6 Apply One-Off Patches

This section describes how to apply Functional One-Off Patches to your Oracle Fusion Applications environment.

The topics related to applying One-Off Patches are as follows:

Prepare to Apply a Functional One-Off Patch

MANDATORY: These steps must be performed prior to applying individual patches using Patch Manager.

To confirm whether an issue may be resolved by a patch for Oracle Fusion Applications, research the issue on My Oracle Support
After finding a patch that may resolve the issue, confirm whether the patch was previously applied to the system. Run the Patch Status report to see if specific patches were applied, as described in the Patch Status Report section.

Apply a Functional One-Off Patch

The end-to-end process of obtaining and applying individual patches using Patch Manager is described as follows:

Upon determining that a new patch is required, download the patch from My Oracle Support. Unzip the patch zip file in the PATCH_TOP directory.
Review the README file that accompanies the patch. This file contains important information and instructions that must be followed. If a patch contains pre-installation or post-installation manual steps, they are described in the patch README file. If there are patches listed under "Other Patches" in the README file, download and apply them before continuing with the application of the Oracle Fusion Applications patch.
Run the Patch Impact report to see the artifacts and managed servers impacted by this patch as described in the Patch Impact Report section. An example of the report command is as follows:
```
FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/ad/bin/fapmgr.sh report -patchimpact -patchtop path_to_unzipped_patch
```
Run the fapmgr validate command to find any potential issues that could result in failure while applying the patch. Resolve all validation failures during this step, to prevent failures during patch application. During patch application, the patch validation runs again by default. An example of the validate command is as follows:
```
FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/ad/bin/fapmgr.sh validate -patchtop path_to_unzipped_patch
```
Prevent locks on patched objects and other data issues during patching of database artifacts by performing the following:
1. Ensure all users are off the system.
2. Set the environment variable for your APPLICATIONS_BASE and FA_ORACLE_HOME directories.
3. Run Health Checker to perform the Patching Readiness Health Checks and the General System Health Checks. Examples of the Health Checker commands are as follows:
```
FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/hc/bin/hcplug.sh -manifest FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/hc/config/PatchingReadinessHealthChecks.xml [-DlogLevel=log_level]
FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/hc/bin/hcplug.sh -manifest FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/hc/config/GeneralSystemHealthChecks.xml [-DlogLevel=log_level]
```
4. Manually shut down the Oracle Enterprise Scheduler Service (ESS) servers by performing the following steps:
  1. Stop the ESS request processor and dispatcher to prevent new requests from being processed.
  2. Cancel any in-progress requests.
  3. Shut down the ESS WebLogic Server Managed server.
5. If the patch contains BI Publisher reports, ensure to back up any customized versions of BI Publisher reports. If a patch includes an update to a catalog object that was delivered with an Oracle Fusion application, the patch will overwrite any customizations applied to the original report.
  
  If a patch contains BI Publisher artifacts, the BI OPMN control process, which is similar to a node manager, must be running for online mode validation to succeed.

Apply the patch using thefapmgr apply command. An example of the apply command is as follows:

FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/ad/bin/fapmgr.sh apply -patchtop path_to_unzipped_patch [-workers number_of_database_workers]

Monitor the progress of the patching session and verify its successful completion by reviewing the Log Summary from a browser.
Review the Diagnostics report to determine if any manual steps are required for the artifacts included in the patch and where the artifacts were copied in FA_ORACLE_HOME.
Review the Diagnostics report to determine if Managed Servers require restart. If any servers must be restarted manually, the report provides the target domain and the names of the cluster and Managed Servers that must be restarted.

If the patch contains JAZN artifacts, resolve any conflicts by reviewing the log files.

Run Health Checker to perform the Post Patching Health Checks. An example of commands is as follows:

FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/hc/bin/hcplug.sh -manifest FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/hc/config/PostPatchingHealthChecks.xml [-DlogLevel=log_level
FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/hc/bin/hcplug.sh -manifest FA_ORACLE_HOME/lcm/hc/config/GeneralSystemHealthChecks.xml [-DlogLevel=log_level