorial will not cover all features or design patterns for managing EBS customizations, it’s aim is to provide an end example for a common use case.  Where applicable, we will call out different options, why you would consider them, and the potential benefits to your overall process.

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Objective

You have a global instance of Oracle E-Business Suite with customizations in a custom top called XXHR.  The goal of this tutorial is to configure FlexDeploy to manage the lifecycle of building and deploying the customizations across the environments in your organization.  In this tutorial, we will source the customizations from a GitHub repository, and deploy them to a Development Environment. Once the configuration is complete we will walk through the build and deployment life-cycle for managing your EBS software delivery.

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Checklist

Checklist

Description

Tomcat

Recommended install option contains Tomcat (no separate install required)

SCM provider

Git provider : GitHub, Gitlab, BitBucket, Azure Devops, Oracle etc.

Other supported source control management:

  • Subversion

  • Git

  • Microsoft TFS Version Control

  • PVCS

  • CVS

  • Perforce

  • File System

SCM repository URL

The URL of the source control management repository.

SCM account user name

The username to login to the repository.

SCM account password

The password to login to the repository.

Review existing SCM directory structure

Recommended source control structure Source Control Folder Structure .

EBS Custom TOP name

Name of the custom top you will deploy to.

EBS Environment File (e.g. EBSapps.env)

The Fully qualified path to the environment file. This is the environment file outside of fs1/fs2 filesystem.

Apps Password

The password for apps user.

User id which runs EBS (e.g. applmgr)

FlexDeploy will connect to target server using this user.

Password for user id

Password to connect to the target server.

JDK home for primary app-tier host

Recommend JDK 1.8 installed outside of fs1/fs2.

If EBS 12.2.x, do you deploy customizations using ADOP?

If using EBS 12.2.x, check whether you have any ADOP patching phases.

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Create EBS Project using Blueprint

The assumption is that you have FlexDeploy installed and ready for use. When logged into the FlexDeploy, you will see the Home page. Click on the + icon on the top and click “Create Project” to create a new project. Image The screen displays the list of blueprints supported by the FlexDeploy. Select the blueprint from the list or you can search for the blueprint in the search filter present in the top. In our case, we will select the EBS Customizations. Image

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General Configuration

Scroll through this guide to fill in the blueprint properties whereas the Build and Deploy options are auto-selected. Image

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Project Info

Property Name

Value for this tutorial

Description

Module Short Name

XXHR

This property defines the short name of the custom top for this project (eg. XXAR, XXHR).

EBS Install Name

EBS

This value will provide environment independent name for EBS install (eg. ERP, EBSHR ).

The default is EBS.

Module Description

EBS Project creation using blueprint

Brief description of the custom module.

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Source Control

Click on source repository dropdown. If you have already created a connection to your source code repository, select it from the list. Enter the sparse checkout folder, if any. Image Otherwise add one by clicking on “Create new Source Repository”. Enter the sparse checkout folders script, if any. Image

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Inputs Info

Field

Required

Description

Name

Yes

A descriptive name for this SCM instance.

Code

Yes

A technical code for the instance, without any spaces.  The codes are available as variables to shell and Groovy scripts, and therefore needs to comply with their limitations. 

Source Control Type

Yes

Type of Source Control Management System.  We will use Git for this tutorial.

Supported Source Control Management Systems are:

  • Subversion

  • Git

  • Microsoft TFS Version Control

  • PVCS

  • CVS

  • Perforce

  • File System

Description

No

SCM Properties

Yes

The remaining properties are specific to the selected SCM.

For Git:

  • Git URL

  • Git User

  • Git Password

  • Git Timeout (optional)

  • Git File Content (optional)

  • Git File Content Commit URL (optional)

We selected the SCM type as GIT. The properties related to the GIT source control management will be displayed on the screen. Image Click on Create New Credential to create a new credential password for GIT password. Enter the credential Name which is unique name to identify the password. In the secret text, enter the password and click on Save. Image After saving the credential, click on Save again on the SCM instance. Do a Test Connection. The green color ticket mark will show that the connection is successful. Image Enter the sparse checkout folder value, if any. Sparse checkout folder is a Folder in your repository where your EBS Customization files are located. If files are in root folder of repository, then leave this value empty. Image

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Gather Build and Deployment information

Enter values for any workflow properties which are required for the build and deploy.  In the image below, no properties are required for this build. Select the target endpoint that the build and deploy should execute on. Image

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Target Properties

Property Name

Values for this Tutorial

Description

EBS Source Script

locate this value from your EBS server.

Source Script with full path. 
e.g. /u1/apps/apps_st/appl/APPSorcl_ebs01.env

EBS Database User

apps

DB User to connect with privileges.
eg: Apps.

EBS Database Password

locate this value from your EBS server.

Password to connect for EBS Database User.

