Introducing the Tidal Automation Adapter for Oracle PeopleSoft

The PeopleSoft module of Tidal Automation (TA) works with the PeopleSoft Process Enterprise Scheduler to enhance PeopleSoft usability and integrate seamlessly with Enterprise Scheduling.

The adapter appears in TA as PeopleSoft connections. You create PeopleSoft jobs and schedule them to run on PeopleSoft process servers that you defined in the TA PeopleSoft Connection Definition dialog.

When a PeopleSoft job is ready to run, adapter tells the PeopleSoft Process Enterprise Scheduler to launch each process in the job. The adapter uses the standard PSPRCSRQST table that the PeopleSoft Process Enterprise Scheduler uses to launch processes. By querying and updating information in this and related tables, TA controls how processes are executed within the PeopleSoft environment.

You can also invoke PeopleSoft from Scheduler to add and edit process definitions and run controls for which you have privileges through authorized PeopleSoft operator IDs.

Terms to Know

  • Access ID –A user with access to the PeopleSoft database. There is usually one access ID dedicated to tools administration. For example, in an PeopleSoft database environment, this id is often known as the SYSADM user.

  • Job – A PeopleSoft job in TA is a collection of one or more PeopleSoft processes. The processes that make up a job can be of the same or different types.

    Note: The concept of a job in PeopleSoft is different from the one used in TA. In this documentation, where there is a reference to a “PeopleSoft job”, it specifically means a TA job defined to run processes on a PeopleSoft process server.

  • Mapped Drive – A mapped drive refers to mapping a Windows drive letter to a network file system. The network drive becomes a virtual hard drive for the computer that has mapped to it. The drive letter is included when referring to the network drive in a path from the perspective of the machine that has it mapped.

  • Process – A PeopleSoft process is a single program or executable, for example, an SQR report.

  • Process Scheduler – Native PeopleSoft job scheduling facility.

  • PeopleTools – Development and administration infrastructure tools included with all PeopleSoft applications that includes the Process Scheduler.

  • Operator ID – A PeopleSoft user definition that restricts access to specific components of the PeopleSoft application itself.

  • Run Control ID – A name that identifies a set of runtime parameter values for a process, including both global andprocess-specific information.

  • UNC – UNC stands for Uniform Naming Convention or Universal Naming Convention. UNC is a way of specifying shared directories, servers, and other resources on a network, indicating path or directory levels within the computer.

    Example: \\computer_name\directory_name.

Minimum Software Requirements

The minimum software releases for the adapter implementation are:

  • PeopleSoft 8.1, 9.1, 9.2

  • PeopleTools version 8.49 - 8.54

    Note: Refer the TA Compatibility Matrix for specific and current version support.

  • TA v6.1 and above.

  • Network File System (NFS) software in a mixed Windows/Unix environment. The Windows master must be able to see the output and logs of PeopleSoft jobs running on Unix process servers via NFS or FTP.

  • One of these databases:

    Oracle 10g and 11i

    DB2 UDB 9 for Unix and DB2 UDB 9 for z/OS

    Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008

  • JDBC drivers. If your PeopleSoft instance uses a Microsoft SQL Server database and your TA master runs on Unix, JDBC drivers must be installed on the Unix master. Directions for downloading and installing the JDBC driver (SP2) are provided in the Installing the Unix Master chapter in the Installation and Configuration Guide. The Unix administrator can help to install the driver and to configure a CLASSPATH environment variable to point to the .jar file.

  • If you are using the IBM® SDK for Java and the DB2® Universal JDBC (sometimes referred to as JCC) driver to run a program against a host database, you may encounter an exception like com.ibm.db2.jcc.b.SqlException: unsupported encoding Cp277 for resultset column. The cause of this exception is that there are two jar files for codesets in the JDK. One is for the basic encoding set (...jre/lib/rt.jar). The other is for the extended encoding set (...jre/lib/charsets.jar). An example of a codeset that is supported by the extended encoding set is Cp277. If you are connecting to PeopleSoft while running DB2, the master should be using JDK instead of JRE. For a workaround, copy the charset.jar file into the jre\lib directory.