Chapter 8: AD and Other Utilities

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Overview

Much of your time as an Apps DBA will be spent using the AD Utilities. These utilities are created by Oracle and packaged in the Oracle E-Business Suite to make maintenance simpler and central to the core product. Through these, you will install patches, maintain most of your applications' core functionality, clone, and perform upgrades to many of the products and modules in your environment. The utilities are run at the command line and in many cases are known better by the name used to run them than by the actual name of the utility.

There are many utilities to run to maintain the smooth operation of the Oracle E-Business Suite. Many of these fall under the blanket of AD Utilities (Oracle Applications DBA Utilities). They are tools that will help to install, upgrade, update, patch, and maintain Apps products.

Although there are several primary utilities, there are many others that are used to perform specific tasks or are called by others to help with the maintenance duties. Table 8.1 gives a basic rundown of the most common utilities, the commands used to execute them, and what overall actions they perform.

Table 8.1: Most Common Utilities

Utility	Execution command	Action Performed
AD Administration	Adadmin	Driver program that performs maintenance tasks on the apps layer and within the database.
Auto Patch	Adpatch	Applies patches in several modes. Can also be used to add new languages and products.
Auto Upgrade	Adaimgr	Upgrades to the latest version of Oracle E-Business Suite.
Rapid Install AD Controller	Adctrl	Allows for the monitoring of status of workers spawned by Auto Upgrade, AD Admin, or Auto Patch and allows for the restarting of failed tasks.
FNDLOAD AD File Identification	Adident	Identifies version and translation level of one or more Apps files. Similar to Grep.
AD Splicer	Adsplice	Registers off cycle products.
File Character Set Converter	Adncnv	Converts text files from one character set to another.
AD Configuration	Adutconf.sql	Access standard information about the installed configuration of the Apps layer.
Auto Configuration	Adautocfg	AutoConfig. Provides central help to manage various configuration files.
AD Relink	Adrelink	Relinks executable programs with server libraries.
AD Merge Patch	Admrgpch	Merges several patches into single integrated patch without guaranteeing to take into account dependencies.
License Manager	Adlicmgr.sh	Licenses products, country specific functionalities, or languages.
AD Java Clone Utility	Adclone	Clones instances for more accurate testing.
	adjkey	Generates the key for SSL.

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