The Project Name will be auto updated as XXHR since it takes the value given in the Module short name i.e. Custom top Name. Select the Parent Folder from the list and click on “Create”. We will be able to see the project created under the given Parent Folder path. Image We can see the Folder hierarchy on the top of the project. Image

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Summary

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General Configuration

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Build and deploy workflows

Image

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Project Properties

There are many properties for EBS, but only one is required - EBS Module Application Short Name.  This property defines the short name of the custom top for this project. The value for EBS Module Application short name i.e. XXHR will be auto populated from the blueprint itself. You can filter out the properties by using the search filter properties in the top. Image

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Source Control

Image

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Branch Name

Image Change the branch name similar to the git repositories branch name. Click on Save. Image

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SCM Instance

Viewing the current list of Integrations is achieved by selecting Integrations from the menu. There are eleven types of integrations in FlexDeploy, but we will focus on Source Control in this tutorial. Image

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Topology

Navigate to the Topology from the Menu. The Page with the Target Groups, Environments and Endpoints sections will be displayed. Choose a Target Group on the left. You will see a list of Environments on the right with colored circles representing each Target.  Image Click on EBS 12.1.3 Target Group and click on the Development Environment Color coding represents:
  • RED - The Endpoint is not configured
  • YELLOW - some of the required properties are not set,
  • GREEN - all required properties are set and the Endpoint is configured
Image

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Targets Properties

Clicking the environment row for DEV allows modifying the Endpoint and properties.

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Populate the files

Click on File Catalog under Package screen. Image Click on “Discover”. This will populate the customization files which are stored in our GitHub repository into our FlexDeploy project.  FlexDeploy will interrogate the files, determine the type, and generate metadata about them.  Image It displays the count of list of the files discovered from that repository. Image Click on “Show new Files” to see the list of files on the file catalog screen. Image To create new files, click on create button. The create file screen will expect the file path and object type. Enter the value and fields related to the object type selected will be displayed. Click on Evaluate if any modifications are done. Click on Save button to save the file. To inactivate the file, click on Active switch box. Image We can see the file created on the top of the screen. Image

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Create a package

On the package screen, click on create button to create a new package. Image Enter the package name and select the package type. We select the “User Managed” in our use case. Image Open the package by clicking on the package name. Image Click on Add Files to add the files that are populated from the SCM repository. We can also create new files at the package level. Image Click on the file name directly to add the file in the package. Else, use the filter file option to search for the specific file and select that to add into the package. Click on save. Image We can see the files added in the package under the package file screen. Image

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Building Package (EBS)

Click on Execution tab to submit the build request for that package. Click on Build. Image The Build Request Form is displayed. Click on the “Submit” button for the build to execute. Image Here you can make note of build execution details for version 1.0.1 of our CHG0054692 package.  To view more detail, click on the generated Execution Id. Image On the Steps tab we see the execution details of our build workflow.  Notice the Initialize: Extract Project Files (Revisions) step.  This is an implicit step that is injected into the build workflow when using partial deployment.  This step extracts the source code for the package files from the configured SCM.  These files are then available for the EBS Build step to assemble them into an artifact, which is versioned (1.0.1) in the artifact repository. After the build completes we can see the artifact on the Artifacts tab, and see details of the files within it on the Files tab. Image Another mechanism for building a package is to select Build from the Execution tab. Select the package name of CHG0054692. Click on Submit to submit the build request. Image Since the build is successful, we see the pop up saying No change detected in source control. Click on Force Build or check the force build check box to re-build the execution. Image Click Submit to build the package.  You can again monitor the build execution by the clicking on the execution Id of project version 1.0.2. Image

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Rebuilding an Existing Package

Now suppose you need to make a modification to one of the files in your package in GitHub.  After pushing the change to the master branch, we need to initiate a new build.  To rebuild an existing package, click on the single gear icon next to the user name, you want to rebuild.  Here we will rebuild project version 1.0.2 of the CHG0054692 package. Click the wrench icon as shown below will again launch the build request form with package name pre-filled and the same project files added.  Image Also note that the request form selects the SCM revisions of the previous build.  To pick up the latest revisions, we will navigate to the File Revisions tab on the Build Request Form and select the revision which we want to make use of. Image Click Submit to build the package. You can again monitor the build execution by the clicking on the execution Id of project version 1.0.3. Image

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Deploying Packages

In the previous module, we performed three builds of one package.  In this module, we will perform deployments of that package into the Dev Environment. To submit the deploy request for a package, first click on the Execution tab of the XXHR Project. Click on the icon as shown in the image below will launch the deploy request form for that project version 1.0.3. Image Select the environment Dev. Click on Submit to submit the deployment for the package CHG0054692. Image We can see all the three files that we selected got successfully deployed to the Dev Environment.
Note that all the three of the files in the package were deployed successfully.  If we modify/commit/push one file in GitHub, rebuild and deploy it to Dev, we will see that that one file gets deployed.  The others will have a status of SKIPPED.  This is because FlexDeploy maintains a hash on all files which it has deployed to determined whether it needs to be deployed or not.  This change detection makes the process more efficient and helps maintain accurate auditing information related to when objects really changed.
Congratulations, you have completed the FlexDeploy E-Business Suite tutorial!  You have learned just how easy it is to configure FlexDeploy to build and deploy all of your EBS customizations across your environments.