PeopleTools 8.54: New Features in PeopleSoft Server Administration

Oracle has added great new features with PeopleTools 8.54. One important area where you will notice significant changes is System and Server Administration. Features such as Portable PS_HOME, Container databases are example of newly added features.

In this post, you will learn about the new features that have been added to PeopleSoft System and Server Administration.

Portable PS_HOME:

With PeopleTools 8.54, the latest enhancement involving PS_HOME, Portable PS_HOME, will provide an easier way to use a private cloud configuration where multiple application installations use the same PeopleTools install.

• Hard-coded paths and symbolic links are removed, which will allow the install of PeopleTools to be more easily copied to other servers.
• UNIX file servers can create a mount point to use the installation with any number of environments.
• With a single PeopleTools install being used with multiple application installs, procuring an environment becomes faster and cheaper. In addition, when it is time to apply maintenance, it is quickly performed in one place instead of in each separate environment, thus lowering the total cost of ownership.
• However, the PS_HOME file system is portable, meaning the PS_HOME directory structure is self-contained and the content within it functions independent of a specific host or file path location.
• Using this portability, system administrators only need to run the PeopleTools installation program once to create the initial PS_HOME and then copy that PS_HOME to other required locations throughout the network.

Push Notifications:

Push Notification is an event framework that enables PeopleSoft server run time to push data directly to PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture browsers. This allows bidirectional full duplex communication between browser clients and server runtime.

• The feature allows defining individual events or group-related events as collections and provides an API to dispatch events to browser clients.
• Notification Window uses the push mechanism provided by Push Notification and collates various notifications generated by the system to the window.
• It categorizes notifications into actions and alerts and allows actions to be performed on the notification items.
• Approval Workflow Engine (AWE) and Trigger Business Event (TBE) are some of the functional areas that will have their notifications published to the Notification Window.
• This feature uses WebSocket push technology in WebServer with Tuxedo Eventing in Application Server

New Approach to Recycle Application Server Processes:

The Percentage Memory Growth parameter has been removed for PeopleTools 8.54 and replaced with a new approach to recycling server processes. Parameter ProcessRestartMemoryLimit has been added with PeopleTools 8.54.

• You can enter a memory threshold for recyclable server processes running within the domain. When the server processes exceed the limit, the system restarts, or recycles, them.
• This setting applies to all recyclable server processes within the domain. If set to 0, this feature is disabled and the system recycles server processes according to the recycle count setting for that recyclable server process

No Support for Descending Indexes:

With PeopleTools 8.54, PeopleTools will no longer support descending indexes on the Oracle database platform.

Configure Partitioning using PIA:

With PeopleTools 8.54, Oracle database customers are able to configure partitioning of PeopleSoft tables as well as indexes. These configurations no longer need to be done outside of PeopleSoft.

To establish partitioning definitions, a new Partitioning page is provided in PeopleSoft Internet Architecture. On this page you can review delivered PeopleSoft partition definitions, or specify table and index partitioning parameters, generate the partitioning DDL and save the DDL to the PeopleTools metadata tables.

Oracle Database 12C- Multitenant Database:

Multitenant Database is a new feature included in Oracle database 12c that provides the ability to move previously autonomous databases (such as PeopleSoft application databases) into a single container database instance.

PeopleTools supports this architecture, whereby you can define PeopleSoft databases as pluggable databases during the installation process. The primary benefit of Pluggable Databases is the ability to consolidate data and code without altering existing schemas or applications.

Usage of Materialized views:

PeopleTools 8.54 enables potentially significant CPU savings by using materialized views for the Oracle database. Application Designer can be used to declare and define materialized views (including the data refresh period) for use within PeopleSoft applications.