Planet PeopleSoft

I’m going to Oracle OpenWorld again this year, and I just finished building my schedule.  Wow.  This year there are so many sessions I want to attend in the same time slots that I won’t be able to see a fraction of what I want to.  Guess I’ll have to skip the session on how to author blue-ray disks using Java in favor of a product roadmap session I need to attend.  You see, I’ve started a new project and I have a whole laundry list of stuff I need to come up to speed on.  I’m sure it’ll be an informative but exhausting week – it always is.

Gazing into my crystal ball, I’m expecting to hear more about the Fusion applications that were introduced at the end of the 2009 OOW.  I think Oracle isn’t re-inventing all of the functionality in their mature ERP/CRM product lines like PeopleSoft, JDE, EBS, and Siebel.  But all the same I’m expecting to see some products that are ready for launch and looking snazzy with the deep integration with BI and other apps that Oracle has invested so heavily in.

Speaking of BI, I’m looking forward to seeing the new release of OBIEE.  BI apps just look cool, and their functionality makes things like PeopleSoft Matching functionality seem boring in comparison.  I'm hoping to see support for a ton of data sources and the ability to publish interactive reports to latest generation mobile devices.  Unfortunately I think I missed the BI boat at some point in my career, so bring on the 3-way match!

PeopleTools 8.51 will be the next GA version of PeopleTools.

Oracle’s Jeff Robbins, Senior Director of PeopleTools Strategy, gives an excellent overview of the new version here (WebEx streaming playback).  This is great information to have as we lead up to Oracle Open World and all the news that will break there.  Worth the time to watch if you’re at all interested in where PeopleTools is going.

PeopleTools is doing a tremendous job of modernizing a ton of PeopleSoft functionality, even from prior releases.  If you haven’t upgraded to PeopleTools 8.5 yet (the most recent major release), you definitely should.

(An aside: if you’re tight on time, resources or budget, we offer a popular PeopleTools 8.5 upgrade service [PDF link] that starts at under USD $10,000 and takes just a few weeks to complete.)

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management) and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More PeopleSoft posts.

If you find that application designer or data mover is taking a long time to load, it could be because tracing is turned on in your configuration manager settings. A good indicator that this is the case is to browse to your temporary files directory (%TEMP%) and look for a file called DBG1.TMP. If this file exists, and is growing steadily, then the application designer/data mover login process is being traced.

To check this and turn it off, open configuration manager, and browse to the Trace tab:

As you can see, there are a few trace options enabled there! Click on the Clear Trace Settings button (on the right), and press Apply and OK to turn off tracing and close down configuration manager.

You should now be able to login to application designer/data mover.

by Praj

Sometimes, clicking the hyperlink in a pagelet to another component, takes you to the component but the breadcrumbs (in PeopleTools 8.5) are not updated. This occurs if the target component has the additional parameter, NAVSTACK=Clear. The NAVSTACK=Clear parameter is used for context sensitive return to links. See ID 620163.1 in My Oracle Support for more information about this parameter and what it does.

In addition to this, the NAVSTACK=Clear parameter has the undocumented feature of not updating breadcrumbs. To see which content references have this parameter, use the following SQL:

 select * from PSPRSMDEFN where PORTAL_URLTEXT like '%NAVSTACK=Clear%'; 

Note that NAVSTACK=Clear is mainly used in PeopleSoft HRMS.

by Praj

I put a post up a short while back on the RVP for PeopleTools 8.51, but this week an Advisor Session has been released where Jeff Robbins gives a little more info (although sadly no screen-shots).

Much of what is covered is similar to the RVP, with a few extras (or maybe I just didn’t notice first time around).

1) The Test Framework really is a big deal.

I semi-dismissed this last time as I suspected that it was the PS Unit Test tool with a rebrand, however it seems like it’s significantly more (which Bauke Gehem did in fact tell me in the comments to my post).  I’m looking forward to getting this up and running.

2) The Business Practice Change

It seems that software components that are part of the PeopleSoft stack that are not Oracle-owned might be finding life a little harder in future.  Tools 8.51 is the last release that Crystal, WebSphere and Business Objects will be packaged with.  Unless you are already a user of these tools, if you want to use them in future you’ll have to get a license directly from the vendor, not Oracle.

