Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Compliance Warning: Customizations

Making even one small customization can put you out of compliance when using Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS)

Oracle E-Business Suite comes with “a restricted-use license for the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, Oracle Internet Application Server Enterprise Edition, which includes WebLogic Server Basic, and a limited set of other products.”

According to Oracle, Organizations using an Oracle EBS Application must use them in their “vanilla”, or “out-of-the-box” state, and modifications exceeding the restrictions of the embedded licensing will result in additional licensing requirements.

Oracle distinguishes between three levels of modifications to its Oracle E-Business Suite Applications, which have increasing licensing requirements for the underlying database and other technologies.

1. No Modifications
   • Included restricted use licenses:
     • Oracle Database Enterprise Edition
     • Oracle Internet Application Server Enterprise Edition
     • WebLogic Server Basic
     • A limited set of other products
   • Additional License Requirements:
     • none

2. Modifications implemented as Java programs and/or modifications to Forms, Reports and/or Workbooks
   • Included restricted use licenses:
     • Oracle Database Enterprise Edition
     • A limited set of other products
   • Additional License Requirements:
     • Oracle Internet Application Server Enterprise Edition
     • WebLogic Server Basic

3. Modifications to the database – tables, columns, stored procedures and triggers, more…
   • Included restricted use licenses:
     • none
   • Additional license requirements:
     • Oracle Database Enterprise Edition
     • Oracle Internet Application Server Enterprise Edition
     • WebLogic Server Basic
     • A limited set of other products
   • In this situation, the customer is required to purchase full use licenses for the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, as well as Oracle Internet Application Server Enterprise Edition (or WebLogic) for the total number of end users or processors for which the modifications are deployed.

Potential additional license requirements:

• Internet Developer Suite and Oracle Programmer for developers making modifications
• JDeveloper for developers who build Java programs which access application schema and who are not licensed for Internet Developer Suite
• For client server workbooks, Discoverer Desktop Edition for total number of actual users

Other possible issues to consider before customizing:

• The software vendor may not provide the software support you need when you need it
• Software patches may not work properly
• Version upgrades will not be certified by the vendor to work with your customizations

 

Commercial off-the-shelf software such as Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) applications is a logical choice for an organization’s operational needs, but care should be taken before choosing the best application.

When considering application candidates, considerations should be:

1. Will the software vendor share a trial version for hands-on evaluation before you commit?
2. Is the program customizable to meet your needs? There may be a simple issue that would eliminate this candidate for consideration, such as an essential text field for your specific business is limited in the version to a predefined amount of characters, and the field cannot be altered to meet your current use.
3. Does a customizable feature lead to additional licensing needs for compliance? Will you need to add a corporate logo, additional fields to an included report format, add tools to modify your application’s back-end database, or some other customization?