2 System Requirements and Technology Stack

This section contains the following topics:

System Requirements
Technology Stack
Integrated External Systems
Character Encoding Settings

System Requirements

This section includes some general requirements for your Oracle Life Sciences Data Hub (Oracle LSH) installation. Additional details are available in the documentation for each product you must install.

Operating Systems

To get the most current information on the Oracle LSH technology stack, see My Oracle Support article 180430.1, Oracle Life Sciences Applications Supported Technology Stacks.

Linux x86 (32-Bit)
- Oracle Enterprise Linux 5
- Red Hat Enterprise AS/ES 5
Linux x86-64 (64-Bit)
- Oracle Enterprise Linux 5
- Red Hat Enterprise AS/ES 5
HP Itanium 11i v3 (64-bit)
AIX 6.1 (64-Bit)
Oracle Solaris 10 (64-Bit)

Note:

Users of 64-Bit OEL 5.6 can use Oracle VM templates to install Oracle LSH 2.2.2. Find instructions in the MOS article, Guide to Using Oracle VM Templates in an Oracle Life Sciences Data Hub 2.2 Installation (ID 1450700.1).

Hardware

Oracle Applications 12.1.3 and Oracle Database 11.2.0.4 can be installed on the same or different servers.

In addition, you need one computer running on Windows for use in installing TMS. You will not need this computer after installing TMS except to install any TMS patches that may be required in the future. See Chapter 4, "Installing Oracle Thesaurus Management System." You need at least one Windows computer if you plan to use Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) to define Business Areas and create data visualizations (OBIEE Answers); see Integrating Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Editions (OBIEE) for Visualizations. You can use the same Windows computer for OBIEE and TMS.

In an installation where the application and database tiers are installed on different computers, those computers are typically connected by a local area network (LAN), while the application-tier computer is connected to clients in a wide area network (WAN).

Using Real Application Clusters (RAC) to install the database over several nodes is optional; see Appendix B, "Installing Real Application Clusters (RAC)" for further information.

Oracle LSH uses Oracle XML Publisher (which is bundled with Oracle Applications) to generate PDF-format Report Sets. If you plan to use this feature and if your Report Sets are very large, you may want to dedicate one node to Oracle XML Publisher processing.

For system hardware requirements see the documentation for each component; see Assemble the Documentation.

In addition:

The TCP/IP network connection to the server should be at least at 1 GB.
Be sure to allow for growth in database storage capacity.
Oracle recommends installing a test environment as similar as possible to the production environment, including all operating system and other patches and updates.

Technology Stack

To get the most current information on the Oracle LSH technology stack, see My Oracle Support article 180430.1. At the time of publication of this document, the required technology stack for Oracle LSH consists of the following products:

Oracle Applications 12.1.3 and required patches.

Note:
Oracle LSH Release 2.2.2 has been tested ONLY on Release 12.1.3 of Oracle Applications. Do NOT install more recent releases unless explicitly instructed to do so by an Oracle LSH-specific note or alert on My Oracle Support.
JDK The Java Developer Kit 1.6 is shipped and installed with Oracle Applications 12.1.1.
Oracle Database 11.2.0.4
XML DB, which is included with the 11.2.0.4 database, is required for Oracle LSH.
Oracle Warehouse Builder 11.2.0.4 OWB is required for Oracle LSH execution system and is bundled with Oracle Database 11.2.0.4.
Oracle Thesaurus Management System 4.6.1 is used internally for the Oracle LSH classification system.
Oracle Reports 10.1.2.3.0 is required for Oracle LSH Programs of type Oracle Reports. It is bundled with Oracle Applications 12.1.3.
A zip utility is required on the Oracle LSH Distributed Processing Server.
Winzip Pro 11.2 SR-1, Winzip 8.1, or any other Winzip version that includes WZUNZIP.exe. This is required on clients used by Oracle LSH developers who launch integrated development environments (IDEs) such as SAS or the Oracle BI Administration Tool on their PC. Winzip is separately licensed and not included on the media pack.
Web browsers:
- Apple Safari 7, 6, 5, 4, 3.2.1 (on Windows only)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 10, 9, 8, 7, 6
- Mozilla Firefox 3.6, 3.5, 24.* ESR, 2, 17.x ESR, 10.x

Integrated External Systems

Oracle LSH includes adapters to support integration with the following external systems.

Oracle Clinical 4.6 or Oracle Clinical 4.5.1 or 4.5.3 with patch 4.5.1.14 or its successor 4.5.1.75, applied. Both patches are compatible with 4.5.3 as well as 4.5.1. — Optional and licensed separately.
SAS 8.2, SAS 9.1.3, SAS 9.2, SAS 9.4
Informatica PowerCenter 8.6.1 with HotFix 11 or Informatica PowerCenter 9.0.1 with HotFix 2, and Informatica PowerCenter 9.5.1 can be used to develop and run Oracle LSH Programs of type Informatica — Optional and licensed separately.
Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 10.1.3.4.1 with patch 7642637 or (OBIEE) 11.1.1.7.0 with patch 131017 can be used to create OBIEE visualizations of Oracle LSH data — Optional and licensed separately.
Oracle BI Publisher 10.1.3.4.1 and 11.1.1.7.0 with patch 140715 can be used to create Oracle LSH reporting Programs of type BI Publisher — Optional and licensed separately.

Character Encoding Settings

The data loaded into Oracle Life Sciences Data Hub (LSH) may originate in many systems, and these systems may use different encoding for special characters, including characters used in languages other than English. Special characters encoded in a coding system other than the one used by Oracle LSH may not be stored or displayed correctly in Oracle LSH.

If your data includes special characters, follow the steps in the sections listed here to adjust the many settings that determine the encoding used by various processes.

Make changes only after carefully analyzing the potential impact on your own data.

Set the database character set when installing Oracle Applications; see Oracle LSH UTF8 Requirements.
Leave NLS_LENGTH_SEMANTICS set to its default value, which is BYTE. To use character semantics, which is required, see the next point.
Set the LHS profile Use Character Semantics for Workarea Installation to Yes. See the chapter on setting profile values in the Oracle Life Sciences Data Hub System Administrator's Guide for information.
Set environment variables on each computer where you install the Oracle LSH Distributed Processing (DP) Server; see Set NLS_LANG to UTF8.
Add a JVM argument to the DP Server Start script; see Edit the DP Server Start Script.
If you are running SAS programs from Oracle LSH, see Start SAS in UTF8 Mode.
Definers who have a SAS or Oracle client such as SQL Developer or SQL*Plus installed as a development environment on their PC should follow instructions in Set the NLS_LANG Environment Variable to UTF8.