Archive
BI Publisher Provides Our Organization Extreme Agility
A year and a half ago, our company embarked on a project to run Oracle E-business R12. Part of that process included a manufacturing migration from our legacy systems, and the other part included a migration of financial modules from Oracle 11i. Included in the 11i financial modules was Accounts Payable, thus our Payment process needed to be migrated to R12. One of my responsibilities was to create the payment output for the R12 system. Payments in Oracle R12 are rendered with BI Publisher, an Oracle tool I became very skilled with while working on the AP project. Although limited, BI Publisher has to be one of the most powerful technologies Oracle provides and has allowed our IT organization to become more agile.
From what I heard, it took the previous business analyst two years to get a check printed in the 11i production system, starting at the beginning of that project. The R12 Payment processing seemed like a daunting task. But I was up for the challenge and eager to enhance my skill set.
Within the first day of working on the payment output, I was able to get a check printed out of our test system. Two weeks later I had a check ready to send to our bank for validation.
Although my manager was impressed, he still had some doubts. I have a feeling he was thinking around the lines of, “this is too good to be true; how can someone get a check ready for approval so fast, when took so long previously?” Whatever his thinking was, the bank validation had the ability to halt my swift progress right in its tracks.
Fixed: Oracle BI Publisher Template XLF Translation File Upload Error
I have been working on BI Publisher templates and the XLF Language Translations at work. I found a nice bug where a user uploads a XLF template translation and Oracle gives an Error that does not match the actual problem that caused the error.
Conditions
- Oracle BI Publisher or XML Publisher module in Oracle E-Business suite R12
- XLF Template Language Translation files
Symptoms
- BI Publisher gives error as seen below
- Unable to upload XLF Translation file
The uploaded translation file is invalid. It should specify a valid target language and territory. Please verify that the file is in the correct format.
Problem
- Original Oracle Translation file exported specifying UTF-8 encoding
- Edited translation files actually use ISO-8859-1 encoding
Solution
- Change XLF Specified Encoding from utf-8 to ISO-8859-1
Bridget Butler; Property Manager at Kass Management
I usually don’t rant about things like this on my Blog, but after my most recent Condominium Board meeting, I feel the need to warn other buildings of the advice they may receive from their Building Managers. I own a condo in a building managed by Kass Management. Our Property Manager, Bridget Butler, is one of the most ignorant people I have ever met. I have caught her falsifying information multiple times. Here are a few examples:
- There are fire doors in our hallway that are not able to close automatically due to the high carpet. I notified Bridget of the issue and got no response. I finally convinced the condo board to press the matter. Bridget Butler came to the next board meeting and reported that she had talked to an Inspector, and that the inspector said “due to the building’s design, fire doors were not necessarily.” This was is in the board meeting minutes, approved by our board. Since no inspector visited the building, I filed a 311 complaint. According to the city website, we now have building violations against our building for the exact problem I asked Bridget to get fixed. Minutes prior to the next board meeting I checked and the doors were not fixed. At the meeting, Bridget Butler said that our violations were closed. How can they be closed when the problem mentioned in the violations are not fixed?? This is fully documented and I may seek legal action.
- I was trying to get our board to approve a cost reduction project to insulate our hot water tanks. Bridget Butler claimed our tanks were “not designed to be insulated” and “they are only warm to the touch.” The manufacturer sells prefabricated insulation cabinets. I measured the surface area of the tanks at 126, and 127 degrees with an infrared thermometer; that is hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns.
- Bridget Butler states that Certificates of Operation for elevators , or copies of, do not have to be placed within the elevator. State laws say otherwise. After one year of asking for the certificate of operation to be placed in the elevator, nothing was being done. I finally called the city of Chicago and found out our elevator had not been inspected since 2007. Isn’t it the management companies responsibility to get that done? I also blame my condo board for not pressing the matter, but it is not ultimately their responsibility.
The biggest problem with this situation is that our Condominium Board tends to trust Bridget Butler because she is in a position of authority. In that manner, Bridget’s ignorance is transferred to our Condo Board; safety issues tend to get dismissed until fines by the city of Chicago are threatened. It should not have to get that far.
I admit I am not the most politically skilled individual. That is my biggest weakness by far. But that doesn’t mean I don’t do the research to find the facts and get things done the right way, every time.
With that said, in conjunction with Bridget’s authoritative position, my week political skills are likely why my Condo Board sides on Bridget’s advice rather than my own. However, when it comes to safety, there is no room for politics, and I astonished that Bridget Butler has gotten this far with her career given her extreme ignorance. I decided to post this to warn other condominium associations to be wary of Bridget’s advice.
