Every site will have at least one environment with Demo data in it, and many developers will have a favourite PeopleSoft Demo data employee, one they know the Emplid for better than their own.

Some pick the first in the list, so that’ll be Rebekah Jones or Kimberly Adams.  It’s often wise not to pick the top ones as they’re also likely to be chosen by others – and it’s good to find an employee that others don’t mess with.

These names will be instantly familiar to most long-time PeopleSoft (HR) developers:

Darlene Bergsten,

Leo Puddephat,

Paul Acosta,

Beatrice Test,

and my personal favourite: Ginger Buckalew.

I’ve often wondered – and perhaps a PeopleSoft alumni can help with this – were these ever real people?  Or did someone fake up a load of demo data one day?

I’ve been spending a little time putting together a VM using Windows Server 2008 and was pleasantly surprised to see that there is a new start-up type when configuring the PIA, App Server and Process Scheduler to start as services.

As well as Automatic, Manual and Disabled, there is now an Automatic (Delayed) option.

David Kurtz has spoken about using service dependencies, but I just want my App Server and Process Scheduler to start after the intial flurry of start-up activity has finished and everything else has calmed down.

Services that have a delayed start still start automatically, they just wait until all the services that aren’t delayed to finish before firing up.

It works a treat!

Following OpenWorld ‘08 I posted about some of the new functionality coming in PeopleTools 8.50, including partial page refresh, modal lookup and prompt dialogues, redesigned menu pagelet etc.

Oracle have now made the RVP available so we get a better idea of what is included in the release.

I’ve picked out a few things that I hadn’t heard about previously:

Maximum number of rows to return on search pages

Search pages will now contain an option to limit the number of rows returned.  The maximum is also configurable globally in PeopleTools Options.

64 bit only software

It seems from Tools 8.50 onwards that the hardware the components are installed upon will be 64-bit only.  No more installing a sandpit environment on your 32-bit laptop … [EDIT 17th May: It seems that running a 64-bit VM on a 32-bit host is possible with VM Ware, but not Virtual PC.  See comment below from Jim Marion.]

Parallel file deploy in CA

Finally!  This should speed up file copies.

Decoupling of PS_Home

It seems that there’ll be a read-only PS_Home with all of the binaries etc, and a seperate read/write config_home for the environment specific config files.

Graphical routings of messages

Should help troubleshooting Service Operations

Interactive PeopleCode debugger

It appears that during a debug session you’ll be able to change variables on the fly.  Pretty nice.

App Class method drilldown

Right-click and jump to the method, just like you can with PeopleCode functions.

New ‘Swan’ contemporary style sheet

A lick of paint for the UI ‘matching Oracle Corporate application standards’, whatevr they may be.  I hope that doesn’t mean the ‘mustard and blue’ that Oracle e-Biz suite users had for years.

Looking forward to it, roll on September …

This year the UKOUG PeopleSoft Conference has been split out from the Oracle Conference (last year it was in the same building, just on a difference floor).  We’ve also teamed up with the GPUG (the HCM Global Product User Group) so there’ll be an extra stream of content this year (HCM, Financials, Tech, Round tables and GPUG).

I’ve been for a few years running now and thoroughly enjoy it.  There’s always something new in the presentations (check out the agenda if you need convincing), it’s excellent for networking with fellow professionals, and there’s nothing like being able to coral some of the industry’s experts to answer a question or two from back at work.

Finally, there’s been a change of venue.  We normally have a contigent of overseas visitors, and seeing as it’s practically on the end of one of Heathrow’s runways it couldn’t be more convenient (just make sure you don’t bring swine flu with you!).

If you’re quick, the early-bird discount will save you a bit of money too …

Click here to register.

In a previous post I’ve spoken about the benefits of creating a custom Navigation Collection on your homepage.

(Note: this doesn’t need to be Enterprise Portal, this can be done in the HR/Financials/CRM/Student Admin application).

I also covered migrating your setup to other environments.  A step I neglected to mention is a common one, when colleagues enviously notice your productive new setup how do you easily apply it to their user profiles so they can benefit also?  Or perhaps you’re setting up a homepage to roll-out to the entire user community?

