Extracurricular at Oracle

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I came across a link to Team Oracle the other day.  I didn’t realize that they have their own Air Show team!  I’ll have to watch the schedule to see if I can catch them in our area.

While we are on the topic, I did already know that Oracle has their own Yacht Racing team.  You can check out BMW Oracle Racing here.

Now, we just need a Basketball team!  We could have Oracle Arena and the mascot could be the CPU Chips.  Maybe that is too much imagination.

Agile Development Links

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http://psst0101.digitaleagle.net/2009/04/30/agile-development-links/

MyOraclePortal published a couple of links to interesting videos.  Check out the page there:

Agile Development

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.

Good Habits for Consultants

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I found this great link the other day about good habits for consultants.  Doing some Googling, I was able to build a quick list of posts about habits for consultants:

• Great consultants have the following good habits
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective Consultants
• 101 Tips for Consultants

Here is another good tid-bit for consultants: 7 greatest challenges

In the past, I found some good jokes about consultants, but the links were broken.  Here are some more:

• A Little Consulting Humor
• Tire Swing Cartoon
• Consulting Humor

Linux Post

I found an interesting site asking for the different Linux distributions on which people have installed PeopleSoft.  Right now, it does not have many posts, but maybe over time people will add more as they experiment.

http://psadmin.org/index.php/LinuxDistribution.html

News: PeopleSoft VM Templates

Is it possible that Oracle might offer PeopleSoft applications as virtual templates?  If you haven’t seen my “idea” on Oracle Mix, please check it out and vote for it.  Currently, it has 14 votes.

Today Justin Kestelyn commented “Stay tuned.”   Does this mean something is in the works?  I am tuned!

Application Designer Automation

In going through the registry, I found a reference to “PeopleSoft.ApplicationDesigner”.  But, I cannot find any documention on how to use it.

I was able to create an object in WScript:

var obj = new ActiveXObject("PeopleSoft.ApplicationDesigner");

But, I cannot figure out what methods to use with the obj variable.

I posted a question on Oracle Mix, but no one has answered, yet.  Jim Marion has pointed out Grey Sparling Solutions, but I haven’t found any information there.  I really like some of the solutions they have created — they are very innovative.

Please let me know if you have any ideas on how to get more information.

Move a Tablespace

This may be pointless, but maybe some of the SQL may help someone.  It is an attempt at boiling all the steps from another post into one SQL script.  The rename at the end didn’t seem to work for some reason, and I didn’t want to put any more time into it.

declare

  tblName varchar(25);

  tempName varchar(25);

  segmentCount number(10);

  osOutput number(3);

begin

   tblName := 'AAAPP';

   dbms_output.put_line('Moving tablespace: ' || tblName);

   tempName := tblName || 'NEW';

   dbms_output.put_line('Using temporary tablespace: ' || tempName);

   select count(*) into segmentCount from dba_segments

   where tablespace_name = tblName;

   dbms_output.put_line('Currently ' || segmentCount || ' segments');

   execute immediate 'create tablespace ' || tempName ||

       ' datafile ''e:\oradata\HCM90\' || tempName || '.DBF''' ||

       ' size 10m ' ||

       ' extent management local autoallocate ' ||

       ' segment space management auto ';

   execute immediate 'ALTER DATABASE DATAFILE ''e:\oradata\HCM90\' ||

      tempName || '.DBF'' AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 5M MAXSIZE UNLIMITED'; 

   for index_rec in (select owner, segment_name 

                     from dba_segments 

                     where segment_type = 'TABLE' 

                     and tablespace_name = tblName)

   loop                     

      execute immediate 'alter table ' || index_rec.owner || '.' || 

          index_rec.segment_name || ' move tablespace ' || tempName; 

   end loop;

   for index_rec in (select owner, table_name, column_name 

                     from dba_lobs 

                     where tablespace_name = tblName)

   loop                     

      execute immediate 'alter table ' || index_rec.owner || '.' || 

          index_rec.table_name || ' move lob(' || index_rec.column_name ||

          ') store as (tablespace ' || tempName || ')'; 

   end loop;

   select count(*) into segmentCount from dba_segments

   where tablespace_name = tblName;

   dbms_output.put_line('Now ' || segmentCount || ' segments');

   execute immediate 'alter tablespace ' || tblName || ' offline';

   execute immediate 'drop tablespace ' || tblName;

   execute immediate 'alter tablespace ' || tempName || ' rename to ' || tblName;

   dbms_output.put_line('Renaming ' || tempName || ' to ' || tblName);

   dbms_pipe.pack_message('cmd /c del e:\oradata\HCM90\' || tblName || '.DBF'); 

   osOutput := dbms_pipe.send_message('HOST_PIPE');

   dbms_output.put_line('Deleted e:\oradata\HCM90\' || tblName || '.DBF -- ' || osOutput);

end;

Security Is Important

Here is just a quick reminder about security being important and about being trustworthy with your privileges:

InfoWorld: Two charged with hacking PeopleSoft to fix grades 

Blog Update

I have updated the PeopleTools Tables page and changed the theme for the site.

Theme:

I chose the Rubric theme because it offers better width for the content.  Especially with programming examples, this width comes in handy.  I am open to suggestions though.  I am a little disappointed with the WordPress tools.  The editor works great and is easy to use, but it does not have many features for formatting code examples.

PeopleTools Tables:

I added some descriptions to the change control tables.  I am finding those tables handy for tracking changes that I am making.  Also, I added the tables for Application Engines.  They can help find App Engines that use a particular state record or actions that call a particular section.  View the page here.

Troubleshooting: Cache not Found

The other day, I had trouble logging into Application Designer at a new location. Basically, changing the cache directory is what solved my problem, but here are the details.