The Bug Process
If you are working with a new release of the applications such as 11i, be aware that you might find programs that misbehave or act differently than the documentation would suggest. If Oracle Development has not yet produced a solution to the problem, the support analyst will start the process with Oracle Development to get a solution.
There are slightly different procedures for different kinds of problems. A bug in a form must document the specific keystrokes, mouse clicks, and error messages. A problem with performance must document the number of records in the table, the execution time, and how the performance degraded. A bug in a report shows whether the report will run from the operating system, the log file, and a copy of the output report. The goal is to create a reproducible case for Oracle Development.
When a bug report has been filed with Oracle Development, both you and the support analyst lose visibility of the problem. Oracle Development usually works anonymously, and you won't know how the problem is progressing until a solution is available. Occasionally, Development will ask for additional information, and that will be a clue that something is happening. You can still call your analyst daily to keep the activity level high, and you can try to escalate by pleading severe business impact. However, realize that Support is only able to give to you what Development gives to it.
Development might produce a patch to resolve your problem, or it might determine the application is behaving as designed. In the latter case, you will be able to file an enhancement request, but this means that you will not get a solution to this problem in the current release of the applications.