PeopleSoft Knowledge Collection

1. What is a set ID or Table set?
It is going share common control table values.

2. What is an object group?
Collection of one or more objects that form a logical group for security purpose.

3. What is business Process Map?
It is an alternative method for accessing panels or it is a graphical representation of a map.

4. What is an activity?
It is a collection of logical steps. It represents specific transaction a user might need to perform.

5. What is a business Process?
It is a collection of activities and it represents broad area functionality, categorizing the several activities.

6.What is a Process?
A task involved by the system.

7. What is a process instance?
It is a process number used to request process.

8. What is a process server agent?
It is going to initialize, select and parse the program.

9. What is a command line parameter?
The executable (.EXE) file is nothing but command line parameter. E.g. C:/SQLbin\SQL.exe.

10. What is Parameter List?
It defines under what database, platform will the program. (Nothing but the meta-strings)

11. What is Application Upgrade?
It is a migration of object from one database to another and updating other system components such as application software.

12. What is Mass change and explain the uses of Mass change?
Mass change is a SQL generator you can use to develop and perform custom applications. Using mass change, a developer can set up a series of INSERT, UPDATE, OR DELETE SQL statements that the end user can execute to perform business functions.
The overall structure of Mass change is similar to that of People soft Query
Except that Query retrieves data from the database while mass change actually updates the database.
The uses of Mass change are as follows.
1. It is used to perform high volume set oriented transactions.
2. Copy data from table or table
3. Archive table data (Archive means that the data does not have backup file and uses to update the values)

13. Why use Mass change and why not SQL execute to update a record, which is not attached to the panel?
The reason why Mass change is preferred over SQL exec is….
1. Two- Three Mass change program can work at a single time.
2. Data / information need not be defined in Mass change
3. Mass change can be used for file download upload.

14. What are the steps involved in Mass change?
The following are the order of steps involved in Mass change.
`1. Define type
2. Assign to template
3. Operator security
4.Mass change definition

15. What is Mass change group?
Adding all Mass change into a group. (i.e., Multiple Mass change definitions can be executed simultaneously).

16. What is workflow?
To an extent all the business processes defined using the Application designer involve workflow. However we usually reserve the term to refer to processes that involve multiple users and the routing of data between the users. People soft workflow tools help you build the routings into your computer systems. You use them to tie together the individual steps so that the system can help coordinate the activities.

17. How Workflow is controlled?
It is controlled by Decision Point (it is graphically denoted by a (?)). Where user has to choose which activity is appropriate towards the next step.

18. What are the key fields used in Key list?
7 key fields used in a key list. They are as follows..
1. Busprocname- (Business Process Name)
2. Activity name
3. Event name
4. Work list name
5. Instance Id
6. Transaction Id
7. Emplid

Note: While defining the above fields in the record definition, a key has to be assigned in the record field properties.

19. What is routing in workflow?
Transfer of roles / users

20. Why workflow is used and explains the advantage of workflow in People soft application?
Workflow typically eliminates the job tasks associated with controlling paper flow, and frees people the once performed clerical functions to do more meaningful work.
• Tasks that don't require user involvement
• Tasks that involve non People soft users
• Tasks that several users work on together.

21. Define the components of workflow?
There are 3 underlying components of workflow i.e., Rules, Roles, Routing.

Rules
Rules are your company's business practices captured in software. Rules determine what activities are required to process your business data. The rules are contained in policies and procedures documents.

Roles
Roles describe how people fit into the workflow. A role is a class of users who perform the same type of work, such as clerks or managers. Your business rules typically specify what user role needs to do an activity.
Roles direct the work to types of people rather than to individuals. Identifying roes instead of individual users makes your workflow more flexible and easier to maintain. Roles remain stable even as people change jobs.

Routings
Routings connect the activities in the workflow. They are the systems means of moving information from one place to another, from one step to the next. Routings bring the flow into workflow. The network of routings creates a business process from what used to be isolated activities. Routings make it possible to deploy applications throughout the enterprise. They work through the levels and departments of an enterprise to bring together the role that are necessary to complete complex tasks.