Oracle now provides hosted PeopleBooks on their web site. For a full list, visit this site.

PeopleTools

There are a number of useful reference sections in PeopleTools PeopleBooks. However, they can be a bit difficult to find at times!

Here are the some of the search terms and corresponding links to the sections I frequently use.

by Praj

I applied for Oracle Open World blogger registration and to my own surprise I received a pass to conference. I have not had a chance to post anything valuable here for awhile – but I promise I will try to make a use of my 5 days at the conference and catch-up on posting new and useful content here. I also hope to get in touch and meet some of the folks that I have been following for some time.

Servers are becoming more powerful as manufacturers are finding new ways to get more cores into a CPU.  Today it’s not uncommon to see hexa and octa-core processors shipping at the same price points the dual- and hexa-cores shipped yesterday.  Where manufacturers once got their performance improvements through raw CPU speed, they are now getting their getting the majority of performance improvement through more cores in their processor chips.

Unfortunately the economics of additional cores for performance aren’t the same as improvements through improved clock cycles because software manufactures have largely tied their technology licensing to the number of cores on a system, and their pricing isn’t decreasing as the number of cores on these new servers increase.

For example, say you buy a basic server with two hexa-core processors, so you’re looking at 12 cores on the box.  Now let’s suppose the list price for Oracle Database is $47,500 per core.    So your list price to run an Oracle database on your new server will be $285,000.  And that’s not counting tuning packs, diagnostic packs, management packs, or even maintenance -- which is calculated as a percentage of the base price.  It turns out the cheapest part of this equation may be the hardware!

So if you’re planning on running software from the big vendors, conduct a solid sizing exercise and be sure to buy just the number of cores that you need.  Leave empty sockets for growth, but you might want to choose models that let you scale with fewer cores to avoid breaking the bank. Avoid sharing servers with more than one software package that is licensed per core (i.e. Informatica and Oracle DB), or you could end up paying double for server capacity that you’ll never be able to fully realize.  And when you DO add cores, be sure to also purchase the additional licenses to stay in compliance.  I’ve heard that software vendors’ compliance teams occasionally check up on you, and running with a few extra cores could break more than your annual budget.

Not content managing all the great PeopleSoft related RSS/ATOM feeds in my news reader, I decided to setup a “planet peoplesoft” using the python-based Planet news aggregator.

http://theputnams.net/mike/peoplesoft

Every four hours, all the blogs listed on the right side of the above url are polled for new content.

For the person who suggested “tax updates”, there is no tax update RSS/ATOM feed that I am aware of. Screen-scraping from support.oracle.com is surely against their terms of service. So I guess I can’t add that.

Anyone have any other handy PeopleSoft feeds to suggest?

Jim Marion of “Jim’s PeopleSoft Journal” has published a great book on advanced/undocumented PeopleSoft development techniques: PeopleSoft PeopleTools Tips & Techniques

I’ve not read it cover to cover, choosing instead to peruse sections that pertain to development I’m working on at the moment.  I’ve already employed the great tips on Application Classes, AJAX and PeopleSoft, and Extending PeopleCode with Java and cannot wait for the next opportunity to jump back in and read more PeopleTools development wisdom.

Thanks Jim!

Tomorrow we, along with Oracle and some keystone clients and partners, will present a webinar on mobile workforce solutions for PeopleSoft Maintenance Management.  You’ll hear from East Kentucky Power Cooperative – a pioneer customer as it relates to to mobile solutions for PeopleSoft MM – and Blue Dot Solutions, the standout leader in enterprise mobility.  If our server logs are credible, this is a hugely popular topic right now.

This webinar will teach you how to:

• Increase productivity for remote workforce.
• Enforce quality work habits by automating best practices.
• Enable field service technicians to synchronize information directly.
• Facilitate visibility of materials and parts across the organization.
• Transition from a reactive to a true asset care mindset.

When? Thursday, August 26, 8 AM PST/11 AM EST.

