The REN Server – an Overview and a Neat Trick – Part 1 of 2 February 13, 2008
Posted by Duncan in PeopleTools.comments closed
This is part 1 of 2. See the companion post here.
The Overview
The REN Server is a seperate Web Server designed to publish Real-time Event Notifications to users, saving them the effort of repeatedly clicking on the Refresh button in Process Monitor. The Popup window you see when running a process ‘to window’ is originally an HTML area populated/called from an iScript, but then some HTML/JavaScript is loaded from the REN Server itself.
To assign permission to run a report ‘to window’ there are 2 steps to follow:
1) Look on the PeopleTools tab of the Permission List and click on Realtime Event Notification Permissions and check ‘Reporting Window’ has ‘Full Access’.
If you wish to use SQL, this will show which Permission List is giving you access to the Report to Window functionality. By default, it is PTPT1200.
SELECT RU.ROLEUSER
, RU.ROLENAME
, RC.CLASSID
, AI.AUTHORIZEDACTIONS
FROM PSROLECLASS RC
, PSROLEUSER RU
, PSAUTHITEM AI
WHERE RC.ROLENAME = RU.ROLENAME
AND RU.ROLEUSER = 'PTDMO'
AND AI.CLASSID = RC.CLASSID
AND AI.BARNAME = 'REPORTING'
2) You’ll also need access to the iScript. Stay with the Permission List, and look on the Web Libraries tab. You need to give WEBLIB_RPT Full Access to the iScript.
Again, if you wish to use SQL, this will show you the Permission list that is giving you access:
SELECT RU.ROLEUSER
, RU.ROLENAME
, RC.CLASSID
, AI.AUTHORIZEDACTIONS
FROM PSROLECLASS RC
, PSROLEUSER RU
, PSAUTHITEM AI
WHERE RC.ROLENAME = RU.ROLENAME
AND RU.ROLEUSER = 'PTDMO'
AND AI.CLASSID = RC.CLASSID
AND AI.MENUNAME = 'WEBLIB_RPT'
AND AI.BARNAME = 'ISCRIPT1'
AND AI.PNLITEMNAME = 'IScript_GetReport'
Now that security is covered you might think that there’s not a huge amount to talk about with the REN Server as in some ways it’s a bit of a ‘black box’. Unless you need Clustering/Failover or a Reverse Proxy Server there isn’t much to configure.
- There are some settings in the psappsrv.cfg (logging levels, ports and authentication token domain),
- and some settings under PeopleTools in the PIA (client authentication, SSL and host machine),
- and of course the option to boot the PSRENSRV process or not is set using PSAdmin
- there is also a psrenconfig.txt under the App Server directory, but I’ve never needed to mess with these settings
Yes, yes, you say. I know all that already. Tell me something I don’t know. Ok, I’ll wager you didn’t know this …
REN Server Ports on Multi-App Installations February 7, 2008
Posted by Duncan in Administration, Infrastructure, Oracle, PeopleSoft, PeopleTools, PS Admin.comments closed
When you have more than one App Server on a single machine – and they both need to run a Ren Server process – you need to adjust the port number in the same way you do for other processes (although the REN Server is easy to miss – like I did – as it’s near the bottom away from the other port numbers).
If you do boot the App Server without changing the port you’ll get an error message:
exec PSRENSRV -A -- -C psappsrv.cfg -D PADMO -S PSRENSRV : CMDTUX_CAT:1685: ERROR: Application initialization failure
tmboot: CMDTUX_CAT:827: ERROR: Fatal error encountered; initiating user error handler
tmshutdown -qy
OK, you think. I know what that is, it must be a port clash. So you reconfigure the port in PSADMIN and then try to boot it again. Same error. Checking the REN Server log gives the following clue:
(ERROR) nssock: Cannot listen on port 7180. The port may already be in use.
It’s still looking on port 7180, not the new port!
The missing step is to update the database, as the port is stored there also:
UPDATE PSREN SET PORT_NUM = 7185, SSLPORT_NUM = 7148
You should then find you App Server and Ren Server boot fine.
SQL Best Practises in less than 20 minutes January 29, 2008
Posted by Duncan in Oracle, PeopleSoft, SQL.comments closed
A post on the blog of H.Tonguç Yılmaz drew my attention to a great video tutorial by Stephane Faroult on “SQL Best Practises in less than 20 minutes”.
http://www.roughsea.com/vids/SQL_Best_Practices.html
Stephane clearly knows his topic, but also possesses a wonderful dry wit. His comical example of the developer’s shopping algorithm and the “DBA doing the parameter dance” to tune it had me chuckling away and has made sure that the point won’t be forgotten.
