Almost all of the technical PeopleSoft sessions at OpenWorld were using PeopleTools 8.52 which in not GA yet. I was pleasantly surprised that Oracle showed commitment to PeopleSoft platform and desire to develop not only the PeopleTools but also enhance the product offering by providing more integrations and run-times of the other products that Oracle owns, for example Oracle SES Search will replace Verity in the next version PeopleTools and will also provide enhanced search capability throughout the application. Here is a sneak peek of the new stuff:

• Pivot Grids – interactive analytics based on the query
• Related Content/Actions – additional action in the context of current transaction without leaving the current page
• Application Search / Component Search (SES) – navigate to transactions, items in the catalog and whatever else you have indexed
• Pagelet Improvements – Enhanced ability to drill, edit fields in the pagelets
• Modal Windows – removed limitations intorduced in 8.51, more widely used in Applications 9.2
• InterWindows communications are intorduced
• Application Designer–  (finally) drilling into Application Classes/Packages, Find Definition references for Application Classes

It seems that there are more good news across the Oracle products – in order to gain competetive advantage we should be seen more and more products being better integrated and even some of them being offered for free within a product you already own. Fusion Apps for example utilize Hyperion Analytics for grids. Of course those “free” components will have just a run-time license.

For full overview of the new features coming out in 8.52  you can download the PeopleTools Highlights session presentation from the OpenWorld Site

Wednesday keynote was for the major part about Oracle applications direction. Steve Miranda talked about Oracle having entire stack – hardware and software, and the fact that Oracle software will run better and will be optimized for Oracle / Sun hardware.

The biggest news was introduction of Oracle Public Cloud by CEO Larry Ellison. Although not similar to traditional cloud software platforms like Salesforce.com or Workday, Ellison emphasized that the differences are the key advantages of the Oracle Cloud platform:

1. Oracle Cloud consists on Oracle Fusion Applications  that utilize  industry standard technologies :  SOA, Architecture, security built into middleware, Database , OS
2. Modern user interface with actionable news,  Analytics,  BI
3. Ability to run Fusion Apps – on premise, hosted or in the cloud

Larry Ellison spoke about the lengthy 6 year journey to Fusion apps and the reasons behind

1. Approximately 100 Fusion modules are in GA (Generally Available) now
2. Oracle Fusion Applications utilize industry standards on all application layers – Java, Oracle Database and Weblogic. This allows Fusion applications to be easily migrated from On-premise to Hosted or Cloud solutions.
3. The vision has changed from what it was 6 years ago – Facebook, Twitter have inflluenced the way people work. Hence, Oracle has added Oracle Social Network for Enterprise, which is also integrate into Fusion apps.

Last years heavyweights continued  the sparring match about “Clouds”.  This time around Larry Ellison first cancelled Marc Benioff’s scheduled keynote, that generate quite a media frenzy and he also added a slide about the “false clouds”.

A picture is worth a 1000 words so here are some of  the slides that I found notable:

1. Business Objects or Crystal reports CDs will not be shipped or supported starting July of 2011 – not surprising since the introduction of XMLP and SAP purchase of Business Objects
2. Additional COBOL compiler from IBM will be offered on AIX and Windows – can be purchased separately, see My Oracle Support Doc ID 1212164.1
3. IBM WebSphere Application Server – “will need to be separately licenses from IBM, September 1, 2010, NEW customers will not receive a license to use IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) when they purchase PeopleSoft Enterprise applications.  Prior to upgrading to PeopleTools 8.52 existing customers will need to obtain support from IBM or migrate to Oracle WebLogic” .
4. PeopleTools will have additional Database Tuning features available only for Oracle Database

On the same note I would like to add that the theme of the conference was – Oracle Investment in Oracle Products on Oracle OS running on Oracle Hardware.

As long as you buy Oracle branded suite – you are all set, but be careful if you decide to buy just a jacket – you may need to go to the tailor to make it fit better. Not to be too negative though, Larry needed to make a decision and spend wisely, based on the recent acquisition of Sun and MySQL  – Oracle has become a one stop shop that makes everything from the jackets, pants, shoes and soon will be making eye-wear and handbags to match.