Where? Webinar – see details below.

Why? Hear from the superpowers of the PeopleSoft Maintenance Management and mobility spaces.

Anything to do to pre-register? There is no pre-registration on WebEx; just use the link below and dial in.

Here are the full details.

(Click to enlarge)

PeopleSoft Maintenance Management is one of the hottest solutions in the Oracle PeopleSoft portfolio, and East Kentucky Power will explain in real-world terms how mobile technology helps them on a daily basis.  Combine that with our nationally-recognized implementation expertise, Blue Dot’s enterprise mobility leadership, and there’s a lot to learn in this hour-long webinar.  Hope you see you there.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management) and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More PeopleSoft posts.

The browser shortcut key combination Control+J or Ctrl+J (which you sometimes need to press twice in browsers) provides some really useful information. However, in a production environment there is some sensitive information you might want to remove from the display such as:

• Database Name
• Database Type
• Application Server

Optionally, you might also want to remove:

• Tools Release
• Application Release
• Service Pack

The web profile settings allow you to turn Control+J on or off under:

PeopleTools > Web Profile > Web Profile Configuration > Open the relevant web profile, e.g. PROD
On the debugging tab, enable the Show Connection & Sys Info checkbox to enable Control + J.

On changing this the web profile will need to be reloaded using servlet directives or a web server restart.

However, turning off Control+J is an all or nothing setting and turning it off also takes away some of the valuable information it provides. A compromise is to limit the Control+J options through a simple customisation.

In application designer, open the HTML definition, PT_INFOPAGECONNECT. This is the HTML displayed on the Control+J page. The labels for each element are stored in the message catalog. Here's how they map:

To hide the information that is sensitive, simply use HTML comments <!— —> to comment out the parts you don't want to show, e.g. for the Database Name, Database Type and Application Server (59,60,61) you could change the code in the HTML to this:

  <!-- <Reference> <Author> <DD/MM/YYYY>: Hide sensitive information from Control+J --> <!-- <tr> <td class='PSEDITBOXLABEL'>%Message(146,59)</td> <td class='PSTEXT'>%DBName</td> </tr> <tr> <td class='PSEDITBOXLABEL'>%Message(146,60)</td> <td class='PSTEXT'>%DBType</td> </tr> <tr> <td class='PSEDITBOXLABEL'>%Message(146,61)</td> <td class='PSTEXT'>%AppServer</td> </tr> --> 

This is how Control + J now looks with above information commented out:

You would do a similar thing for Tools Release, Application Release and Service Pack (52,53,54) if you did not want to show that information either.

by Praj

The first sign of this error was the following message on the sign on screen:

 CHECK APPSERVER LOGS. THE SITE BOOTED WITH INTERNAL DEFAULT SETTINGS, BECAUSE OF: bea.jolt.ApplicationException: TPESVCFAIL - application level service failure. 

However I could still login and use the application. What tweaked me to a deeper problem was that the web profile I expected (DEV) was not being used, and so the CTRL+J option was not available. On checking the application server logs, I found the following messages (formatted for readability):

 Error Setting Sign on PeopleCode context for User @MACHINE: Sign on PeopleCode was not executed PeopleSoft ID and Password authentication failed. Invalid user {V1.1}JP9ukEkTssmYrzsK1yvXFg==@MACHINE. {V1.1}JP9ukEkTssmYrzsK1yvXFg==@MACHINE is an Invalid User ID, or you typed the wrong password. User ID and Password are required and case-sensitive. Make sure you're typing in the correct upper and lower case. Failed to execute GetCertificate request 

Some research on My Oracle Support pointed to this article (ID 621495.1) which describes exactly the same symptoms. However, there was nothing wrong with the encrypted user PTWEBSERVER, who had the the correct password and encrypted password in configuration.properties, the account was unlocked, and they had the role PeopleTools Web Server. In fact nothing had changed at all in terms of web server configuration.

Eventually, I found that the windows firewall might have been blocking the java process for the web server. Since the web server was being started by a service, this was not evident. I only realised the problem after stopping the service and then trying to manually start it with the startPIA.bat file under PS_HOME\webserv\<DOMAIN>\bin\startPIA.bat. When I did this, it brought up the windows firewall dialog asking to allow private/public network access for Java which I accepted.