Section2

1. What is a workflow processor?
Workflow processor is a suite of online agents that run and control the workflow in your business processes. Once you define your business processes, you set up agents to do the work for you. Workflow processor consists of:

Word lists, which are ordered lists of the work a person (or group of people) have to do.
Application agents, which detect when a business rule has been triggered as users enter data into a People soft application. They evaluate who should action the new work instance (the role) and routes it to them (the routing)
The message agent, which processes messages sent to People soft external systems, such as electronic mail systems, interactive voice response systems, kiosks, other workflow systems, even the internet. It provides an application-programming interface (API) that enables third-party systems to integrate with People soft applications.

Database agents, which monitor the People soft database to identify items that need to enter workflow, such as overdue requisitions, scheduled performance reviews; departments that are over budget-any item you want to be alerted about. Workflow Administrator gives you the ability to access, monitor, analyze, and control workflow in your organization, which activities take the longest, which work lists are overloaded, and you can redesign work when an employee is out sick

2. What is a Tree?
It is a People soft object that defines the grouping and hierarchical relationship between the values of database fields. It also specifies how the system groups together the values of the fields for the purpose of reporting and security access.
Note: A particular tree is imported through out People soft system. Only one tree should be active throughout People soft system at a time.

3. What is a Tree Node (Unit)?
It represents the group of detailed values that report to it.

4. What is a Tree level?
It provides the short way to refer all nodes that share a single parent.

5. What is a node?
It is an individual branch of main level.

6. What is a Parent?
A node, which has other nodes reporting to it.

7. What is a child?
Lower level than its parent is called a child.

8. What is a sibling?
A node, which is placed at the same level, is called sibling.

9. What is meant by category in Tree manager?
High-level grouping under which you can organize your tree structure and tree definition.

10. Explain the various options to define a Tree?
There are 2 options to define a Tree..
1.Detailed Tree: used to gather information about the various parts of the tree.
2.Summary Tree: collection of detailed tree nodes.

11. What are the advantages of Tree Manager?
The following are the advantages of a Tree Manager..
1. By building a tree you can make rules centralized and can be used throughout the system.
2. Tree makes it easier to select the values you want to include in a report, ledger or security profile.
3. The main advantage in a tree is that it summarizes the rules visually and you can easily see as to now the values relate to each other.

12. What is an application reviewer?
It is a tool, which is window, based and designed as an aid in debugging People code programs. It allows us to investigate processing errors and to set a break point in between programs.
Note: People code works in data on the stacks. (Stacks store the internal machine execution numbers)

13. What are the important Cross-reference Reports in People soft?
There are three important Cross-reference reports in People soft..
1. XRF PCFL (Cross reference people code to field)
2. XRF FLPC (Cross reference field to People code)
3. XRF PNPC (Cross reference panel to People code)

14. What is a Query Tool?
Query tool is a powerful tool for defining database queries in an easy-to-use graphical environment. You can extract the precise data you want using visual representation of People soft database.

15. Enlist the uses of Query tool?
The following are the uses of Query tool..
1. It is used to simplify SQR statements
2. It can be used to generate one-time adhoc queries or queries used repeatedly.
3. It provides security for queries.
4. Query tool can be used to generate Pnvision and Crystal reports.

16. Explain briefly the types of queries?
There are 3 types of Queries
Search for records. Many of the search dialog boxes in People soft applications enable you to open Query and create a query based on the search record definition. This option enables you to search for records based on sophisticated search criteria. This type of query is called a search query.

Determine who to forward information to. You can write queries that People soft Work flow uses to determine who to send e-mails, forms, or work list entries to.
This type of query is called a role query>

User defined queries (adhoc query) is used to generate reports in the user defined format.

17. Explain briefly about the Database tab and Query tab?
When you click the database tab, you see a list of available record definitions (or record components). You can view these records as either a tree of access groups or as an alphabetical tree of records to which you operator ID has access.
When you click the Query tab, you see all the components used in the current query (such as record components, field components, prompts, expressions, and so on.

