Patching Oracle 9ias Release 2 For Business Intelligence

Oracle Discoverer and Oracle Reports are Oracle's two main business intelligence tools for reporting against relational data. Discoverer can report against Oracle and ODBC relational data, plus 9i OLAP data when using the new SQL Views, whilst Reports can report against a whole range of data using it's system of plug-ins, including relational data, XML and Oracle Express.

Discoverer and Reports were traditionally client-server tools, sold separate from the database and with their own install and maintenance requirements. However, in the last couple of years, Oracle have started bundling Discoverer and Reports with Oracle 9iAS, and therefore many of our clients who historically have never worked with application servers are now having to get to grips with 9iAS, J2EE, Apache and XML configuration files.

A common hurdle we have to deal with is setting up (and patching) the 9iAS server so that Reports and Discoverer run as advertised. Unfortunately, as with most Oracle products, you can't just install it and expect everything to work fine - there are various configuration steps to go through, and a number of the dreaded patches to install.

As a memory-jogger for myself, and for anyone else who's interested, i'll be putting up some of the key information about setting up a 9iAS release 2 server for business intelligence and datawarehousing. As a starter, here's the definitive list of the patches and software versions you need to install, before 9iAS is considered 'stable' for production purposes. The relevant patch numbers apply to installs on Windows 2000 Server; the patches will be the same on other platforms, but the patch numbers themselves will differ. The majority of this information came from the document "9iAS Release 2 : Patching Recommendations Within the Version Lifecycle" on metalink.

1. Install 9iAS release 9.0.2.0.1 on to a server. Make sure you're not installing 9.0.2.0.0. (or you'll need more patches), and 9.0.3 isn't a full release - it only contains the core J2EE functionality.
2. Install the OID patch (patch no. 2682125) on the infrastructure instance, which is an essential rerequisite for all the other patches. Beware here as there are plenty of opportunities for this to go wrong; check note 211014.1 on metalink before installing.
3. Install the 9iAS Core Patch (patch no. 2703110) on both the infrastructure and middleware instances.
4. Install the 9iAS Non-Core Patch (patch no. 2926973) on both the
   infrastructure and middleware instance.
5. If you want to run the JAZN samples, install patch no. 2452053. I didn't install this as I don't have a clue what JAZN is or does.
   
6. If your client PCs are running IE5.0, install the one-off patch 277983 which fixes a cookies persistence problem.
7. Lastly, install the Portal Import/Export patch (patch no. 2996463) so that Portal exports and imports work properly.

If you want to use Discoverer Portlets in your portal page, there's another couple of steps to go through before these work o.k.

1. Install the 9.0.2.53.13 one-off patch for Discoverer (patch no. 2945041) which is a prerequisite for...
2. The Discoverer Viewer One-Off Patch (patch no. 2595444) which fixes the issue " "2595444 CANNOT VIEW/EDIT DISCO PORTLET USING MS IE 5.5 SP2 - XML PARSE ERROR"
3. Because the above two patches have upgraded the Discoverer EUL metadata, install patch no. 2555265 on your Oracle 9iDS installation.

That's it! 9iAS is now up to the correct, supported, level and Discoverer and Reports should work without major problems.