I then stopped the PIA with the stopPIA.bat file (in the same folder), and then started the PIA using the service. However the problem came back. So I uninstalled the service using PS_HOME\webserv\<DOMAIN>\bin\uninstallNTServicePIA.cmd and then installed it again using PS_HOME\webserv\<DOMAIN>\bin\installNTServicePIA.cmd. This fixed the issue. Perhaps it was an issue with the service all along? If that's the case, then simply uninstalling and re-installing the service might be all that you need to do to fix this.

by Praj

Depending on your trace options the log files it generates can be large and complex. Detailed here are some options to help clean traces.

App Server Info

Regular Expression removes App Server generated process and time information

 PSAPPSRV\.\d+\s\(\d+\)\s+\d-\d+\s\d+\.\d+\.\d+\s+\d+\.\d+\s+[<|>|\s]+\s PSAPPSRV.1036468 (4432) 1-1639614 11.04.53 32.330552 >>> start ... PSAPPSRV.1036468 (4432) 1-1639615 11.04.53 0.000050 call ext ... PSAPPSRV.1036468 (4432) 1-1639616 11.04.53 0.000135 >>> start-ext ... PSAPPSRV.1036468 (4432) 1-1639617 11.04.53 0.141851 <<< end-ext ... PSAPPSRV.1036468 (4432) 1-1639624 11.04.53 0.000032 <<< end ... 

by melban

The following SQL links together the XML publisher Report Definition, Data Source, Template, and Template file, to identify any reports that have a template where the template file definition is missing. Here's what the template definition looks like when the template file definition is missing:

Reporting Tools > XML Publisher > Report Definition > Template tab

If you a run an XML publisher report with a template file missing, you will generally get a message like this in your standard output log:

 Active template file not found in the template definition <TEMPLATE_NAME> for date <EFFDT>. (235,2515) PSXP_RPTDEFNMANAGER.TemplateDefn.OnExecute Name:GetActiveTemplateFile PCPC:15872 Statement:346 

SQL to search for report templates missing a file:

 select RD.REPORT_DEFN_ID, RD.DESCR as REPORT_DESCR, RD.PT_REPORT_STATUS, RD.DS_ID as DATA_SOURCE_ID, RD.PT_TEMPLATE_TYPE, RT.TMPLDEFN_ID, RT.IS_DEFAULT as IS_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE, RD.LASTUPDOPRID as REPORT_LASTUPDOPRID, RD.LASTUPDDTTM as REPORT_LASTUPDDTTM, DS.DS_TYPE, DS.DESCR as DATA_SOURCE_DESCR, DS.ACTIVE_FLAG, DS.SCHEMAFILE, DS.SAMPLEDATFILE, DS.REGISTERED_BY as DATA_SOURCE_REGISTERED_BY, DS.LASTUPDOPRID as DATA_SOURCE_LASTUPDOPRID, DS.LASTUPDDTTM as DATA_SOURCE_LASTUPDDTTM, TD.DESCR as TEMPLATE_DESCR, TD.REGISTERED_BY as TEMPLATE_REGISTERED_BY, TD.LASTUPDOPRID as TEMPLATE_LASTUPDOPRID, TD.LASTUPDDTTM as TEMPLATE_LASTUPDDTTM from PSXPRPTDEFN RD inner join PSXPRPTTMPL RT on RD.REPORT_DEFN_ID = RT.REPORT_DEFN_ID inner join PSXPDATASRC DS on DS.DS_TYPE = RD.DS_TYPE and DS.DS_ID = RD.DS_ID inner join PSXPTMPLDEFN TD on RT.TMPLDEFN_ID = TD.TMPLDEFN_ID left outer join PSXPTMPLFILEDEF TFD on TD.TMPLDEFN_ID = TFD.TMPLDEFN_ID where TFD.TMPLDEFN_ID is null order by RD.REPORT_DEFN_ID, RT.TMPLDEFN_ID; 

by Praj