18. What is an Access Group in a Query tool?
Access groups provide a way for you to logically organize the record components to control security access within Query. It is not a physical representation of your database. The record components shown are those that the operator has been granted access to.

19. Explain briefly about Crystal Reports?
With Crystal Reports Pro from Seagate software, you can generate attractive reports. Crystal reports builds directly on queries you create in People soft Query. Crystal reports pro for windows is a report formatter that helps you to generate clear and easy to read printed reports containing data from your People soft applications. You can generate standard reports we have already created and saved in Crystal, or create your own custom reports.
Generating formatted output in Crystal involves two steps. First you create and save queries in People soft Query then you create report definitions in Crystal to format the fields (columns) used in the queries. Once you have created and saved the report definitions, you can print reports that are easy to read and understand. You can generate reports in a variety of different formats, including ASCII files, Microsoft Word documents and spread sheets.

Section3

. What is Application Engine?
It is the tool, which performs, background SQL processing against our application data tables. It is an alternative for COBOL, SQL or SQR
Programs. Other tools such as query tool and mass change generate SQL.

2. What are the parts of Application Engine?
Application Engine consists of 4 parts.
1. Application: It is a set of SQL statements.
2. Steps: It is the smallest unit of work committed in an application.
3. Sections: Comprises of 1 or more steps
4. Statements: SQL statements like update, insert, delete or select are issued.

3. What is the advantage of using Application Engine?
The following are the advantages of using Application Engine.
Encapsulation
Unlike applications developed using COBOL or SQR, Application Engine applications reside completely within your database. With Application Engine, there are the programs to compile, no statements to store, and no need to directly interact with the operating environment in use. You can build, run and debug your applications without existing People Tools.
Effective Dating
Application sections are effective dated-meaning you can activate/deactivate a section as of a particular date. This enables you to archive sections as you modify them, instead of destroying them. In the future if you decide to revert to a previous incarnation of a section you can simply reactivate it.
SQL / Meta-SQL Support
In addition to writing your SQL within Application Engine, you can also copy SQL statements into Application Engine from SQL talk or any other SQL utility with few – if any changes.
RDBMS platforms have many differing syntax rules – especially in regard to date, time and other numeric calculations. For the most part you can work around this problem using Meta-SQL which Application Engine supports. This language was created to handle different RDBMS SQL syntax's by replacing them with a standard syntax, called Meta-strings.
With in Platform specific sections
You can also have the ability to call generic portions of SQL statements by using the & CLAUSE function. This means you can write your generic SQL portions just once, and reference them from your different platform versions.
Set Processing Support
Set processing is a SQL technique used to process groups (or sets) of rows of one time rather than one at a time. Application Engine is particularly effective of processing these types of applications.
Object Orientation
Unless designed to anticipate changes in field attributes. COBOL applications may need to be modified when things change. If a developer increases a field's length, then it may need to be changed in every instance where the COBOL program uses this field as a bind or select variable. This can require a good bit of effort. And, if not handled properly, a change like this can cause confusing errors. For example, if the length of a field in the COBOL is wrong, it may work fine, or you may get an error, or the field may get truncated.
One of the corner stones of People soft functionality is Application Designer. Because of the way it works, most field attributes (type, length and scale) can be specified once, globally. If the field is used on more than one record, it has the same attributes in each of these records.

PORTABILITY
You can use Data Mover to import/export your applications. This means that you can export an application(s) into a file, and attach it to an e-mail message. Then, the recipient can simply use the IMPORT feature of Data Mover, and the application is ready to run.

4. What is a Cache Record?
The Cache record (or cache) is a physical People soft record, keyed by process instance that must be created and maintained by the Application Engine developer. This record defines the fields that an application uses to pas values from one SQL statements to another. You retrieve cache field values by the Application Engine and BIND function; you assign cache values using & SELECT.

