Every PeopleSoft developer has read something about the new Oracle products incorporating web 2.0 functionality like personalized pages. But what if you’re not among the lucky developers that use those new, modern, up2date products? In this post I’d like to show how we can create web 2.0 functionality in older PeopleSoft versions step by step.

First a small introduction. At the moment I am a member of a team which is busy building Selfservice functionality for a very large oranisation. Development is done in PS HRMS 8.22. I was asked to think about a selfservice page with dynamicaly ordered content blocks. Still there? I mean that the page has several blocks containing content and the employee  must be able to organize these blocks himself.

So, what’s the plan? Let’s start by describing the big picture. We must create a page in app designer containing the blocks that shall contain the content. After that we’ll add some Javascript (client side script)  to make the blocks draggable. The order of the blocks must then be stored in the database. For this we’ll use Ajax and IScript. Almost there, hang on. The last thing to do is to make sure that if the page is reloaded / revisited we get the order of the blocks from the database with Ajax and IScript again and order the blocks.

The philosophy is that  the page is designed in app designer as always and will work without all the fancy web 2.0 stuff. We will only use the web 2.0 stuff to enhance the user experience.

In the next post we will set up a simple page with content blocks, and make these blocks draggable.

Hopefully see you then!

During this year’s Oracle OpenWorld cool new features in the new release of PeopleTools are unveiled. This new version should become available somewhere in 2009, together with the PeopleSoft 9.1 Application versions.

Look and Feel
One of the big changes in PeopleTools 8.50 is the User Experience. If you look at this screenshot you can see that the layout is still PeopleSoft common, but Oracle’s blue has arrived. Or did the blue arrive with the takeover of PeopleSoft …

General OpenWorld news

Your Applications Stream
The Applications stream encompasses all of Oracle’s applications product lines including Oracle E-Business Suite, and Oracle’s PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, Hyperion, and Agile applications. In sessions for both line-of-business and technical audiences, you’ll find product information, sneak peeks at new product releases, and presentations focused on Oracle’s strategy and vision for its applications business. This stream also includes sessions applicable across all the applications product lines, covering subjects such as applications tools and technology; midsize businesses; governance, risk management, and compliance; and Oracle Application Integration Architecture.

Check the Applications Stream

General Open World news

Today is the closure of Open World, the end of a week where Peter R. de Vries got his Emmy, Larry found his ‘X’ and Obama and McCain discuss with Bush what ‘x’ to use for $ 700 Billion.

On the Oracle Open World Blog you find more interesting news and free sessions for replay for those who haven’t been there.

This year’s Oracle OpenWorld newsletter was made available to you by the following crew (Tom, Wouter, Rick and Peter)

Thanks for your contribution!

Oracle OpenWorld 2009: October 11 – 15

General Open World news

Ellison Unleashes HP Oracle Database Machine
In his much-anticipated keynote address, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced Oracle’s first-ever hardware product, the HP Oracle Database Machine. Introduced as the world’s fastest database machine, the HP Oracle Database Machine improves data warehouse query performance by a factor of 10 or more. The machine is a combination of smart storage software from Oracle and industrystandard hardware from HP; it consists of a grid of Oracle Database servers and a grid of new Oracle Exadata Storage Servers packaged in a single rack along with the required InfiniBand infrastructure and related hardware.
“Talk about extreme performance—you’re looking at the world’s fastest database machine,” said Ellison, as the HP Oracle Database Machine rose from beneath the stage next to him. “For the first time, customers can get smart performance storage designed for Oracle data warehouses that is 10 times faster. And this is 1,400 times larger than Apple’s largest iPod,” he added, prompting laughter from the standing-room-only crowd.
Enterprise data warehouses are experiencing phenomenal growth, explained Ellison, as data volume triples in size every two years. “The issue is, you still have to get at that data to run your business, but the pipes are real bottlenecks,” said Ellison. “We’ve developed software that does more database processing directly at the disc drive, so less data has to travel over pipes, and combined that with HP’s extreme hardware—wider pipes and more of them. The performance improvement is truly amazing,” he added. Read the full story in today’s newspaper

Larry goes eXtreme!

Two years after the moment that Oracle went into Operating Systems – Unbreakable Linux – today Larry announced that Oracle (partnering with HP) will sell hardware also. And it’s not a simple commodity server… It’s the HP Oracle Database Machine. This beast contains 8 database servers (with 64 cores in total) and 14 eXadata servers (with 112 cores). And an enormous amount of storage: 1400 times more than the largest iPod! I think it could contain all mp3′s in the world…
An eXadata Server (officially known as the HP Oracle Exadata Programmable Storage Server) contains 2 processors with 8 cores each, 12 disks, Enterprise Linux and – and this is the coolest part – Parallel Query processing capability for every disk. By bringing processing capability close to the storage, the amount of data going through the wires from a storage server to a database server is dramatically reduced – because results are passed instead of data blocks. Because of this architecture the performance will remain the same as the database is growing – just add some more servers and it will be fine. So this is the last piece of the grid-puzzle: Next to Fusion Middleware grid and Database Grid, Oracle can provide us now with Storage Grid.
The performance of this thing is gigantic: tests proved that queries will run 10 to 50 (!) times faster than on current available hardware.
And now of course the closing question: What does it cost?
A Database Machine costs $650,000 – which is $4,000 per terabyte, and that is much cheaper than other storage around. Apart from that there is ‘some’ license involved for the software : $1,680,000 (and surely an annual fee of 15% of that amount). So it’s not for free…but it can replace a room full of your current hardware!

Some impressions from our inside reporter
• When Logica focus on “Committed, Innovate & Open” (CIO) it inspired oracle to “Complete, Open & Integrated (COI)”
• The main news was about Hardware. Co-operation between oracle and HP for storage systems
• Charles Philips had dinner with customers but couldn’t cook ….. score for Paul Schuijt.

Also check the photo impressions. http://picasaweb.google.com/leovlist/2008092224OowFotos#