Internal 500 error accessing direct forms in R12

Many a times we hit lot of issues after cloning, mostly it would be login issues. Being APPS DBA we will try to eliminate and find the root cause of the problem to fix the issue. One such approach is "Direct access to Forms" to check whether form services are configured successfully or not. From introduction of Self-Service in 11.5+, direct access to forms is not allowed by default.

We have to tweak the Administer server security settings to enable this feature. By default the value would be "SECURE" which should be "OFF" to access forms directly

Command to change the security settings. In admin application node run below command as applmgr user.

java oracle.apps.fnd.security.AdminAppServer apps/<apps_pwd> AUTHENTICATION OFF DBC=$FND_SECURE/<SID>.dbc

Check the status using,

java oracle.apps.fnd.security.AdminAppServer apps/<apps_pwd> STATUS DBC=$FND_SECURE/<SID>.dbc

Sample output:

Database Server

---------------

DATABASE_ID:<SID>

AUTHENTICATION: OFF

Application Server

------------------

APPL_SERVER_STATUS: VALID

APPL_SERVER_ID:<Server ID>

After turning off Administer Server Security bounce all application services.

Then access the below links for direct forms,

11i, http://:/dev60cgi/f60cgi

R12,http://hyptestdb.alrajhisteel.com:8010/forms/frmservlet

When your middle tier forms server is 10.1.2.3 then you will hit below error while accessing the above URL,

500 Internal Server Error
Servlet error: An exception occurred. The current application deployment descriptors do not allow for including it in this response. Please consult the application log for details

This is a known issue and got fixed in higher version 10.1.2.3.1

Workaround is to append "?" at the end of URL like,

11i, http://:/dev60cgi/f60cgi?

R12,http://hyptestdb.alrajhisteel.com:8010/forms/frmservlet?

References

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1. Log on as a Different User Option Greyed Out in File Drop Down Menu [ID 165485.1]

2. Preventing access via "/forms/frmservlet/" in Release 12 [ID 821037.1]

3. How to Administer Server Security in Release 12 [ID 443978.1]