Choosing the right instance

Working in  a multi instance environment with the main PROD instance accompanied by TEST DEV and others can be tricky. While in my previoust post I covered on how to tell the difference if one is looking for it, it is too easy to confuse them and create a test record on the Production instance, or enter a valid customer order into Test, especially if both are opened at the same time. 

The best way to avoid it is to change the application color and apperance for each instance. 

FORMS

Most of the time, when DBAs make a clone they set the value of the

Site Name 

profile by putting the name of the instance there. This changes the name of the application displayed in the bar on top of the window:

This is very useful but often can be overlooked.  A good way to make the difference apparent is changing the colors of forms which can be done with the 

Java Color Scheme

profile.  As long as every instance has a different color, the risk of confusing them is minimized

Another, a bit more radical approach is to remove the oralce graphical interface and display pure Java forms by changing the 

Java Look and Feel

profile. This will make your 11i or R12 applications look vary much  like the old 11.0.3 version.

OA Framework

The Java profile options will not change the way your Oracle Framework pages look like. 

To change them you need to se the 

Oracle Applications Look and Feel

profile. 

Here is an example of how the pages look after the profile change

If you want to go further than that, you can use the 'Customizing Look and Feel Administrator' responsibility to design your own graphical theme.

There is also a http://oracleskins.com/ company that designs customized skins.