Oracle Applications File System

Oracle Applications File System

A proper understanding of the file system that Oracle Applications implements is critical for efficiently working with and managing Oracle Applications.

The below discussion only a brief overview of the Applications file system and directory structures and does not include shared application tier file system.

The final structure your application file system takes depends upon the input parameters that you give while executing rapidinstall, it is carried across multiple nodes with the help of the config.txt which stores these parameters.

The [dbname] in this blog refer to your database name and generally the SID of your database which is also specified at the time of executing rapidinstall for installing oracle applications.

Since the installation start with the DB node first we will first talk about the DB Tier.

On the DB tier there two main top level directories which are [dbname]DATA and [dbname]DB.

The [dbname]DATA is also reffred as the DATA_TOP contains all the datafiles (.dbf) for the various tablespaces of your database. These include your System tablespace, Applications Tablespace, Temporary table Space etc. All the datafiles must reside within the DATA_TOP.It is however possible to have multiple DATA_TOPs within a Oracle Applications Instance, this is
particularly useful for spreading across your datafiles across multiple mount points or disks.

The second important top level directory of the database tier is [dbname]DB. This contains your 9i ORACLE_HOME (as in the case of 11.5.10).That is under this directory all the files need to run and maintain you database reside.any database upgrade like upgrading your applications database to 10g would involve upgrading this ORACLE_HOME.

Coming to the Applications Tier there are three important top level directories.

[dbname]APPL,[dbname]COMN and [dbname]ORA

The [dbname]APPL is also know as your APPL_TOP. The APPL_TOP contains the core technology files required for Oracle Applications it also contains individual subdirectories for all oracle applications products. For eg under the [dbname]APPL or the APPL_TOP you would find directories for AD,FND,GL etc. These product directories are also know as PRODUCT_TOPs like AD_TOP,GL_TOP etc. Each of the product directories have the sub directories like admin, driver, import, odf, sql, bin, forms,reports etc.

The second TOP level directory under the applications tier is the [dbname]COMN. This is also referred to as your COMMON_TOP.The COMMON_TOP contains files that are commonly used by different Oracle applications products as well as any third party applications that may have been integrated with Oracle applications.

The COMMON_TOP contains sub following sub directories.

admin which holds the place for concurrent manager log and out files in the log and out sub directories respectively. Also it contains a scripts subdirectory.
html which is also referred by the environment variable OA_HTML contains the HTML files, JSP,CSS and Java scripts that are used by Oracle Applications.
java subdirectory which holds the jar files, this is also referred to as the JAVA_TOP.
scripts subdirectory that contains the machine admin scripts like the adstpall.sh
util subdirectory contains third party utilities that are used in oracle applications like JRE from sun microsystems
Temp subdirectory used for caching
Portal subdirectory used to delivery rapid install portal pages.

The third top level directory under application tier is the [dbname]ORA directory.This contains the IAS ORACLE HOME and the 8.0.6 ORACLE HOME.

Apart from the Database ORACLE_HOME 11i uses two other ORACLE_HOMES.The first is the 8.0.6 ORACLE HOME.This is used for developer 6i products which are forms reports and graphics. The applications executables also link with the 8.0.6 libraries.

IAS ORACLE HOME is the ORACLE HOME used by the 9iAS application server which is the primary web server for Oracle Applications.