Is Oracle the next Microsoft? January 24, 2008
Posted by Duncan in Oracle, PeopleSoft.comments closed
There’s an article/survey on the Register website pondering the above topic.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/24/oracle_bea_acquisition/
Tolerance of slow App Server boot January 22, 2008
Posted by Duncan in Infrastructure, Oracle, PeopleSoft, PeopleTools, PS Admin, Tuxedo.comments closed
In one of the more recent versions of Tools (8.49 is the first time I’ve noticed it, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been around in prior versions) I’ve noticed that occasionally the boot of an Application Server will fail with an error.
Booting admin processes ...
exec BBL -A :
CMDTUX_CAT:1863: INFO: Process ID=2636 Assume failed (timeout).
At the time of writing, there is nothing in Customer Connection for this, and a google search wasn’t particularly helpful either. So I had to resort to a technique from pre-Google days – i.e. work it out myself. Thankfully it wasn’t too difficult. (more…)
Checking out the competition: Workday January 22, 2008
Posted by Duncan in Oracle, PeopleSoft.comments closed
A colleague spotted that the Workday website has some online demos posted.
For those unfamiliar with Workday it’s the next project of Dave Duffield, the co-founder and ex-chairman of PeopleSoft. See http://www.davesnextmove.com/
Some of the UI is pretty new (the org charts, related items and inline analytics are nice) but some of it is really reminiscent of a more ‘web 2.0’ style of PeopleSoft (the stars for required fields, the prompts, the date lookups etc).
It’s interesting they’ve used Adobe’s Flex/Flash to enhance the UI rather than Ajax or Microsoft’s Silverlight, and they’re using the ‘home page’ as more of a functional than a structural portal – definitely a step in the right direction.
The demos are here:
http://www.workday.com/resources/product_previews/index.php
BEA acquired by Oracle January 16, 2008
Posted by Duncan in Fusion, Oracle, PeopleSoft.comments closed
On the same day as Sun’s purchase of MySQL, it seems Oracle has finally managed to purchase BEA for $8.5 billion. Not as much as BEA wanted, but more than Oracle’s ‘highest offer’.
“The addition of BEA products and technology will significantly enhance and extend Oracle’s Fusion middleware software suite,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “Oracle Fusion middleware has an open “hot-pluggable” architecture that allows customers the option of coupling BEA’s WebLogic Java Server to virtually all the components of the Fusion software suite. That’s just one example of how customers can choose among Oracle and BEA middleware products, knowing that those products will gracefully interoperate and be supported for years to come.”
Multi Rowset Output from Query for XMLP January 15, 2008
Posted by Duncan in Oracle, PeopleSoft, PeopleTools, XML Publisher.comments closed
One of the issues with using PSQuery to generate the XML for an XMLP report is that you can only get a single rowset from a query, meaning your report had to be fairly simple. In the past, for more complex reports I’ve just created an App Engine instead as it gives me greater control over the XML generated.
Another method exists however …
Materialized Views January 10, 2008
Posted by Duncan in Oracle, PeopleSoft, SQL.comments closed
A materialized view (aka Snapshot) is a sort of ‘summary table’, the use of which allows you to reduce the processing time and complexity of some queries.
It’s a view where the data is defined via a SQL statement, but the resulting dataset is actually stored in the database (which can then be indexed, analysed etc). Depending upon the parameters chosen Oracle can keep the data in your view in sync with that in the tables upon which it is based. They were originally designed for replication (i.e. holding local copies of remote tables) but they’ve been adapted for performance tuning and reporting use.
XMLP and Checkboxes in PDFs January 2, 2008
Posted by Duncan in Oracle, PeopleSoft, PeopleTools, XML Publisher.comments closed
I’ve been having problems getting checkboxes to print correctly when creating PDFs using XMLP. I was faced with tiny little diamonds like those on the left here, when I was expecting ‘standard’ checkboxes like those on the right:
It turns out that the XML Publisher default PDF output font does not include a glyph to represent a checkbox and this is an issue faced by one or two Oracle people already (Tim Dexter has written about it here). I thought I add a quick write-up as I’m tackling the issue from a PeopleSoft perspective.
(more…)
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