Here’s how you do it:

The first step is security.  If you’ve created your pagelets then you’ll also have provided some kind of security, either public or role based.  Assuming users have the permissions to use your pagelet then they’ll be able to add it to their homepage.

Secondly, you want to programmatically apply your setup to their profile.  The tables containing the setup are:

PSPRUHDEFN (Homepage Definition)

PSPRUHTAB (Homepage Tabs), and

PSPRUHTABPGLT (Homepage Pagelets)

The quickest way I’ve found is to write a query bringing back just the row(s) for the user you’ve setup, and then use the “export as insert statement” functionality in SQL Developer/TOAD to automatically generate the insert statements.  Then all you have to do is amend the oprids and you’re done.

Finally, you’ll probably need to clear the App Server cache.

Oracle buys Sun Microsystems!

Today I had the need to check something on an old Tools 8.18 / HR v8.3 environment that hadn’t been booted for many a year, and it was quite an eye opener.

The environment was hosted within an old VM, last touched in 2003 and it was fun to mess around and battle to get it booted.

Those of us that have been around for a few years will remember the old Tools 8.1x user interface with the breadcrumbs, but one of the surprises for me was how fast it runs on a modern laptop.  I gave it 1.5GB Ram and it absolutely flew!

The entire VM (that’s Windows 2000, the install – Tuxedo, WebLogic, Ps Home, and the database – SQL Server) comes in at just under 4GB.

Another surprise was that the PeopleCode editor didn’t have Syntax Highlighting.  I can remember moaning about it at the time – how most other IDEs had it built in for years – but I’ve just got so used to having it I’d forgotten there was a time when it wasn’t there, and boy does it make PeopleCode difficult to read.

So it was a surprise on one hand, how far the product has come since 2003, but also a little sad as most of the progress came in the first half of the intervening years.

I’ve put together an overview of Oracle’s SQL Developer product – at least the main features from a PeopleSoft developer’s perspective – plus some productivity tips and configuration tweaks to make it a better user experience.

It’s probably a bit big to be a blog post so I’ve put it on a tab at the top, and at this link:

http://peoplesofttipster.com/sql-developer/

According to the Enterprise System Spectator there have been a large amount of layoffs at Oracle (and a lesser amount at SAP). Around 8,000 employees have lost their jobs.

It’s not immediately clear whether it’s 10% of the global workforce or 10% in North America.

It can be a good idea to frequently take flat-file backups of your App Designer Projects, depending upon how reliable the infrastructure is at your site, and how frequently environments get refreshed from Production.  I’ve often thought “I wish that there was a shortcut for this procedure”, but have never done anything about it.

I recently chanced across the excellent PeopleSoft Wiki and noticed a batch file containing many command lines to control App Designer, including exporting projects to command line.

Now I’m not awfully keen on automating migration between environments (I like to run the compare reports and set the flags myself immediately before migration) but the exporting of projects caught my eye.

Using the same command line we can create a batch file that’ll loop through a list of projects and export them – one at a time – into a directory of your choosing.

Create a file in the same directory as the batch file with a list of the projects you wish to export (one on each line) named project_list.txt.  Then run the following batch file:
set pside=C:\Tools\bin\client\winx86\pside.exe
set export_path=C:\temp\exports\
set dbtype=ORACLE
set user=ddavies
set pwd=******
set srcdb=DEV
FOR /F %%a IN (project_list.txt) DO %pside% -HIDE -PJTF %%a -FP %export_path% -CT %dbtype% -CO %user% -CP %pwd% -CD %srcdb% -QUIET -AF 0 -DDL 1 -PPL 0 -CFD 0 -CFF 0 -LF %export_path%%%a.log
pause

Update: 2nd Feb
Anyone having the same issue as Jeff in the comments (where your project flags are set incorrectly and as a result the project gets copied, but not the objects) can set the flags via SQL.

UPDATE PSPROJECTITEM
SET COPYDONE = 0, TAKEACTION = 1
WHERE PROJECTNAME = ”;

One extra note, when you run the above SQL the results aren’t always immediately visible in App Designer. Sometimes I’ve had to shut it and re-open, and sometimes I’ve had to clear the cache also.