Oracle Fusion - search for "the world changed in the past 5 years"

• 400 customers on Oracle Fusion Applications

Interesting article on the state of the Oracle Fusion Apps.

http://blog.softwareinsider.org/2012/12/31/market-maker-11-steve-miranda-oracle-fusion-applications-update-the-inside-story/

Must read it.

Oracle Fusion Applications Documentation Library for links to release notes, guides, licensing information,and more can be found here

You can use this page to learn about Oracle Fusion Applications . You can use the tabs to find user guides, implementation guides, and other documentation resources for each product family.

Other Documentation Links

• Oracle Fusion Applications Technology Library : You can use these library for technical guides such as install, patching,implementation, and extensibility. click here to get .
• Oracle Enterprise Repository : You will get technical information about integrating with other applications,including services, operations, composites, events, and integration tables. click here to get .
• Oracle Fusion Applications Documentation Info Center : To access this you need my Oracle support access. If you have valid access rights , you can get white papers, release notes, What's New and other resources.

Oracle recently announced the availability of Oracle Fusion Tap, native application for the iPad ,which is capable of completely changing the way users employ their smartphones in order to realize enhanced productivity.

With Oracle Fusion Tap application, users can:

• browse key performance indicators and view up to the minute analyses;
• obtain a complete view of the workforce through the blending of human resource and with job specific information, such as worker performance correlated to sales performance;
• manage CRM Sales opportunities, contacts, accounts and activities and more;
• browse organization and view critical worker information including predicted performance and attrition; browse the product catalog and manage revenue lines;
• compare multiple workers in order to determine top performers, compensation distribution across teams, and which workers are available to support initiatives;
• leverage existing fusion application content and extend Fusion Tap through easy to use composers; and more.

Oracle Fusion Tap is now available in the app store via itune!

Oracle Tap for iPad cann't used by those who bought Fusion hardware as this runs off cloud-based enterprise applications and across Oracle Application Cloud Services.

You can find more insights in this clip

Refrence Note

• Doc #1430761.1 on My Oracle Support
• Oracle Press Release
• Link for Oracle Fusion Tap

Want to learn more about Oracle's next generation applications, Fusion Applications.Here are some of the post , that helps you to understand better.

ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS is the integration of Oracle applications such as E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards & Siebel into a set of next generation applications based on open industry standards.Fusion Applications is build on top of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Technology Stack using Oracle's Fusion Architecture as blueprint.

Oracle Fusion Applications provide a complete applications portfolio and a host of deployment options(On premise,Public cloud,Private cloud,Hybrid public/private cloud).This include over 100 modules across seven core enterprise application product areas:

Additional products exist to add significant incremental business value span the entire suite:

• Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub (Oracle Fusion Financials)
• Oracle Fusion Talent Review (Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management)
• Oracle Fusion Territory Management (Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management)
• Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management)

Oracle Fusion Middleware is the underlying Technical Platform used to build Oracle Fusion Applications. Oracle Fusion Architecture is the blueprint that ties together the Fusion Applications, Middleware Platform and Grid Technology.

As an EBS user, the concepts that we have learned over the years are all made obsolete. In their place many of the PeopleSoft concepts has taken over.

• Identity Manger replaces FND User
• Business Units replace Operating Units
• Date Effectivity replaces Date Track
• ESS replaces Concurrent Manager
• Access Control Governor replaces OICM

Extensible Attribute Framework introduced allowing unlimited set of attributes with more powerful features than Descriptive Flexfields (DFF). All attributes can be inherited or discovered by business intelligence, business rules, business processes, transactional UI and transactional logic. Gone are the days where one must add custom tables due to limitations of DFF fields. Will align to ‘Rethink Customization Strategy’

Sub-ledger Accounting (SLA) architecture is carried into Fusion Applications combined with Business Unit mapping providing a basis for an excellent Service Provider Model.

Fusion Application Security is built using the Security Manager Tool (part of Fusion Middleware) this means the concept of Responsibilities that EBS users are familiar with are gone and in its place Role based access mechanism is implemented.

Fusion have almost all Technology Stack

These technology stack create ample opportunity to Functional Analyst,Technical Developer and Application Architects.
Combines the best-in-breed functionalities of EBS, Siebel CRM, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards Enterprise One Applications.All of the current applications mashed up along with usability and business process optimization resulting in a new set of better application.

There is choice of adoption scenarios in order to move to Oracle Fusion Application. Co-existence option ie adding on specific Oracle Fusion application module .

Fusion application Business Intelligence comprises of Oracle Transactional BI (OTBI) a real time self service reporting directly off Fusion Apps data. Oracle BI Applications (OBIA) is a prepackaged data warehouse enabling historical analysis and cross domain insight. Whereas specialized Domain specific Analytics include financial statements, sales territory planning and Project Performance built on Essbase technology. White space analysis built on Real Time decisions and Oracle Data Mining Technologies.

Oracle Fusion Functional Setup Manager provides a single user interface for performing all tasks related to Oracle Fusion Applications setup after installation and helps you to easily move the setup data between instances to reduce implementation time.

More References from Oracle

Oracle Fusion Applications is very secure and security approach consists of tightly coordinating the following aspects of security.

• Role-based access control (RBAC)
• Function security via OPSS
• Standard Data security
• Privacy
• Access provisioning and identity management
• Segregation of duties policies
• Enforcement across tools, technologies, data transformations, and access methods

The Oracle Fusion Applications security approach supports a reference implementation of roles and security policies that address common business needs.

