Oracle EBS Alert Mechanism

Question

I have no knowledge on Oracle EBS and Oracle Alert mechanism. My understanding is that Oracle Alert works just like database trigger.

Will Oracle Alert fire when database updates/inserts happen from the back-end? We have observed alert is only firing for transactions front end and not running for back-end updates?

Is it guaranteed that just like a Trigger, EBS Alert will fire on every update to the record?

Answer 1

My understanding is that Oracle Alert works just like database trigger.

Yes, it is somewhat like a database trigger created from the Front-End Application. To explain further, there are two types of Oracle Alerts, Periodic and Event Alerts.

1. Periodic Alerts are alerts have a specific schedule and run according to a set period and time.
2. Event Alerts are alerts that only send notifications whenever inserts or updates have been performed on a table from the Front-End Application.

Take note that for Event Alerts, the triggering table must be setup in Oracle EBS' Application Object Library (called an Application Table).

Will Oracle Alert fire when database updates/inserts happen from the backend?

No. Taking this line from Krishna Reddy :

Oracle Alerts can only be triggered from an application that has been registered in Oracle Applications. Alerts cannot be triggered via SQL updates or deletes to an Alert activated trigger.

To add more context, Oracle Alert is a simple and efficient way to give you an immediate view of the critical activities in your Oracle Application. It helps Business Users / Administrators be on top of important or unusual business events you need to know about via E-Mail. It can also automate a process depending on the user's response.

Some weaknesses and limitations though, is that Oracle Alert cannot process rows up to more than around 50, and its Report Layout has a text-based design and does not support HTML. Also, the text width is also limited.

Check out the Oracle documentation and this good article about Oracle Alerts.