5. What is unique about panels, which refer to view as opposed to physical tables?
Panels that refer to views in People soft are not used for insert, update or delete. All fields on these panels are display only.

6. How search records are used?
Search records are used to search, retrieve and filter data. Search records also define the structure of the dialog box.

7. Where are the search records assigned?
Search records are assigned to a panel group in a menu.

8. Does the search record for a panel has to be the same as the record being
Accessed on the panel? Why or Why not?
The search record for the panel does not have to be the same as the record being
Accessed on the panel because the search record is used to search for and or
Filter the search key.

9. How can a search record dialog box be suppressed?
A search record dialog box can be suppressed by assigning a search record that does not have search key.

10. What do search views delivered by People soft do besides displaying the dialog
Box?
Search views delivered by People soft are used to implement row level security as well as display a dialog box.

11. What do you need to do to modify the search views?
To modify a search view, we need to change the record definition and recreate the underlying SQL view.

12. When would you have to alter the tables and modify the panels, in the process
of modifying search records?
You need to alter tables and modify panels, when you modify a search record to include a new field.

13. When will there be two occurs level records in a panel group?
If you are referring to two different record definitions that share a same high-level key then two-level one-scroll bar can be displayed as stacked scroll bars.

14. In what order does the application processor fill buffer for the panel group?
The application processor uses occurs level in the panel group to fill the buffer.

15.Differentiate Error V/s Warning statements in People code?
The error statement issues a message and the condition causing the error must
Be corrected before proceeding. The warning statement issues a message and
The user can proceed without changing any values.

16. Where can you run Jobs?
The process scheduler can run jobs on the client or a server machine.

17. What restrictions are placed on multi-process jobs?
A multi process jobs can only be scheduled to run on a server.

18. List the three output destinations available through the Process Scheduler?
You can direct the output to a printer file and windows screen.

19. Where do you set up default operator / class options for Process Monitor?
In operator security, using change, process profile.

20. What are the advantages of incorporating Table set ids into People soft applications?
Table set Ids allow you to share sets of values (codes) in the same prompt table.

21. What fields should be at the tope of every search record definition that use table set Ids?
SET ID is the field that should be at the top of every record definition that uses table set Ids.

22. What is a Record Group ID?
A Record group ID is a group of record definitions that are Sharing the same set control field.

23. What do you determine using Table set Ids control information?
Table set ID control information determines how the information should be shared. The Table set ID control panel defines which Table set Ids set control filed code will use for each record group.

24. What are the three types of Maps used by the navigator?
The 3 types of Maps used by the navigator are..
1. Business Process Map
2. Activity Map
3. Step Map

25. What are the types of layers in Crystal reports?
There are 4 types of layers in Crystal Reports. They are..
1. Report Header - In this, we will write title, date, and logos of the company.
2. Page Header – Used to write column headings.
3. Detail – Contains database column values.
4. Page Footer – Used to write page numbers and address.

Section4

1. What is PIA and what are its components?
It is n-tier architecture. We have client, web server, application server and Database server. We have jolt and tuxedo. We have WSL, WSH, JSL, JSH, QUEUES and services.
In database server we have system tables, peopletools tables and application tables.

2. Differentiate Field edit and Save edit?
In Field edit for each field change, a transition to the application server to the database is taken place. In Save edit for all the fields, only one transition to the application server to the Database is taken place.

3. What are think time functions?
Think-time functions suspend processing either until the user has taken some action (such as clicking a button in a message box), or until an external process has run to completion.

4. In which events error & warning are used most extensively.
Field edit, Save edit, Search save, row delete, row insert.

5. Is there any way by which you can find out whether the user is in Add mode or Update mode?
%mode---returns A---for Add mode. Returns U –for Update mode

6. What is the purpose of the SQLEXEC function? What are its benefits and draw backs?
SQLEXEC is used to execute the sql statements (select, insert,update,delete).
We can get only one row at a time.

7. How is the searchinit event most often used by people soft application?
A) Searchinit fires before the search dialogue page is displayed to the end user.For this reason searchinit is often used to enhance roll level security by inserting and graying out certain values to the search dialogue page.