Aside from the obvious PSOPRDEFN table there is PSACCESSLOG – this table has OPRID, LOGIPADDRESS, LOGINDTTM, LOGOUTDTTM columns that give you information about user sign on activity. LOGIPADDRESS will contain the RemoteAddr property  of  %Request object, which is also useful in case you validate user ip address at the sign on. The only problem this could pose is in case your users are behind a single or multiple gateways that perform NAT. Then the value of this field would contain those NATed ip addresses and not the actual user ip addresses.

I would like to start from the end and the good news for all Oracle PeopleSoft application users – Oracle plans to maintain PeopleSoft application for some time even though there are plans to try and come up with mysterious Fusion Applications, but no one knows when, where or what modules would Oracle to start with.

Because Oracle does not seem to be a able to eliminate all of the product lines it has acquired over the years – the long term strategy is to keep the products but heavily invest into integration solutions – Fusion Middleware – and expand the suite of included product and toolsets.

Crystal Reports – currently part of the PeopleSoft , was recently purchased by rival SAP, will still be supported,  but if you would like to have less problems with upgrades and next version you should try and use XML Publisher.

PeopleTools 8.50 – the official “not written” word is 3rd quarter of 2009 and I really hope this is true, because after seeing the new suite in action,as in presentation in my earlier posts, we’ve been all waiting to get our hands on and give it a try. Just a quick note – as long as you are on version 8.4+ you should be able to upgrade to new tools to utilize the latest and greatest of the new platform – new sleek look, AJAX , partial page refreshes and new integrations.

All of the further slides I am including are borrowed from the presentation by Tom Vassallo.

Here is a diagram that outlines the Application compatibility and Tools Releases:

Furthermore , folks at Oracle PeopleSoft added some cool features like iPhone apps for Expenses:

Remember there was this great BI product Hyperion Essbase, oh sorry – Oracle System 11. Well the good news for all of us that are using these tools, according to the new strategy – “unite and conquer” – Oracle is throwing some free features with Tools:

The icing on this cake are ability to integrate with social networking, RSS feeds:

To stay with current trend Oracle is also starting to add SaaS solutions for all of the lines of products. I am sure we’ll see more of those appear soon.

To finish this post here is the official roadmap for PeopleTools and Application 9.1

The solution that I have employ to solve this problem is to modify the PT_BRANDING:BrandingBase class to dynamically display environment name based on the URL, like this:

PT_BRANDING Application package was meant to be used to dynamically customize the look and feel of you application and of course you can do a lot more with this but this is just a very simple example of how easy this can be done.

In order to achieve the above effect all you need is to add code to 2 methods in the class PT_BRANDING:BrandingBase

method GetUniHeaderHTML
method GetUniHeaderHTML_PIA

These methods, as the name suggests are responsible for rendering you Application Portal Header.

/*Iouri Chadour - Added to put Test Environment notification in the header&Request.ContentURI - returns your portal URL in form http://server:port/psp/PSPRC/Left(Right(&Request.ContentURI, 4), 3) - extracts the significant piece to displayon the header*/
&zEnvName = Left(Right(&Request.ContentURI, 4), 3);
&Greeting = &zEnvName | " Environment " | ", UserID:" | %UserId | ", Name: " | %UserDescription;
/* End Mod */

/* This code below is delivered checks for client browser to ensure that Header is displayed correctly */

