Fixing EPM 11.2.15 Upgrade Issues: Oracle Inventory Errors and Patch 11.2.21 Workarounds

I ran into a first while installing the base of EPM 11.2.15 this last week and wanted to share the details.

Having upgraded an environment to EPM 11.2.15, which is a full installation package, the environment components were redeployed and validated.  Everything in the environment worked as expected and validated.

The next step was to upgrade the environment to the latest available patch, EPM 11.2.21.  It was here when the wheels fell off the proverbial bus.  The EPM 11.2.21 validated and installed, and it was seemingly successful.  However, a look at the detail log from the patch showed that every EPM component was not applied, as the products weren’t deemed to be present in the E:\Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1 folder.

Of course, they were present, because the environment services were running and validated, and the Help | About page was showing all of them running at 11.2.15.  So what was happening?

Well, it turns out that the final step of any EPM 11.2.15 installation is the updating the Oracle Inventory step.  This step can take upwards of an hour in many systems, and looking at the inventory files for the environment showed no reference to 11.2.15 whatsoever, even though the install seemed to have completed without issue.

The fix here was to re-run the 11.2.15 installer, select ‘Reinstall this release’ and redeploy everything a second time.  Once this was done and revalidated, we were able to see that the inventory updated properly, and then apply the 11.2.21 patch set. 

So, if you ever encounter something similar…now you know a workaround. As always, the team here at iArch Solutions is available to assist with your EPM or cloud computing needs, so don’t be a stranger.