Best Oracle Apps DBA Cloning Interview Questions 11i/R12 [ 2023 ]

Oracle Applications DBA EBS (E-Business Suite)
Cloning Interview Questions with Answers Part 1

1. What is cloning and why is it required?
Ans : 
• Cloning is the process of creating an identical copy of the Oracle application system.
It is required due to following reasons
• Creating a test copy of your production system before upgrading.
• Moving an existing system to a different machine.
• To test some patches
• Creating a development copy of your environment to be used by the developers.

2. What is rapid clone?
Ans : 
Rapid Clone is the new cloning utility introduced in Release 11.5.8. Rapid Clone leverages the new installation and configuration technology utilized by Rapid Install

3. How do I determine if my system is rapid clone enabled?
Ans : 
First, verify system is AutoConfig enabled. Then, verify that you have applied the latest Rapid Clone patch.

4. Explain the cloning process?
Ans :
1. Run adpreclone as applmgr and oracle user on source Perl adpreclone.pl dbTier as oracle user Perl adpreclone.pl appsTier as applmgr user
2. Take the cold/hotbackup of source database
3. Copy the five directories appl,comn,ora , db,data to target
4. Rename the directories, and change the permisssion
5. Set the inventory in oraInst.loc
6. Run perl adcfgclone.pl dbTier as oracle user,if the backup type is cold
7. If the backup type is hotbackup then Perl adcfgclone.pl dbTechStack. Create the control file on target from the control script trace file from source Recover the database Alter database open resetlogs
8. Run autoconfig with the ports changed as per requirement in xml.
9. Run perl adcfgclone.pl appsTier as applmgr
10. Run autoconfig with the ports changed as per requirement in xml.

5. What are the steps to clone from a single node to a multi-node?
Ans : 
• You must login as the owner of file system once the database cloning is done.
• Run the adcfgclone.pl from the common_top/clone bin.
• Accept for target system having more than one application tier server node.
• Collect the details for processing node, admin node, forms node, and web node.
• Now you get a prompt for the various mount point details and it creates the context file for you.
• Follow the same steps from all the nodes.

6. What are the files you need to copy from APPL_TOP for creating a clone application system?
Ans : 
• APPL_TOP
• OA_HTML
• OA_JAVA
• OA_JRE_TOP
• COMMON_TOP>/util
• COMMON_TOP>/clone
• 806 ORACLE_HOME
• iAS ORACLE_HOME

7. Does clone preserve the patch history?
Ans : 
• Yes, Rapid clone preserves the patch history in following locations
• RDBMS ORACLE_HOME: preserves the OUI oraInventory.
• iAS ORACLE_HOME: preserves the OUI oraInventory
• 806 ORACLE_HOME: preserves the patch level and Oracle inventory
• APPL_TOP and Database: preserves the patch level and history tables.

8. What are the scripts do you use while Apps cloning?
Ans : 
• A type of script that’s made a comeback in hot scripts is clone script.
• adpreclone.pl prepares the source system and adcfgclone.pl configures the target system.
• Both the scripts are located in $COMMON_TOP/admin/scripts/contextname directory.
• Adpreclone.pl collects information about the database.
• It also creates generic templates of files containing source specified hardcore values.

8a. What are the pre-reqs for cloning complete Application file system?

9. What are the pre-upgrade steps that need to be taken for the up gradation of non_11i instance to 11.5.10?
Ans : 
• First, you need to take a complete backup of the application system.
• Run the TUMS utility
• Review the TUMS report
• Maintain the multilingual tables
• Rename the custom database objects
• Check attachment file upload directory
• You need to save the custom.pll

10. How often do you clone?
Ans: 
Cloning happens biweekly or monthly depending on the organization requirement.

11. How much time does it take to upgrade, clone?
Ans: 
Clone usually takes around 48hrs to copy and configure and upgrade depends on the database size and module involved. upgrade from 11.5.9 to 11.5.10.2 will take around 3-4 days and 11i to R12 upgrade will take around 4-5 days.

12. When do we run FND_CONC_CLONE.SETUP_CLEAN?
Ans:
FND_NODES table contains node information, If you have cloned test instance from production still the node information of production will be present after clone in the test instance.
we use FND_CONC_CLONE.SETUP_CLEAN to cleanup FND_NODES table in the target to clear source node information as part of cloning.
Below syntax to execute:
SQL> sho user
USER is "APPS"
SQL> EXEC FND_CONC_CLONE.SETUP_CLEAN;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> commit;
Commit complete.

This will delete all the entries in the fnd_nodes table, to populate it with target system node information, Run autoconfig on DB node and Applications node.

13. What is the location of adpreclone.pl for oracle user?
Ans : $RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME/appsutil/scripts/

14. What is the location of adcfgclone.pl for oracle user?
Ans : $RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME/appsutil/clone/bin

15. What is the location of adpreclone.pl for applmgr user?
Ans : $COMMON_TOP/admin/scripts/

16. What is the location of adcfgclone.pl for applmgr user?
Ans : $COMMON_TOP/clone/bin

17. How do we find adpreclone is run in source or not ?
Ans : 
If clone directory exists under RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME/appsutil for oracle user and $COMMON_TOP for applmgr user.

