OOW2010 – day 4

Second last day of this Open World 2010, so far very interesting but really exhausting.

The first session of the day was “PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.51 Highlights: Simplify Upgrade and Maintenance” (Scott Schafer), with a special key point, with a demo, on the new tool Peoplesoft Test Framework (PTF). This tool, combined with the enhancement of the compare report (now stored in tables in the database !) will change a lot the upgrade process. PTF is running onto a Windows client machine only and need Internet Explorer as a browser (version 7 and above). PTF is a tool for impact analysis, and is a record and playback testing tool. It creates comparable and copyable objects. Everything seems to be done to simplify the regular (yearly) upgrade of the Peopletools that we should do as of now, but it is perfectly integrated in a lifecycle management, upgrade and change management.

The second session was “PeopleSoft Enterprise Integration of Oracle Database Technologies” (Jerry Zarate, Darryl Presley), and again very interesting stuff presented here. Peopletools 8.51 has again greatly changed a couple of things for administrators. For instance, Peoplesoft will take the script back (with DBMS_METADATA.GET_DDL package – I’d say finally) before creating a new script when building a project, consequently if a table has been partitioned, it keeps the partitions settings. An other great feature is the Active Data Guard (only within 11g database), from Peopletools 8.51, we can configure a standby site in the application and batch server configuration files. By defining a component as “read-only” (also new in AppDesigner) Peoplesoft will run it onto the standby database if it has been defined and if it is available. It does not work yet for all the processes (COBOL and SQR will follow in future version), but it can greatly improve performance by running a couple of queries/processes onto the secondary site instead of loading the primary site. Many years after the acquisition, we can see now Peoplesoft much more integrated into Oracle database.

Last session of the day, “PeopleSoft PeopleTools Developer Series: Application Performance Tips” (Jeremy Pressman), not Peopletools 8.51 specific, but great advices to improve performance following some rules. For instance, use temporary tables where possible, avoid nested views but tables, on a grid use multiple hide columns at a time instead of one by one, avoid long field in a grid or use a view, from Peopletools 8.50.12 use “Get Next Number With Gap” (GNNWGC, MOS note #1067463.1), use _UNNEST_SUBQUERY=false (I already wrote an article last year about hat here)…

Tomorrow, last day, “it’s a wrap”…

Nicolas.