The Applications Context

Where the System Identifier (SID) was traditionally used to identify a file as belonging to a particular Oracle E-Business Suite environment, an Applications context is used in an AutoConfig-managed environment such as Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12. The default context name, also referred to in this chapter as <CONTEXT_NAME>, is <SID>_<hostname>.
Using an Applications context has a number of advantages:

• Simplifies overall management of an Oracle E-Business Suite system
  
• Allows easier startup and shutdown of applications services
  
• Permits services to be installed or deinstalled independently of others
  
• Integrates seamlessly with a shared application tier file system (see Chapter 9)
  
• Enables use of Oracle Applications Manager for configuration management (see Chapter 7)
  
• Facilitates support for Oracle Real Application Clusters (see Chapter 4)

Before AutoConfig and the Applications context were introduced, configuration management tasks could be time-consuming and prone to error, in some cases requiring manual changes to be made to several configuration files. While individual configuration files are still used in an AutoConfig-enabled environment, they play a secondary role to an XML-based repository of Oracle E-Business Suite environment information, called the context file.
By centralizing the configuration information, AutoConfig simplifies procedures for activities that range from upgrading a technology stack component to starting and stopping applications services. Another benefit is that the various files AutoConfig employs can be updated via standard Oracle E-Business Suite patches.
There are separate context files for the application and database tiers of an Oracle E-Business Suite system.
Applications Context File - The Applications context file,<INST_TOP>/appl/admin/<CONTEXT_NAME>.xml, is a repository for environment-specific details used by AutoConfig to configure the application tier. Information from this file is used to generate Oracle E-Business Suite configuration files and update relevant database profiles.
Information stored includes:

• Name and location of the database
  
• Port numbers for Forms and Web services
  
• Product-specific port numbers
  
• Information about application tier services controlled by AutoConfig

The values of the context variables that make up the context file are in part determined by the choices you make when you run Rapid Install. For example, when you specify that a particular application tier node is to be used as a concurrent processing server, the relevant variable will be set to execute the scripts that start the service.
Database Context File - The database context file, <RDBMS_ORACLE_HOME>/appsutil/<CONTEXT_NAME>.xml, performs an equivalent role on the database tier. Information from this file is used to generate configuration files used on the database tier when AutoConfig is next run.