When working in a mixed environment, you are bound to run into those ^M characters at the end of your lines at some point. Here is a great link describing how to fix it. They talk about vi, but gVim works the same way.
Oracle Applications – Business & Technology: Removing ”^M” from SQL*Loader datafile
This article on Field Security falls under the category of things that I need to come back to and read:
A Guide To Developing A Dynamic People Soft Field Security Application
MyOraclePortal published a couple of links to interesting videos. Check out the page there:
I thought the videos were very well done.
What I am curious about is anyone’s experience in using Agile Development with PeopleSoft. Has anyone tried to use this development style on a PeopleSoft project?
I was involved in a project that attempted something similar. It was not successful, but I don’t believe it was because of the agile development. A number of things could be blamed such as a lack of automated testing, limited involvement during the end-user testing, too long of a duration between iterations, and users requesting more of PeopleSoft than it was designed to do. Also, the company was bought out by a larger company before the project was completed and I think they wanted to go another direction.
I just noticed that the folks over at Grey-Sparling are working on a new site to host code for PeopleCode. I am excited to see what it is going to look like. It is not up quite yet.
Here is another one of those technologies that I would love to play with but have to wait for a client that actually needs it: JSON. I found Jim’s post on JSON very interesting and would love to have the need to come back to it.
One other solution that might be worth considering is this library for Java. You would have to compile it and place it on the class path, but you could access it from PeopleCode. Or, I wonder if it would be worth implementing the library in a PeopleCode Application Package?
And in conjunction, you can’t mention JSON, without mentioning jQuery.
I just noticed Jim’s annoucement of PSUnit, a tool for automated testing in PeopleSoft. I had to link it so I could come back and give it a try. To download load it, look for the link at the bottom of the PeopleSoft Technology Blog post.
In my opinion, automated testing would be huge for PeopleSoft. It is such a huge and complex system that a complete system test requires many users to perform many different actions. Maintaining a series of automated tests would allow an organization to run a full test everytime they apply a tax update, bundle, or any sort of modification to their system.
Well, I will report when I get a change to play with it some more.
Jim’s PeopleSoft Journal: Test Driven Development for PeopleSoft
I just noticed that the folks over at Grey Sparling have finished their Version Control product that they have been talking about.
Version Control for PeopleSoft Demo
Grey Sparling Version Control for PeopleSoft
Okay, now I just need to find a client who needs and wants to use it so I can get a chance to see how it works!
Jim Marion’s post on JDBC made me think a little more. (By the way, thanks, Jim, for linking me.) The one disadvantage about accessing the PeopleSoft database via JDBC is that you have to supply the password to make the connection.
I have thought about trying to read the password from the application server or batch server configuration file, but if I remember right it only has the connect id and the connect password. With the connect password, I might be able to use it to read the Access id and password from the database, but I have would have to be able to unencrypt it.
One advantage that SQL Server might have is that you can use Window’s security. Assuming that the account running the application server or batch server has access to the database, you could just use the integrated security instead of an actual user name or password.
The advantage that JDBC has is that you don’t have to know the number of fields/columns that you want until run time. With both the SQL object and SQLExec, you have to have a variable for each field you return or a return that contains all of those fields.
For example, I am trying to loop through a group of tables in a linked server and copy all of their fields to a table in the current database. I have a problem using INSERT … SELECT, and I have to read the values in and then write them out. I can’t figure another way to do it other than use JDBC.
Please correct me if I am wrong on any of this. Maybe these thoughts will give someone else an idea that I overlooked.
Today, I came across this interesting tip about editing PeopleCode:
Editing Enhancements for SQR and PeopleCode
I had something like this for gVim, but I need to dig it out again.
They also posted information about shortcuts in the Application Designer PeopleCode editor:
The article references PeopleBooks:
I have been recommended to document a PeopleSoft installation by printing out the installation notes and writing down in the margins what I did and what problems I ran into. I think that is a great idea.
But, what if I could convert the installation notes into Microsoft Word or Open Office so that I could take my notes directly in the document. The advantage is that I would have something I could search through for reference or in case of problems. Also, I could easily include screen shots and such.
The problem is that I haven’t found a way to convert the PDF. Here is a link that I tried, it and might help you if you have a smaller PDF. I think the installation notes are too large. It didn’t work for me. Let me know if you get it to work.
I am exploring some other options, too.
Please let me know if you have any other ideas for PDFs or for installation documentation.