A Progress Bar for the REN Window June 25, 2008
Posted by Duncan in Application Engine, PeopleSoft, PeopleTools.comments closed
When I spoke before about the REN Server window and inserting into it, I mentioned that as well as text a progress bar was a possible inclusion.
The benefit of a progress bar to the users is that they can tell at a glance how far through a long running process is.
There are inherant problems with progress bars of course, in that they’re often less than 100% accurate. Most people have at some point joked at the time estimates for file copy progress bars within Windows, and ‘Microsoft Minutes’ is sometimes used as an ananlogy for inaccurate and super-cautious time estimates.
Despite this, I believe they have a place. For some processes – particularly those that run row-by-row – it’d be pretty easy to work out how far through it is by comparing the row number to the total number of rows.
Here’s how it’s done … (more…)
ReUse in App Engines July 31, 2007
Posted by Duncan in Application Engine, PeopleSoft, PeopleTools, SQL.comments closed
One of the easiest tricks to improve performance of some App Engines is the ‘ReUse’ setting. It’s useful when you have a SQL object that is called multiple times, for instance when you have a DoSelect that runs a SQL Step repeatedly, substituting different Bind variables in each time.
Clearing the Process Scheduler Cache – without a Reboot June 11, 2007
Posted by Duncan in Administration, Application Engine, PeopleSoft, SQL.comments closed
I subscribe to a couple of PeopleSoft technical mailing lists / websites and I came across an interesting tip tonight that I thought I’d pass on.
The post was on IT Toolbox (peoplesoft.ittoolbox.com) and the poster was a guy called Neil Pak (at least that’s what the email said, I guess his real name could be anything).
The issue being discussed was one that’ll be familiar to all developers who’ve written a few App Engines in their time – needing to bounce the Process Scheduler to clear the cache, to get the Process Scheduler to use the latest changes. Sometimes it picks them up, sometimes it doesn’t, particularly if you’re changing an existing object – and for me this has happened mostly with SQL Objects. (more…)
State Records and Missing Data May 22, 2007
Posted by Duncan in Application Engine, PeopleSoft, SQL.comments closed
We’ve encountered an issue today that we hadn’t noticed before. Within an Application Engine program we populate a state record (AET table) with values. The first time we use these values (i.e. retrieve them using %Bind(<fieldname>)) the values are retrieved successfully, however when we attempt to use the values a second time they are empty/blank.
This occurred because our State Record was set as a Derived/Work record and our App Engine did not have restart disabled. As a result it was performing Commits after each Section (the default behaviour), and – this is the gotcha – a commit clears down the State Record!
The PeopleSoft Tipster Blog 