The chapter includes the following sections:
Before you begin installing or planning an installation of Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer, be sure to review the following information.
Unlike the other Fusion Middleware 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.7.0) installers, the Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer installer is a patch set installer and not a full installer.
As a result, the following applies:
If you have an existing 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) Oracle home containing one or more of the Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer components, then you can use this installer to patch the Oracle home to Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.7.0).
For more information, see the "Applying the Latest Oracle Fusion Middleware Patch Set" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Patching Guide for Oracle Forms and Reports.
If you are planning to install a new Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer environment, then review your software needs and business requirements, and consider alternative software solutions provided by Oracle.
For more information, see Section 1.2, "Alternative Oracle Solutions for Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.7.)."
This section includes the alternative solutions for Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.7.0).
It contains the following topics:
For a complete portal solution, Oracle recommends that you install Oracle WebCenter 11g to experience the most complete portfolio of portal, web experience management, content, social, and collaboration technologies in a single integrated product suite.
For more information, see the following resources:
If you have a requirement to use Oracle Forms and Reports 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.7.0), then Oracle recommends installing Oracle Forms and Reports 11g Release 2 (11.1.2), which offers more advanced Identity Management (Oracle Internet Directory with Oracle Access Manager) and configuration options.
You can install Oracle Forms and Reports 11g Release 2 (11.1.2) with a pre-existing Oracle Single Sign-On 10g or a new installation of Oracle Access Manager (OAM) 11g.
For more information, refer to the following resources:
If, after reviewing your business needs and the available software alternatives, you still need to install a new Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.7.0) environment, consider the following:
Unlike previous releases, you cannot install all the components of this installer at the same time. Instead, each product now has its own requirements and processes for installing and configuring the software.
Note:
While installing Oracle Portal or Oracle Forms and Reports, 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) or 11g Release 2 (11.1.2) version, make sure that you create separate Middleware homes for each of the products, to ensure that the installation is in compliance with the recommended maintenance and certification.
If you are installing Oracle Forms, Reports, or Discoverer, you must install and configure them without securing them with Oracle Identity Management. There are several known issues when attempting to secure these product versions with Oracle Identity Management during the configuration phase.
Unlike Oracle Forms, Reports, and Discoverer, Oracle Portal cannot be installed and configured without Oracle Internet Directory (OID) and Oracle Single Sign-On 10g. However, at this time, Oracle Single Sign-On 10g is not supported for new installations.
As a result, if you want to install Oracle Portal from the Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer installer, then refer to "Considerations When Installing Oracle Portal 11g" in the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11.1.1.7.0 Release Notes for information about locating specific information on this topic from the My Oracle Support Web site.
While installing a new Oracle BI Discoverer 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.7.0) Oracle home, be sure that you select only Oracle Discoverer during the Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports, and Discoverer 11g installation. You can also configure Oracle Discoverer to integrate with OAM 11g after installing Oracle Discoverer on your system.