18. How many clonings you have done?

19. What are the clone errors, you have encountered?

20. What does pre clone script do on source system?

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Best 20 Oracle Apps DBA RDBMS Interview Questions with Answers 11i/R12 Part1

Oracle Apps DBA EBS (E-Business Suite)
RDBMS Interview Questions/FAQs Part1

1. How to apply an RDBMS patch?
Answer :
Using opatch

2. Have you applied rdbms patches and for what?
Answer :
We got ORA-7445 error, for which oracle recommended applying a rdbms patch.

3. What is the pre-req for applying a rdbms patch?
Answer :
Inventory should be set in file oraInst.loc @/var/opt/oracle or /etc

4. What is Inventory?
Answer :
The oraInventory is the location for the OUI (Oracle Universal Installer)'s bookkeeping. The inventory stores information about all Oracle software products installed in all ORACLE_HOMES on a machine, other non-Oracle products, such as the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). In a 11i Application system the RDBMS and iAS ORACLE_HOMEs are registered in the oraInventory. The 806 ORACLE_HOME, which is not managed through OUI, is not registered in oraInventory.

5. What are the different types of inventories?
Answer :
The Global inventory (or Central inventory) The Local inventory (or Home inventory).


6. Is it necessary to shutdown database while applying a database patch?
Answer :
Yes.

7. What is Global inventory?
Answer :
The Global Inventory is the part of the XML inventory that contains the high level list of all oracle products installed on a machine. There should therefore be only one per machine. Its location is defined by the content of oraInst.loc. The Global Inventory records the physical location of Oracle products installed on the machine, such as ORACLE_HOMES (RDBMS and IAS) or JRE. It does not have any information about the detail of patches applied to each ORACLE_HOMEs. The Global Inventory gets updated every time you install or de-install an ORACLE_HOME on the machine, be it through OUI Installer, Rapid Install, or Rapid Clone. If you need to delete an ORACLE_HOME, you should always do it through the OUI de-installer in order to keep the Global Inventory synchronized.

8. What is local inventory?
Answer :
There is one Local Inventory per ORACLE_HOME. It is physically located inside the ORACLE_HOME at $ORACLE_HOME/inventory and contains the detail of the patch level for that ORACLE_HOME. The Local Inventory gets updated whenever a patch is applied to the ORACLE_HOME, using OUI.

9. How to find opatch is enabled or not for your database?
Answer :
If Opatch directory exists under RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME.

10. What is the size of your database?


11. How to find operating system version?
Answer :
uname –a

12. How to kill a database session?
Answer :
alter system kill session '&sid,&serial#';

13. How to find invalid objects in database?
Answer : 
select count(*) from dba_objects where status=’INVALID’;

14. What is tnsping?
Answer :
tnsping is command used to check the connectivity to the database server node from other nodes. TNS entry should be there in tnsnames.ora for the database we are trying to work this command.

15. How to find the locks and what is the resolution?
Answer :
we can find general locks with the following query:
select * from sys.dba_dml_locks order by session_id.
We can find the dead locks with the following query:
select * from v$lock where lmode > 0 and id1 in (select distinct id1 from v$lock where request > 0)
If it’s a dead lock, we need to kill that session.

16. Which files tell you the database health?
Answer :
alert log file @RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME/admin//bdump

17. What is statspack?
Answer :
Statspack is a database utility to gather database and session level performance information.

18. How to install statspack?
Answer :
Run the script spcreate.sql @RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin.

19. How to enable trace at database level?
Answer :
set init.ora parameter sql_trace

20. How to enable trace for a session?
Answer :
alter system set sql_trace=true;
Execute the sql query
alter system set sql_trace=false;
This will create a trace file at $RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME/admin/contextname/udump with the spid of the current sql session.

Oracle AppsDBA (E-Business Suite) RDBMS Interview Questions/FAQs Part2

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Top 30 Oracle Apps 11i/R12 DBA Cloning Interview Questions

Oracle Applications DBA EBS (E-Business Suite)

Cloning Interview Questions Part 2

21. Can we run pre clone script on Apps tier when services are up? Why?

22. Where is the adpreclone.pl script located in DB and APPS? How do you start it in both ?

23. What is the precaution you need to take before copying the file system to Target ?

24. Where is adcfgclone.pl located ? Where is its log file created?

25. What are the prompts adcfgclone.pl asks for on target system?

26. What are the errors you faced while cloning? How did you resolve?

27. Can we clone a cloned system? How?

28. How do we clone a single-node to multi-node system?

29. Can we clone a multi-node to single-node ? How?

30. Do profile options get updated as in source when cloning ?

31. Which post clone steps you need to do manually?



Related Oracle Apps Articles: Oracle Applications DBA EBS (E-Business Suite) Cloning Interview Questions with Answers Part 1