What’s new in PeopleTools 8.54?

Oracle has released PeopleTools 8.54 a month back and as of now it is also available with the PUM image for HCM and FSCM.

Peoplesoft has come with many changes with PeopleTools 8.54 and I would try to list out important ones.

Fluid pages

The usage of mobile phones and tablets have changed drastically in recent times.

PeopleSoft embraces this change and comes with many new concepts primarily targeting the mobile devices.

With this release PeopleSoft introduces the PeopleSoft Fluid User Interface.

This is a significant improvement over the PeopleSoft “classic” user interface, the PeopleSoft application fluid pages scale gracefully from large screen devices, such as laptops and desktops, to the reduced viewing space of tablets and smartphones whereby the presentation and layout of information is adjusted dynamically to conform to the dimensions of the user’s device.

PeopleSoft fluid page definitions are maintained within PeopleSoft Application

Designer, and the application developer will have the ability to define and apply conditional formatting appropriate to smartphone, tablet, or large-screen devices.

So to check this on, I created a new page in App Designer.

When I clicked on properties of the page, we have a new tab here ‘Fluid’.

It will take some time and practice for us to get used to all these field to know their significance.

So we will leave it as it is.

In case you want to learn to more about this tab, please refer Peoplebooks.

64-Bit Development Client

With PeopleTools 8.54 the Development Client is now built as a 64-bit application, taking advantage of

higher memory addressing and improved performance.

The following applications run on the Development Client and are impacted by this enhancement:

• Application Designer.
• Data Mover.
• Change Assistant.
• nVision
• Change Impact Analyzer
• Application Engine.
• SQR.

The move to the 64-bit bit architecture of the PeopleTools development environment means that

system administrators no longer need to acquire and configure the additional 32-bit connectivity

software for the RDBMS platform.

Mobile Application Platform

With release 8.54, PeopleSoft is delivering, for the first time, the ability to create a responsive user

interface using standard technologies such as HTML5, cascading style sheets (CSS3), and JavaScript.

Applications built using the Mobile Application Platform (MAP) will provide a completely different

experience than those built using traditional PeopleTools components and pages. Applications built with

MAP can include media queries that allow applications to scale from Smartphones, to mini-tablets, to

full-size tablets, and that adjust the user interface for the device perspective that is being used. The

framework allows you to develop applications with touch interfaces that look and operate similarly to

native interfaces on mobile devices.

MAP supports a web-only development model for the majority of the application development. The

document-based data structures, page layouts, and styles are all defined in the PeopleSoft Pure

Internet Architecture. Business logic processing is done through PeopleTools application class

PeopleCode built in PeopleSoft Application Designer. Additional user-interface libraries can be easily

plugged in and accessed on pages.

While MAP is similar in many ways to the PeopleSoft Fluid User Interface delivered with PeopleTools

8.54, there is a single major difference. That difference is that MAP reads and writes data through

RESTful web services that pass through the integration gateway and provide the communication layer

between MAP applications and the database.

Using RESTful services as the foundation of the framework offers these significant differences:

Since all parts of the application are based on REST services, an open integration model that

enables an application to navigate from one application to another, including third-party

applications, is inherent in the design.

Application Engine

Application Engine Trace File Enhancements

PeopleTools 8.54 will include the following features to streamline Application Engine Trace files.

Application Engine trace file split.

You can set the file size of the Application Engine Trace file. Whenever the file size exceeds the

defined file size value, the file will close and the log will shift to a new file. Application Engine trace file naming convention.

The naming convention for the Application Engine Trace file with a process instance will include the

Date/Time stamp.

Application Engine program section trace.

In previous versions, the trace file included output of the Application Engine program with all the

sections. From this release you can select the sections to trace output in the Application Engine

Trace file.

Application Engine trace file with PeopleCode and SQL trace outputs.

You can combine the trace output for both PeopleCode and SQL into Application Engine Trace file.

Also for 8.54, it will be optional to commit changes in the Application Engine program to the database.

You can opt not to commit the changes for application engine program to the database, if the

application engine program is running from Application Designer.

Global Temporary Table in Application Engine

PeopleTools 8.54 extends the potential of Oracle Global Temporary Tables (GTTs) to Application

Engine.

In 8.54, you can define Temporary Tables as GTTs in the Application Designer. This feature can be

applied to Application Engine programs running in both batch mode and online mode. The data in GTT

is session specific for Application Engine programs running in batch mode and transaction specific for

Application Engine programs running in online mode. But GTTs in online mode cannot be shared

between Application Engine programs. Each Application Engine program has its own set of GTTs.

Therefore, it is recommended that GTTs should not be used as Share Tables in online mode. You can

also define GTTs to re-startable batch Application Engine programs considering that the data in GTT

will not be retained when the program exists.

Prior to 8.54, a warning was displayed whenever the number of instances of a temporary table

exceeded 99. From 8.54, you can set the number of instances to a maximum of 9999 when the

Application Engine program uses only GTTs in temporary tables. If the Application Engine program is

using both GTTs and temporary then a warning is displayed when the number of instances exceeds 99.

Portable PS_HOME

PeopleTools has focused on a number of enhancements related to PS_HOME in recent PeopleTools

releases to make PS_HOME more secure, with a clearer separation of functionality. It began with

providing a more secure installation by splitting out logs, cache and configuration files into

PS_CFG_HOME, which allowed PS_HOME to become read-only. From there, we created

PS_APP_HOME to split the PeopleTools and PeopleSoft application objects apart, thus removing any

ambiguity of which objects are changed during a PeopleTools vs. application upgrade, or during the

application of maintenance. PS_CUST_HOME arrived with PeopleTools 8.53 and provided a

mechanism to separate any customized code (COBOL, SQR, and so on) from delivered code.

