EPM 11.2, RCU and You!

There’s a venerable utility for Oracle Fusion Middleware that has been available for quite some time. Those of us who configured Oracle Data Integrator in the pre-FDMEE days, Hyperion Financial Close Management Suite 11.1.2.1 through 11.1.2.4.2xx, or Oracle Business Intelligence know what I’m about to discuss.

 
Oracle Repository Creation Utility, or “RCU” for short.

In EPM 11.1.2.4 and prior, you didn’t need to worry about running RCU if you weren’t using the modules I mentioned within my first paragraph.

Those days are behind us now. EPM 11.2 requires that you run through the RCU process before you attempt to create your Oracle WebLogic domain and deploy your EPM Foundation web service.

R2D2 says: “Technically, EPM Foundation is an Oracle WebLogic Managed Server.”
C3P0 responds: “Don’t get technical with me [further insults added here].”

So let’s talk about what has changed in EPM 11.2. Your actions will depend upon if you’re using Microsoft SQL Server or an Oracle database.

If you’re using Microsoft SQL Server, the steps are a little more complex because your DBA needs to create an empty database for you. Furthermore, the DBA needs to run these queries against that database before you may continue and run RCU. Let’s assume the DBA has named the RCU database “epmrcu”:

ALTER DATABASE epmrcu Set READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON
GO
ALTER DATABASE epmrcu Set ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON
GO
ALTER DATABASE epmrcu COLLATE LATIN1_GENERAL_CS_AS
GO

Note the COLLATE option is slightly different for RCU’s database vs. everything else EPM wants to use (source: SQL Server Database Creation Requirements).

The above steps aren’t needed if you’re using an Oracle Database; RCU creates the schemas and associated users for you.

Now for both MS SQL Server or Oracle Database, you need to fire up Oracle/Middleware/oracle_common/bin/rcu.bat and follow the instructions here: Using RCU.

Unless you’re a DBA, you will need a DBA’s assistance. The RCU utility requires someone with elevated rights to type in their credentials for a DBA superuser account (“sa” for MS SQL or “sys as sysdba” for Oracle). There’s the option to save the commands to a SQL query so your DBA can run it on their own, but I’ve experienced mixed results with this in the past.

So you now have your RCU database initialized. There’s just one more manual step to do.

On each server where any Oracle WebLogic components run, you need to manually edit this file:

Oracle\Middleware\EPMSystem11R1\common\config\11.1.2.0\RCUSchema.properties

Here’s the fun part:  passwords are exposed in plain text until you run through configTool on the server, at which time the passwords become encrypted (source: Updating RCU.properties File).

(Edit: I blew away my MS Server 2016 VM and spun up MS Server 2019 after being advised by Oracle that Server 2016 hasn’t been certified yet for EPM 11.2. After running through RCU, I inspected the RCU.properties file and noticed encrypted passwords. I still had to update the JDBC URL and some other information).

Once you complete all of these tasks, you may finally launch configTool and deploy your WebLogic Admin Server and your various WebLogic Managed Services. If you overlooked these instructions from the config guide, unfortunately you will need to blow away the entire domains/EPMSystem folder structure and start over.

Want to learn more about what I’ve learned about EPM 11.2? Download my white paper, “From the Mad Scientist’s Lab: An Assessment of Oracle Hyperion/EPM 11.2.”