</End Rant>
Refreshing Oracle Self Service Menus and Home Screen
When implementing our RBAC (Role Based Access Control) security model in Oracle, I found it quite irritating when the self service pages would not update to include the newly applied Roles and granted security functions. Here is the solution I found to refresh the web based pages so they they reflect the user’s newly applied security.
Problem
- “XXX is not a valid responsibility for the current user” error
- Not seeing updates from newly assigned or revoked Roles or Responsibilities
- Changes in self service pages driven by new or changed configurations
Solution
- Assign yourself the “Functional Administrator” Responsibility.
- This is a self service responsibility; it must be assigned BEFORE you have the problem which you are trying to solve.
- Click the Core Services Tab
- Click the Caching Framework Menu (top)
- Click the Global Configuration Menu (left)
- Click the Clear All Cache Button
- Click the Yes Button
Component Backflush with Oracle MTL Transaction Interface Table
Recently, at work, we noticed the Work Order-less completions inserted into our MTL_TRANSACTIONS_INTERFACE table were not spawning component backflush transactions. It was quite the mystery to us, as they had been working in Oracle 11i (11.5.10). At some point during our migration to R12 (12.1.3) the backflush transactions had stopped. We searched Oracle’s documentation, support knowledge base, and all over the internet. We couldn’t find a solution.
One of my colleagues got in touch with someone she used to work with. They were able to provide a private API: APPS.wip_flowUtil_priv. My colleague tried the API call explodeRequirementsToMTI and was able to get the components to backflush. We thought all was well.
However, upon further testing, I noticed something strange. The original Assembly was getting stuck in the interface. And when resubmitted, I saw both the assembly and another round of components getting transacted. What was going on?
Further testing provided me with the answer: the originally inserted assembly record was getting slightly altered by the material transaction worker before getting marked in error. Altered to a point which would spawn component backflush transactions if marked for processing and then processed. I tried inserting a fresh assembly record into the MTL_TRANSACTIONS_INTERFACE table with the updated fields and was able to get the components to backflush, automatically, without any errors.
We now have a functioning R12 Work Order-less completion interface which inserts assembly completion records into the MTL_TRANSACTIONS_INTERFACE table. Records which are correctly formed and spawn component issue (backflush) transactions when processed by the material transaction manager (Process transaction interface).
These are the two fields that were changed by the transaction manager:
OPERATION_SEQ_NUM from -1 to NULL
TRANSACTION_BATCH_SEQ from NULL to 1
Below is the insert statement we are using, with Oracle 12.1.3 changes noted.
QR Codes On Your Business Card
QR Codes have become tremendously popular over the last few months. Most companies use QR codes as a way to direct users to websites. Users can scan a code with their mobile phone, and the phone directs the user to the marketer’s webpage. The process saves the user time by eliminating the need for the user to type the web address into their phone.
QR Codes are two-dimensional machine readable images. Much like normal barcodes, such as UPC codes, but with a much higher density of information, and significant redundancy/error correction. Any simple text can be encoded in a QR Code and then read by a machine using a scanner or camera.
When I was doing some research on QR Codes I found they can be used for other purposes such as encoding VCARDs. VCARD files are simple contact or address book files saved as plain text. Most address book applications can save and open VCARD files with ease. Many QR scanner applications recognize QR codes with VCARDs as the encoded text.
So, when I was designing my most recent personal business card I though it would be a neat idea to include a QR encoded VCARD on them.
The first step was getting a VCARD. Unfortunately this was not an easy task. Although there is a standard for VCARDs, most software applications interpret the standard differently, especially as related to the phone number. It is worth mentioning that if too much information is in the VCARD text, the QR Code will get denser, and thus harder for phones to read. Through some trial and error, I ended up with this VCARD:
BEGIN:VCARD N;LANGUAGE=en-us:Hayes;Ed EMAIL;INTERNET:ed@edhayes.us TEL;CELL:440-263-4420 URL:http://www.edhayes.us ADR:;;;CHICAGO;IL;; END:VCARD
Any decent QR encoding software should be able to encode this. I used the one available at http://invx.com/code. Make sure the encoder encodes the text as the QR code, rather than encoding a URL that directs the user to a page displaying the text.
Finally I placed the encoded QR code image on my business card. Now, when I give my card to someone, they can scan it with their phone, and my contact gets added to their address book. Not only does this ensure that there are no typos, it’s much easier for the user to enter my contact information by scanning an image rather than typing on a tiny keyboard.
ED HAYES 