I know this sounds little stupid for some people, but for some people this is helpful. I know one guy who gets confused all the time with these two terms and comes and asks me all the time. I thought I would list these here and ask him to remember PeopleSoftGuys.com, so that he can come here and read it..

Custom Objects in PeopleSoft: Custom objects are the objects built by a PeopleSoft client to accommodate their business needs.

Customized Objects in PeopleSoft: Customized objects are the delivered objects from PeopleSoft to which the client made some changes to accommodate their business requirements.

The following are the common AR Transaction tables

PS_ITEM  - Item related information will be stored.

PS_GROUP_CONTROL – Groups related information will be stored

PS_PENDING_ITEM  - Pending items related to pending group will be stored.

PS_ITEM_DST - Accounting information related to a pending group will be stored.

PS_PENDING_DST - Accounting information related to a posted group will be  stored.

PS_DEPOSIT_CONTROL - Deposit related information will be stored

PS_PAYMENT - Payment related information will be stored.

PeopleSoft change assistant is a standalone application delivered with PeopleTools 8.4x onwards. PeopleSoft change assistant can be used for applying patches and fixes for maintenance updates.

PeopleSoft change assistant grabs all the required information from the Environment Management Hub and uploads it to the PeopleSoft customer connection site. With this environment information, PeopleSoft customer connection will determine what updates should be applied to your environment.

When you access customer connection, you can get a list of all unapplied updates for your given application environment including any prerequisites. So you can download all the change packages and apply the fixes and patches to your environment with very minimal effort.

Make sure you setup environment name by going to  PeopleTools -> PeopleTools Options

Enter the Environment Long Name and Environment Short Name parameters.

PeopleSoft delivers templates for each update in change packages. Whenever you apply updates by using the Apply change package option, change assistant will automatically loads the template into Change Assistant. You can add additional tasks and steps into the template.

Check your PeopleBooks for more detailed information on this.

Note: You can only apply application relates fixes using PeopleSoft Change Assistant. You can not apply PeopleTools fixes / Patches with change assistant. You should use Upgrade Assistant for that purpose.

Recently I wrote the following UNIX command line code to delete the older files in report repository and log files. I thought it might be useful for some one.

Reports Delete

find /psreports/PSPROD/* -type d -prune -mtime +15 -exec /bin/rm -R {} \;

The above command will delete all the directories under /psreports/PSPROD directory which are 15 days or older.

App Server Logs Delete

find /appserv/PSPROD/LOGS/* -type f -prune -mtime +15 -exec /bin/rm -R {} \;

The above command will delete all the application server log files under /appserv/PSPROD/LOGS directory which are 15 days or older.
Process Scheduler Logs Delete

find /appserv/prcs/PSPROD/LOGS/* -type f -prune -mtime +15 -exec /bin/rm -R {} \;

The above command will delete all the process scheduler server log files under /appserv/prcs/PSPROD/LOGS/ directory which are 15 days or older.
 

PeopleSoft Data Mover issues COMMIT statements after most successful SQL commands, except for EXPORT and IMPORT commands. But for EXPORT and IMPORT commands, PeopleSoft Data Mover issues a COMMIT after each record. With IMPORT commands you can associate a  SET COMMIT n command, which will perform a COMMIT after the system inserts every n rows.

Example:

SET INPUT C:\PS_CUSTOMER.dat;
SET COMMIT 5000;
IMPORT *;

The example shows that it will import all the data from PS_CUSTOMER.dat file and it will commit the data after every 5000 rows are inserted into PeopleSoft record.

ENCRYPT_PASSWORD
 Encrypt one or all user passwords defined in PSOPRDEFN table.
  Example: ENCRYPT_PASSWORD ROGERS;

EXPORT
 EXPORT command will be used to export the data from a table or a join of tables and store the result set in a file. You can use the generated export file as input for migrating data to any another platform.
Example:
SET OUTPUT C:\PS_CUSTOMER.dat
EXPORT PS_CUSTOMER;

IMPORT
IMPORT command will be used to Insert data into PeopleSoft tables using the data in an exported file. If a tablespace or table does not exist, this command creates tablespace, table, and indexes for the record, using the information in the exported file, and inserts the data.
Example
SET INPUT C:\PS_CUSTOMER.dat
IMPORT *;
 
REM, REMARK, and –
 These commands will be used to indicate comment statements in the data move scripts.

Example:
REM Example file;
 

You can connect to PeopleSoft data mover in two modes depending on the previlages that your user id has. The following two are the modes that you can connect to the data mover.

• Regular mode.

Most of the time you connect using this mode. To sign in to the data mover in regular mode, enter your PeopleSoft user ID and password during sign-in. In regular mode, all data mover commands are valid.

• Bootstrap mode.

In bootstrap mode, you use a database access ID and access password when signing in to data mover. Typically, we use bootstrap mode for database load. When we create a brand new PeopleSoft database we connect to the data mover in a bootstrap mode. We also use bootstrap mode for running some security commands, such as ENCRYPT_PASSWORD.

I’m currently leading a project for a public sector client and we needed to perform a data conversion of legacy data from SBT system into PeopleSoft financials and supply chain system.

The approach I designed to bring the data into the PeopleSoft system is

• Export the data from SBT system (Which is in FoxPro) to .dbf files
• Import the data into MS Access database by using MS Access import utility
• Export the data into Sybase database (which is where PeopleSoft database is located) using MS Access export utility by using Open Database connectivity (ODBC).
• Once the data is in Sybase database we are planning to import the metadata into Convoy DM tool and map the tables to a target database.
• Then we are planning to generate the conversion SQRs using Convoy DM.

I will post more info regarding this conversion. Once we start progressing on this. I thought this would be useful for someone as I couldn’t find any information on this anywhere else.

Before you kill any service you need to identify the service to be killed. Find out from the database which pid is stuck  or go to /psappsrv and run the psadmin to take a look at the server status to see which query is not idle

Go to /psappsrv location

type psadmin and hit enter
select your domain and choose “TUXEDO command line”

at the command line issue the following command

    >psr   (This will show you the services running)

then type the following at command prompt and hit enter.
    >v  (This will turn on the verbose option)(v again will turn it off)

then type the following command to kill the long running proceess id.
    >shutdown -i 25 -w 30  (-i = server id, -w = delay before forcing the server down (in seconds))

NOTE: Server id should match with your pid in the database query. you need to use the -w option as the service will wait for the clients to finish their transactions

Oracle plans to acquire BEA Systems a middleware developer for $8.5 billion in a cash deal, the company announced Wednesday.

Under this deal, which is expected to close by the middle of the year 2008, Oracle agreed to pay nearly $19.38 per share. That purchase price is above Oracle’s initial offer of $17 a share, which BEA had rejected earlier, saying that it would need $21 a share for any party to enter acquisition talks with the company.

This would make Oracle to substitute it’s fusion middleware with better middleware product out in the market.