Fusion Application Security Architecture

As a first step, you need to understand what security capabilities are offered by Fusion Application. The figure below illustrates the Fusion Application Security .

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

As per architecture you can see lot many security tools are been used . some of them as:

1. Single Sign on
   • Oracle Access Manager (OAM)
2. Identity Management Tools
   • Oracle Identity Manager (OIM)
   • OIM SPML Interface
   • Identity Governance Framework (IGF)
   • Oracle Virtual Directory (OVD)
   • Oracle Internet Directory (OID)
3. Authorization Management tools
   • Authorization Policy Manager (APM)

In fusion , in order to try any customizations and extensions , you need an environment for testing, before deploying to Production.In Fusion World this is magaed via SandBox Manager. The other terminology you need to get expose is Composer.

Sandbox Manager is a tool that provides a place where users can define and design their changes before putting them into production.

The three types of sandboxes are avaiable

• Metadata, such as non-flexfield UI page customizations :This sandbox supports making changes to the application's metadata stored in the MDS repository.
• Security :This sandbox supports making data security changes.
• Generated flexfields based business components

Sandbox Manager has the following features:

• This stored all changes in the sandbox
• You can have sandboxes to specfic to a user
• Can have many sandboxes running (different users) at the same time
• Make changes over a period of time (long-running sandbox)
• All documents changed can be saved or reverted with one operation
• Migrate sandbox in its entirety from test to production

Usually , there are two types of sandboxes:

• Sandboxes intended to be published.
• Sandboxes intended for "test-only" purposes.

Hope this helps. Next will explore more on "Composer"

If you are coming from EBS then this post will help you to understand the difference of security model in these two application.

here is quick comparison chart all the major security features of Oracle Application (EBS) and Fusion Application side by side.

Oracle Identity Management is major security infrastructure component of Oracle Fusion Applications .

Oracle Fusion Applications leverage Oracle Identity Management for foundation security services; identity administration (identity life cycle management, self-service account request and password management, enterprise role management); authentication and trust management (single sign-on, identity federation, privacy); access control (risk-based authorization, fine-grained entitlements, web services security); identity and access governance (audit and compliance reporting, segregation of duties, conflict-resolution management, attestation, role mining and engineering, identity and fraudprevention analytics); and directory services (persistent storage, identity virtualization,synchronization, and database-user security).

For detailed explanation of Oracle Identity Mangements integration with Oracle Fusion Applications refer this whitepaper published by Oracle.

If you are planning to R12.1 Upgrade these three New Resources will be useful.

1. Data Model Comparison Report

You can use this to do Per product database object comparison between any of two releases . This comparison report you can do for the following object types

• Regular tables, Partitioned tables, Index organized tables, Global temporary tables, Queued tables
• Views, Materialized views, Materialized view logs
• Indexes, Sequences, Advanced queues
• Packages, Triggers

Benefits

• Customers can focus on what has changed
• Easier to analyze impact on customizations, planned test coverage
• Differences viewable for all products in the same report via simple UI

Untill this Post, this is currently Available for R12.1.3 Vs (11i9,11i10cu2,12.0.4,12.0.6,12.1.1,12.1.2)

You can download this zip via as per metalink Note 1290886

Read details at here

2) EBS ATG Seed Data Comparison Report

You can use this to do Per product EBS ATG Seeded data type comparison between two releases.

This comparison report you can do for getting

(1) Summary report provides volume of changes between releases per product

(2) It all have detailed report per product provides , ie comparison for :

Benefits

Untill this Post, this is currently Available for R12.1.3 Vs (11i10CU2,12.0.4,12.0.6, 12.1.1)

You can download this zip via as per metalink Note 1327399.1

(3) EBS Online Documentation Library

This is a master list of all books (Apps and ATG) from main page via “Index” link and have a graet search capability.

You can get this accessible via Oracle.com

Read details at here

Here is a list with Administration Tools used for managing for Oracle Fusion application , middleware and database.

Oracle Fusion Applications

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Applications Control (Fusion Applications Control)
  • This is used to monitor and administer product family within the Oracle Fusion Applications
• Oracle Fusion Functional Setup Manager
  • This tool guides you through the tasks of setting up the functional data and reference data
• Oracle Fusion Applications Diagnostic Dashboard
  • This is used to register, execute, and monitor diagnostic tests for Oracle Fusion Applications
  • This helps for diagnostic test registration tags and purge diagnostic test results

Administration tools for Oracle Fusion Middleware

• Fusion Applications Control
  • This is used to monitor and administer Oracle Fusion Middleware components within Oracle WebLogic Server domain for a specific product family
• Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control (Grid Control)
  • This is used to monitor historical data for Oracle Fusion Middleware components across all Oracle
• Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console
  • This is used to manage Oracle WebLogic Server in each domain
• Oracle Fusion Middleware command-line tools
  • This is used to manage Oracle Fusion Middleware component . This is kind of Scripting Tool (WLST) and the Oracle Process Manager and Notification Server (OPMN)
• Middleware support for Applications Security
  • Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console - Manage policies of enterprise applications
  • Oracle Authorization Policy Manager - Manage application policies
  • Oracle Access Manager Administration Console - Manage system configurations
  • Oracle Identity Manager Administrative and User Console – Access users, roles, authorization policies
  • Oracle Web Service Policy Manager – Manage & secure web services for SOA composite applications

Administration Tools for Oracle Database

• Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control
  • This is used to monitor and manage the Oracle Database for the Oracle Fusion Applications