11.2.6 - FR Repository quirk

I've put a few 11.2.6 install notches on my belt lately, and I have had a mix of success, and a few issues, but mostly on maintenance upgrades. I did find something last week that had me scratching my head for a minute. An issue I was troubleshooting caused me to start looking at the FR repository…. And that's where I went down a rabbit hole!

Looking in SQL developer I connected as my FR user the schema is empty!

I opened the ConfigTool.cmd and selected the FR instance > Config DB and verified I put in the right information, and I used the user name for FR "EPM_FR."

I also ran a registry report and looked for the EPM_FR(DATABASE_CONN) entry in the report, and everything there was what I was expecting.

So where did they go, and how is FR working?

What I found was, whether this is by design or a bug in EPM 11.2.6, the FR configure database information is ignored by the configuration and FR is combined with Shared Services. On multiple levels. 

The first level is in the DB/Schema. The FR "CreateRepository.sql" script creates a host of tables, a few index's and a couple of sequences when it builds the repository. All of these objects were found inside the Shared Services Repository.

The second level is in WebLogic. When looking in the WL Admin Console I wanted to know how FR Web was working if the database was empty. What I found was no database connection was built for FR in the WL Domain, and the FR server was only targeted to the "EPMSystemRegistry"

Financial Reporting is working. I don’t consider this configuration quirk to be an "issue" in a functional way, but it is concerning that I was expecting the system to use a FR repository I specified, and the EPM system had it's own ideas.

If this is a design change and not a BUG, then Oracle should remove the "Configure Database" task from the FR in the ConfigTool. They might even consider moving FR into "Foundation" like the do Calc Manager. This "quirk" may pre-date 11.2.6.