Defining a concurrent program

The different types of concurrent programs that we can create are as follows:

It is worth noting that at runtime the executable will need to be placed at a specific location. Files are stored in the $PRODUCT_TOP of the application they are registered with. Under this directory, they will be in the directory related to the type of program it is. The following are a few examples of where executables will need to be stored:

Throughout the chapter we will be looking at the output and log files generated by Oracle EBS when we run a concurrent program. These files are produced during execution and we can write log messages or output messages throughout processing. The output file is used to produce output for the user to see what has been processed and the log file is used to write more technical or debugging messages, which may not necessarily be understood by the end user. An additional way to debug is to use APIs to write to the FND_LOG_MESSAGES table.

The location of log files can be found by querying the FND_CONCURRENT_REQUESTS table. The two columns you are looking for are logfile_name and outfile_name:

SELECT logfile_name, outfile_name
FROM FND_CONCURRENT_REQUESTS
WHERE request_id = <request_id>

The results of this query will give you the location of the output files for a given request_id. Alternatively, you can search for the files manually in the directory listed in the UTL_FILE_DIR parameter in the init.ora file. The log file will start with an l and the output file with an o. Both will be followed by the request_id and both will have a .req file extension.

To register an application, perform the following steps:

We have now registered a custom application called XXHR Custom Application. We can see that the application short name and the base path are defined here.

The responsibility we need to configure the concurrent program is Application Developer. The code for the following recipe is available in the following files: XXHREEBS_1_1.pks (specification) and XXHREEBS_1_1.pkb (body). Follow the readme_1_1.txt to install this package.

We have defined an executable that will be launched by the concurrent program we are about to configure next. The executable has to be created before we can configure the concurrent program. This executable is calling a database package which at present has very little in it. When calling a PL/SQL package from a concurrent program there are two mandatory parameters. These are errbuf and retcode. We must return a value that represents a completion status and this is done by assigning a value to the retcode parameter. If we look at the package specification we can see that there are three constant variables defined, called SUCCESS, WARNING, and FAILED. These are set to 0, 1, and 2 respectively and we will assign a constant variable to the retcode out parameter to return a value to the concurrent manager upon completion. Valid return values for the retcode parameter are as follows:

0 - Success
1 - Success & warning
2 - Error

We have assigned constant variables to make the code easier to read. The other parameter that is returned is the errbuf parameter. We can assign text to this parameter so that we can return error messages if any occur at runtime back to the concurrent program, so it will be displayed in the log file.

So now we have configured the executable and also defined the concurrent program that launches the executable. These are the basic steps required to configure a concurrent program. As you will see there are a number of other regions on the screen and some buttons, and we will be looking at some of these later in the chapter. The next step is to run the concurrent program.