OOW2010 – day 3

Today was an exciting day for Peopletools stuffs.

First of all was the session “PeopleSoft PeopleTools Product Roadmap” (Jeff Robbins) with a lot of announcement and planning for the future of Peoplesoft. As of now, a new Peopletools release will be out on 12 months basis. There will be the major releases (Peopletools 8.50 is) and minor releases (the next two ones). Major releases will be the based releases for the new applications delivered on a 3 years basis. It could be resume as following :
Peopletools 8.50 => Application 9.1 (2009)
Peopletools 8.51 and 8.52 => Application feature packs (2011/2012)
Peopletools 8.53 => Application 9.2 (2013)
Peopletools 8.54 and 8.55 => Application feature packs (2014/2015)
Peopletools 8.56 => Application 9.2 (2015)
etc.
A couple of changes in the licenses, Oracle won’t provide anymore the applications from tier vendors (e.g. Crystal Reports, Business Objects…). Furthermore, the IBM COBOL compiler (currently only available on AIX and Windows but could be soon on Linux as well) is coming around with 25% of discount (it is worth to re-read your current fees, see MOS note #1212164.1).
And now about the new features coming in Peopletools 8.51 (non-exhaustive list):
* Smart navigation : application navigation by hierarchical data, persistent search page
* Embedded help
* Peoplesoft Test Framework : to simplify the upgrade, run compare report directly onto the database, test case, estimate level effort, automated system test…
* Work Center Framework
* Security, Integration and Plateform
* Active Dataguard (11g+)
That was 1 hour session, intensive and informative. Now we just have to download, install and play with this new version to see by ourselves.

My second session of the day was also dedicated to Peopletools 8.51, “PeopleSoft PeopleTools Release 8.51 Highlights: PeopleSoft PeopleTools in Action” (Russell Broom). Also a very detailed and informative session, especially about the features coming automatically or not (to be activated manually) within a Peopletools upgrade only.
* The Work Center is still limited within Peopletools 8.51 but it will be expended within the future versions.
* Embedded help is a modeless window (manual step after Peopletools only upgrade)
* A lot about widows : modal, modal prompt, modal zoom, modal secondary page
* Persistent search (manual step after Peopletools only upgrade)
* Related content

The last session was not Peopletools 8.51 focused, but not less interesting, “Peopletools : Secure Coding Practices” (Greg Kelly), or the state of the art of the security coding. Greg gave a lot of advices and some rules to follow to protect the code against SQL injections. A very good remind to be applied on every project !

I’m looking forward tomorrow, some more highlights on Peopletools 8.51 (Upgrade and Maintenance).

Nicolas.