We're currently running EBS 12.1.3 (Payroll with some HR aspects) on an 11.2 database.

Planning the database and application upgrades, whether that be together or database in 2020 and app in 2021.

Looking through the details, EBS changes appear relatively moderate aside from the introduction of online patching and its obvious storage impact. The database upgrade doesn't feel me with dread either with many case studies suggesting performance (negatively or positively) being the most common impact. Appears there's quite a few outstanding bugs which is a concern, so hoping 19c is more stable should it be certified with EBS in time. Otherwise, we'll aim for 12c Release 2.

So I thought I'd seek some real-world experiences of either upgrade, especially if anyone has done both together? I've got Oracle on the hook but a nice independent take on things is always welcome!

Hello sir!

A while ago now, and my absence from the game for nigh-on 18 months has exacerbated the sketchiness of my memory, but:

The main headaches where around customisations, including custom reports involving run result values. I believe that the non-creation of null run result values - which used to be 'optional' but with 12.2 became the default (and non-configurable!) position - meant that any custom queries looking for such rows needed to handle the possibility of a missing row rather than just 'ignoring the nulls'.

The other major issue (there were more, but my memory is really bad!) was around custom tables, and was primarily to do with this hot-patching thing. Where I previously worked there were hundreds of custom tables, all with their respective build scripts for the table, indexes, synonyms and grants etc. There was a wholesale need to change pretty much all of them so that having created/altered the table, the Oracle process had to be run to create the special views needed to facilitate hot patching. The name of the view type escapes my addled brain at this time. The synonym creation scripts then needed to change so that they pointed to the special view of the table rather than the base table.

Finally, while the 2 brain cells are colliding randomly in my head - when you come to do testing of concurrent programs, I seem to recall there was a problem around seeing log/outputs, but that may have been some nonsense with Windows-10 security on web pages. Hopefully someone else can flesh out that ridiculously sparse account of the problem.

Hope it all goes well!

Cheers,

Afternoon CT! That's very useful to know, think I brushed past something on those pesky custom tables but the NULL run results thing didn't come up, so that's very useful.

I'll dig around for more and include in my impact summary - thanks for the pointers!

Sad to hear about your memory loss and general degradation of faculties. By the way, you owe me £1,000 for that,er, thing I sold you...

Given that your organisation and this other place where I worked down in Gosport are both sides of the same government service (ahem), I feel it would profit you greatly if some senior manager type at your end had a conversation with their equivalent down there to see if more detailed info could be made available on their upgrade. Just tell him or her to say the magic word 'MTR' and hopefully doors will open!

Oh and as for the £1,000 I still owe you, yes I think you're probably right. If only I could remember where I put my cheque book...

I've suggested the very same in my upgrade strategy doc but useful to know that you were referring to that particular tech refresh - would be foolish not harvest some lessons learned!

Your cheque book is in your pink handbag...

I sold that, and a kidney, on eBay. In fact I put the kidney in the bag for safe keeping.

Any road up, I think we both know I already paid you that money to expedite the release of the trunk full of £30M sitting in that vault in Nigeria. Still waiting for that, by the way... that was you wasn't it!