A fellow DBA and myself just recently completed a Release 12 installation. I started it and quickly ran into issues with the forms server. I then punted the project over to him to have a second opinion and to ensure that I did not make any mistakes. I am an interim/backup DBA so I thought a more specialized resource might have better luck.
Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for the team, he ran into the same issue. We were installing the Vision test instance on a new server with Oracle Enterprise LINUX. On the surface, this would appear to be a slam dunk. But it did not turn out that way all. After some significant assistance from an Oracle support representative, my Oracle peer was able to get the Vision instance up and running.
The problem is that the LINUX Team and Applications Team do not appear to be cooperating with each another. Apparently, the Release 12 installation requires an older version of Motif than what Oracle Enterprise LINUX contains. According to our support rep, we can only run the base 12.1.1 with IE 7. That seems a bit odd since Internet Explorer is currently on version 9 and 10 is approaching beta. We were assured that patching to a higher version of Release 12 will support future versions of IE.
So let this be a warning to anyone installing Oracle Applications Release 12 on OEL. It can be done but I was a disappointed that the installation process is broken and needs a considerable amount of work to get it working. I had higher expectations since this is a flagship product.
