R12 AD utilities: One step forward, two steps back?

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After having completed my first installation of E-Business Suite Release 12, I decided to take a look on Metalink whether there were some critical updates to EBS Release 12. My special interest was in the Applications Technology Family.

I found out there was a number of patches to be applied.
Apparently, patch 4502962 (Applications DBA minipack), which drew my attention (after all, it is a minipack, and is marked as high priority) is already applied when you do a fresh install of R12. No need to apply this one.

However, while running adpatch, I found out that Oracle apparently has decided to go back in time a little (back to the days of -11i- AD.I.2, I suppose): During adpatch, you will be asked for a number of passwords:

Autopatch needs the password for your ‘SYSTEM’ ORACLE schema
in order to determine your installation configuration
Enter the password for your ‘SYSTEM’ ORACLE schema: manager
…
Enter the ORACLE password of Application Object Library [APPS]: apps

After applying AD.I.4 in 11i, the passwords did no longer show while typing them. This was a feature long awaited for by the Oracle E-Business Suite Administrators. Now, with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, they suddenly appear again.
Is this because Oracle didn’t use the most recent version of adpatch to build their R12 code on? Or is there another reason?

This doesn’t only apply to adpatch. It also applies to adadmin and adctrl. I didn’t check the other AD utilities yet, but I am almost sure that it applies to all of the ad utilities that use these questions.

EDIT (March 16, 2007): Two days ago, I logged an enancement request with Oracle for the re-improvement of these tools. After going back and forth some times, the engineer came back with the following message:

Development have stated:
” This is an expected behavior. The feature that hides the system and apps passwords is reverted. There is an issue with this feature on AIX platform. So we have reverted this feature. This requires a fix from server. We have logged a bug against server to fix this (Bug 5559355). ”
So it seems the fix in AD.I.4 has been reverted & is being progressed in bug 5559355.

Aparently, some issue on AIX is holding back this functionality to be implemented… You all know the bug number now, so keep an eye on this bug!

Anyway, please be aware of the fact that your system and apps schema passwords plainly appear on your screen while applying patches to R12.