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Oracle Apps DBA: Keeping E-Business Suite Alive · Module 7 · Patching

Testing a patch before production

Lesson 77 of 184 · 2 min

What to test, on what, and THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "IT APPLIED" AND "THE BUSINESS STILL WORKS". Almost all patch testing establishes only that the patch applies cleanly, which is worth knowing and is not the question anybody is asking. "IT APPLIED" IS A TEST OF THE PATCHING PROCESS. It tells you the prerequisites are met, the cycle completes, and how long it takes — which is genuinely useful, because it means the production night has no surprises in the mechanics. "THE BUSINESS STILL WORKS" IS A TEST OF THE SYSTEM AFTERWARDS, AND IT IS A DIFFERENT ACTIVITY DONE BY DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Somebody who knows the business process enters an invoice, runs the period-end programs, checks a report against what it produced before. You cannot do that half, and pretending a technical smoke test covers it is how a patch reaches production having been tested for the wrong thing. SO ARRANGE…

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In this module: Module 7 · Patching

  1. 1Why you are patching at all
  2. 2Kinds of patch, and what each touches
  3. 3Reading a readme properly
  4. 4Online patching: the model
  5. 5The adop cycle, phase by phaseFree preview
  6. 6When a phase fails
  7. 7Abandoning and cleaning up
  8. 8Rollback: what is actually reversible
  9. 9Patching the database tier
  10. 10Testing a patch before production
  11. 11The outage plan
  12. 12Patching cadence, and falling behind
  13. 13What breaks: five patching failures
  14. 14Lab briefing · Apply, fail, abandon, apply again