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.

Oracle Materialized Views

Materialized views take the results of complex SELECT statements and save the datasets to disk. The

results are then readily available without the need to run the SQL each time. The SELECT statements

typically defining materialized views often contain sizable tables, complex joins, and summary functions

that may take some time and computing resources to complete. By running the SQL once and saving

the results to be used and reused, a significant savings of CPU and memory consumption can be

achieved. Materialized views provide significant improvements in performance when used in Pivot Grids

that do not use frequently updated data sets. The data is refreshed on a time period defined in the

materialized view.

PeopleTools 8.54 enables potentially significant CPU savings by using materialized views for the

Oracle database. Application Designer will have the ability to declare and define materialized views

(including the data refresh period) for use within PeopleSoft applications.

Chart Class Enhancements

In PeopleTools 8.54, the Chart class has been enhanced with these features and other features not

listed here:

Reference areas – A reference area can be displayed in conjunction with a chart as a band of color

drawn based on numeric values along a chart axis. For each band of color, you would create a

separate instance of the ReferenceArea class.

A bar chart with a reference area displayed behind the chart

->Reference lines – A reference line can be displayed in conjunction with a chart as a colored line

drawn based on a numeric value along a chart axis. For each line, you would create a separate

instance of the ReferenceLine class.

->Funnel charts – A funnel chart typically graphs two sets of data: actual amounts versus target

amounts.

A funnel chart displaying actual data versus target data

->Line smoothing – Using the IsLineChartSmoothing property allows line charts to be displayed with

smoothed lines.

->Interactive charts – Using the IsChartDrillable property, the chart background (that is, the entire

chart control) can be made interactive. (This is in addition to the chart data points, which can

already be made interactive by using the IsDrillable property.)

PeopleSoft Pivot Grids

Since their release a few years ago, Pivot Grids have become a valuable component of PeopleSoft’s

rich reporting and analytics toolset. With PeopleTools 8.54, our teams continue to enhance this

important technology to become an integral element of the PeopleSoft user experience.

As mentioned, the PeopleSoft Fluid User Interface takes advantage of Pivot Grids both on the new fluid

homepage tiles as well as the basis for the new component search framework used for fluid

components. These new capabilities ensure that visual insight and analytics are woven directly into the

fabric of the PeopleSoft application, rather than merely graphics pasted onto a page.

PeopleTools 8.54 brings a number of extremely important new features to PeopleSoft Pivot Grid:

• Setting the limit of the Pivot Grid result rows.
• Viewing PSQuery drilling URLs in Pivot Grid Detail View.
• Scatter and Bubble chart types.
• Attaching PeopleSoft Trees to dimensions.
• Setting Column Type value.
• Setting Aggregate value.
• Setting currency formats.
• Setting the Display As option.
• Setting embedded help.
• Specifying the display mode.Release Notes PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.54
• July 2014
• Copyright © 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 49
• Specifying the fluid mode options.
• Expanding or collapsing all dimensions in the grid.
• Configuring Pivot Grid Views using Pivot Grid Wizard.
• Publishing Pivot Grid fluid views as grouplets.
• Creating Pivot Grid models directly from Query Manager.
• Setting row-level, aggregate, and bulk related actions.
• Displaying all views in the Pivot Grid Viewer search page.
• Resetting layouts.
• Drilling down to details from the charts.
• Using Component Real Time Search in Pivot Grid fluid mode.
• Creating component Pivot Grid models using Pivot Grid Wizard.
• Viewing Pivot Grid models in fluid mode.
• Using the Component Real-Time Search and viewing Pivot Grid models in mobile interaction
• platforms.
• Embedding Pivot Grid fluid subpages in application pages.
• Copying the fluid components between databases.
• Preserving Pivot Grid configuration and personalizations.

PeopleSoft Test Framework

PeopleSoft Test Framework (PTF) enables customers to automate testing with a tool that integrates

with and has firsthand knowledge of PeopleSoft metadata. Enhancements for PeopleTools 8.54 focus

primarily on providing smart automation, which is all about running the tests that need to run in the way

that they should be run based on what has happened in your application.

By improving integration among PeopleSoft Test Framework, PeopleSoft metadata, and lifecycle

management reports, in release 8.54, you will now be able to easily determine which tests require

modification and which tests need to be run.

Changes to PeopleSoft Test Framework also include many usability enhancements for creating,

administering, recording, and executing tests.

Branding Framework
PeopleTools now provides a greatly expanded branding framework that is powerful and flexible,

bringing the capability of managing the look and feel to the PeopleSoft application without requiring

PeopleSoft Interaction Hub. With PeopleTools 8.54, many common branding activities, including

managing content associated with the overall site style, are now performed online rather than requiring

the use of Application Designer. In addition, PeopleTools supports component-based branding,

providing the ability to apply a consistent appearance when rendering content from multiple providers

on the same page.

With PeopleTools branding, common actions, such as layout manipulation, style sheet and image use,

and JavaScript injection, can be managed online through the browser. For example, these tasks can be

easily performed within the delivered online pages:

• Manage configurable header and footer layouts.
• Assemble branding themes, and assign those themes by portal or by user attributes.
• Preview style changes online.