If &navTheme.isNS4x() Then    &UniHeaderHTMLPIA = GetHTMLText(HTML.PORTAL_UNI_HEADER_NS4X, &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PS_LOGO), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBRCRV), " ", " ", &FavoritesHTML, &AddToFavoritesHTML, &HelpHTML, "", &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_CRV), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_BG), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_BG), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBRCRV), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_SHD), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBR), &styleSheet, &homeURL, &startURL, &AddToFavFormHTML, &LogoutURL, MsgGetText(95, 400, "Return Home"), /*20*/MsgGetText(95, 401, "Home"), MsgGetText(95, 402, "Return to Menu"), MsgGetText(95, 403, "Menu"), MsgGetText(95, 408, "Sign out"), &Greeting, &SearchHTML, &ColSpanHTML, &PersonalizeHTML, "", "", &HelpJSHTML, &homepageJS, "", &TabHTML, &WLHTML, &domainScript, &Response.GetJavaScriptURL(HTML.PT_SAVEWARNINGSCRIPT), "", &SaveWarnCrossDomainScript, &Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_ACTIVE_CENTER), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_INACTIVE_CENTER), /*40*/&Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_LINE), %Request.ExpireMeta, &CTIHTML, &MCFHTML, &PPMHTML, &Charset);ElseElse    &UniHeaderHTMLPIA = GetHTMLText(HTML.PORTAL_UNI_HEADER_NNS, &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PS_LOGO), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBRCRV), "", "", &FavoritesHTML, &AddToFavoritesHTML, &HelpHTML, "", &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_CRV), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_BG), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_BG), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBRCRV), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_SHD), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.NEW_PORTAL_HDR_TBR), &styleSheet, &homeURL, &startURL, &AddToFavFormHTML, &LogoutURL, MsgGetText(95, 400, "Return Home"), /*20*/MsgGetText(95, 401, "Home"), MsgGetText(95, 402, "Return to Menu"), MsgGetText(95, 403, "Menu"), MsgGetText(95, 408, "Sign out"), &Greeting, &SearchHTML, &ColSpanHTML, &PersonalizeHTML, "", "", &HelpJSHTML, &homepageJS, MsgGetText(95, 138, "Tool Bar Header"), &TabHTML, &WLHTML, &domainScript, &Response.GetJavaScriptURL(HTML.PT_SAVEWARNINGSCRIPT), "", &SaveWarnCrossDomainScript, &Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_ACTIVE_CENTER), &Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_INACTIVE_CENTER), /*40*/&Response.GetImageURL(Image.PT_HOME_TAB_LINE), %Request.ExpireMeta, &CTIHTML, &MCFHTML, &PPMHTML, &Charset); End-If;

1. Download Notepad++ from http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/
2. After install go to Settings and remove all languages that you are not using:

3. Download PeopleCode and SQR syntax and Intellisense files below

a) Paste Intellisense File below

into C:\Program Files\Notepad++\plugins\APIs\

and %appdata%\Notepad++\plugins

Download Files -

PeopleCode IntelliSense 1

PeopleCode IntelliSense 2

b) Paste PeopleCode and SQR Syntax files attached below into %appdata%\Notepad++\

Download File – PeopleCode SQR Syntax Files

c) Close and restart Notepad++

 

4. Configure Notpad++ to recognize sqr and peoplecode by following the instructions below:

Choose the desired language e.g. Peoplecode or SQR and change the color scheme to the way you like it. For PeopleCode I suggest specifying rem and  remark in the comments & Number section. For the slash comments to work properly  / /  – we need to specify them in the Operators section (screenshot), because for some reason PeopleCode has more that 2 types of comments –

/+ your comment +/

/* your comment */

rem your comment

remark your comment

Enjoy – in my next post I will explain how Notepad++ can be effectively used for looking at PeopleCode Trace files.

Here is a link to

Oracle Database Online Documentation 11g Release 1 (11.1)

And here PeopleBooks Link:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12341_01/crm9pbr0_run2/eng/index.htm

   1:  

   2: db2 "reorg table PSFSSYS.PS_LEDGER index PSFSSYS.PSCLEDGER allow read access indexscan"

   3: db2 "RUNSTATS ON TABLE PSFSSYS.PS_LEDGER FOR INDEX PSFSSYS.PSCLEDGER"

   4: db2 "reorgchk current statistics on table PSFSSYS.PS_LEDGER"

Also it is great to cleanup treeselectors, to make sure that static selectors did not get out of sync with trees, this can be done on a regular basis, see a sample script below. Please note that the number in the end of the treeselector name xx – corresponds to the chartfield length:

   1:  

   2: -- Delete TreeSelectors

   3: Delete from PSFSSYS.PSTREESELECT05;

   4: Delete from PSFSSYS.PSTREESELECT06;

   5: Delete from PSFSSYS.PSTREESELECT10;

   6:  

   7: -- Delete Tree Control table for the respective selectors above

   8: delete from PSFSSYS.pstreeselctl

   9: where length in (5,6,10);

For details about PeopleSoft nVision architecture and structure please make sure to read the Red Paper by clicking below

PeopleSoft nVision Red Paper

Tags: PeopleSoft nVisoin