8. What are the options for using SQL in people code?
a) Sqlexec
b) Record class methods (selectbykey, delete, insert, update)
c) Using sql class, its properties and methods.

9. What is the difference between component buffer and data buffer?
Component buffer contains all the data of the active component.
Data buffer contains the data other than the data in the component buffer (Data of other records)

10. What databuffer classes are available in people code?
Rowset, Row, Record, Field, Array, File, Sql, chart, grid and so on.

11. When we select a component what events will be fired?
If default mode for component is search mode: only searchinit will fired .If default mode for component is new mode :field default, field formula, rowinit, searchinit.

12. What are different variables in people code and their Scope?
System variables and User defined variables.
Scope --- Global, Component, Local.

13. What is default processing?
In default processing, any blank fields in the component are set to their default value. You can specify the default value either in the Record Field Properties, or in FieldDefault PeopleCode

14. What is difference between field default and Row init?
Field default specifies only the default value for a field when we are in Add mode.
Row init fires only when a row of data coming from database to component buffer.

15. What is difference between saveprechange and savepostchange? Which function directly interacts with the database?
Saveprechange---last event that executes before updating the data from component buffer to the database.
Savepostchange –fires after the updation of data in the database.
SQLEXEC --- function directly interacts with the database.

16. What is Getlevel 0()? What is the use of %subrec and %selectall functions?
Getlevel0 ()---used the get the rowset of the level0.
%subrec--is used only in Dynamic View SQL where it expands to the columns of a subrecord:
%selectall--%SelectAll is shorthand for selecting all fields in the specified record, wrapping date/time fields with %DateOut, %TimeOut.

17. What is an array in people code? What is maximum dimension of an array? Which function inserts values into an array? What is "pop"?
An array is a collection of data storage locations, each of which holds the same type of data.
The maximum depth of a PeopleCode array is 15 dimensions.
Push and unshift are the functions of the array used to add the elements into the array one from the end of the array and one from the beginning.
Pop is a function of array used to select and delete an element from the end of the array.

18. What is difference between Getrowset and Createrowset in people code?
Getrowset –is used to get rowset for a record in the component buffer.
Createrowset—is used to create rowset for a record which in database, and is also called a Standalone rowset

19. Can you save the component programmatically?
Using Dosave and Dosavenow functions.

20. What is differed processing and its advantages?
Postpones some user actions to reduce the number of trips to the database so that increases the performance (in system edits, field edit, and field change).
Advantages:
1) Reduces the network traffic.
2) Increases the performance.
33. Write the syntax to access third level record field using object oriented peoplecode?
&fld=Getlevel0 ()(1).GetRowset(Record..GetRow(1),
GetRowset (Record.).GetRow(1),
GetRowset (Record.).GetRow(1),
GetRecord (Record.).GetFieild(Field.))

21. What are the built-functions used to control translate values dynamically?
Adddropdownitem ()
Deletedropdownitem ()

22. How to populate data into grid in online?
&Rs.Select or Scrollselect ().
SECURITY
Before accessing a people soft application what levels of security must be passed through.
a) Field level security
b) Row level security
c) Maintain security
d) Definition security
e) Portal security.

23.What is the use of primary permission list in user profile?
Primary permission list is used for mass change and definition security purposes.
How to authorize the user to run a process or report?
To authorize a user to run a process, the process group, which contains the process or report, should be added to the permission list of that user.

24.How to give access to the records that are to be used in a query?
To give access to the records that are to be used in query, we have create a new query security tree and add the records which we want to give the access and then assign a access group to the tree. After that we have to add that query tree and query access group to the permission list.

25.What are the rules used by the system to determine whether a user is authorized to update an object?
The user should have the permission to update the object. This is given by the Definition security. The group, which holds the object, should be added to the permission list of the user in update mode.
What are the different ways we can set up the portal security to access component in portal?
1) Structure & content
2) Menu import
3) Register component