Customizing Autoconfig

Customizing an AutoConfig Environment

AutoConfig is a tool that simplifies and standardizes configuration management tasks in an Oracle Applications environment. 

The configuration generated by AutoConfig may not always meet your specific requirements and it may be necessary to customize AutoConfig to get your environment up and running. Examples where you might want to customize AutoConfig include:

• • Start additional services or processes when you start Oracle Applications services

  • Define and add zones to your JServ configuration

  • Extend Forms to integrate with a third party Java version

  • Develop customer applications that are maintained by AutoConfig

Historically, Oracle did not document procedures on how to implement customizations. If you tried to customize your AutoConfig-generated files by manually editing them, your changes were lost every time AutoConfig ran. To avoid this, Oracle Support may have instructed you to add your customizations between "Begin/End customizations" blocks in the configuration files. This limited and inflexible method has now been superseded by a fully supported mechanism to extend your AutoConfig-maintained environment with maximum flexibility, preserving your extensions every time AutoConfig is run.

The following table discusses the terminology used in this document:

• • • • • 1. Note: You must have Oracle Applications Manager (OAM) H or higher installed to manage custom variables. Refer to Oracle Applications Manager 11i Availability for instructions on installing OAM.

• • 1. Verify your customizations

       1. Execute the adchkcfg utility as described in Note 165195.1 on OracleMetaLink. When this utility runs, it instantiates any custom template files in place of the corresponding AutoConfig template file. The adchkcfg utility generates a report with information about all files and profile options that will be changed during the next normal execution of AutoConfig. Verify that your customizations would be applied as expected in your next AutoConfig run.

    2. Run AutoConfig

• • • 1. Run AutoConfig as described in Note 165195.1 on OracleMetaLink. When AutoConfig runs, it instantiates any custom template file in place of the corresponding AutoConfig template file.

1. Customizing listener.ora and tnsnames.ora files

   1. The customization of listener.ora and tnsnames.ora cannot be done through the custom template files as mentioned in step 3. The listener.ora and tnsnames.ora files can be customized using IFILE. The location of the respective ifile is specified at the end of the listener.ora and tnsnames.ora files.

• • • • • 1. Note: Prior to TXK RUP U there was no AutoConfig support for non-default listener name. AutoConfig supported only the default DB listener names. The default DB listener name

             1. • For RAC instances is LISTENER_<HOSTNAME>

                • For nonRAC instances is <SID>

• • • • • • 1. TXK RUP U delivers a new feature for enabling customer-defined non-default listener names using the context variable s_db_listener. To customize the listener name, set the value of s_db_listener to the intended customized listener name and run the AutoConfig on DB Tier.

1. Creating a customer owned AutoConfig template file

   1. You can create an AutoConfig template file of your own. This will enable you to develop custom applications that AutoConfig configures and maintains.

      1. Perform the following tasks in the order listed:

      2. Define a product_top

         1. Use the Oracle Applications Manager Context Editor to add your custom product_top to the context file. Refer to the Help pages available on your Oracle Applications Manager site. The relevant information for adding custom context variables is located in the "System Configuration" -> "AutoConfig" -> "Custom Parameters" section. Choose the variable type "PROD_TOP" when adding the product_top variable. The default value for the product_top variable must be set to '%s_at%/<product name>/11.5.0'.

            1. For example, define the product top for the product 'my' as follows:

            2.     OA_VAR = c_mytop 

            3.     Default Value = %s_at%/my/11.5.0

            4.     Title = My Product top

            5.     Description = This is my product top

            6.     OA_TYPE = PROD_TOP

• • 1. Create the customer owned AutoConfig template directory

       1. Create the directory where your AutoConfig template files will reside. Execute the following command as the applmgr user:

          1. • On UNIX 

             • mkdir <c_mytop>/admin/template

             • On Windows 

             • mkdir <c_mytop>\admin\template

    2. Develop the customer owned AutoConfig template file

• • • 1. Create the AutoConfig template file in the AutoConfig template directory. There are no file name restrictions, and the new template file can be of any type that can store text, such as text file, Shell script, Perl script, or SQL script. To use AutoConfig instantiation, enter your context variables in the file. When AutoConfig runs, it replaces the context variables with the associated values from the context file.

         1. For example create and edit the file

         2. <c_mytop>/admin/template/myTemplate.txt

• • 3. Create the customer owned AutoConfig driver directory

• • • 1. Create the directory where your AutoConfig driver file will reside. Execute the following command as the applmgr user:

         1. • On UNIX 

            • mkdir <c_mytop>/admin/driver

            • On Windows 

            • mkdir <c_mytop>\admin\driver

• • 4. Develop the customer owned AutoConfig driver file

• • • 1. The AutoConfig driver file instructs AutoConfig where to place the generated configuration file. Place the driver file in the AutoConfig driver directory. The name for the driver file is defined as: <product>tmpl.drv. For this example the driver file would be named:mytmpl.drv. Refer to Appendix: Specification for AutoConfig driver file syntax for information on the format of the driver file.

         1. For example, to have AutoConfig instantiate the above example template file, the driver file would contain this line:

         2. my admin/template myTemplate.txt INSTE8 <s_pt> myConfiguration.txt 660

Section 4: Advanced Features of AutoConfig Customizations

This section discusses advanced features when using AutoConfig Customizations.

1. Debugging customizations

   1. If problems arise with customizations that you implemented, it may be useful to run AutoConfig with the AutoConfig template files, ignoring custom template files. Execute the following command:

      1. • On UNIX

         • <AD_TOP>/bin/adconfig.sh -nocustom contextfile=<CONTEXT> \ 

         • appspass=<APPSpwd>

         • On Windows

         • <AD_TOP>\bin\adconfig.cmd -nocustom contextfile=<CONTEXT> \ 

         • appspass=<APPSpwd>

2. Preserving customizations After Updates

• 1. You must review your customizations whenever AD Patch delivers a new version of an AutoConfig template file for which you edited the corresponding custom template file. If the customizations are still required, copy the new version of the AutoConfig template file to the custom template directory, and edit the custom template file with your customizations.

     1. AutoConfig checks that your custom template files are of the same versions as the AutoConfig template files, and will not run if it detects any version mismatch.

3. Reports

• 1. The report produced by the adtmplreport utility can:

     1. • List all customized files in an Oracle Applications instance

        • List all AutoConfig template files, their custom template files and their configuration files

        • Identify the name and location of the AutoConfig template file and the custom template file for a given configuration file

        • Identify the name and location of the configuration file for a given AutoConfig template file

• • 1. The report utility is located at: