Web Services – The Fuel For Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

As we are eagerly awaiting the Montreal fest this weekend and with surge in fuel prices, its right time to discuss the driving force behind SOA.

Web Services are the core to a SOA System and they are the driving factor for a lot of present day state of the art systems.Days are gone by where a small piece of change request would require 2 to 4 months of work on the legacy systems with application service provider ASP.
It all depends on the compatibility factor, say for example we need to leverage the functionality of a JCL or a COBOL program to be used in a Visual Basic or AJAX application. It would sound complicated as the solution was designed with a lot of interfaces for the Microsoft or Unix environment; It was really a hard job to perform a couple of years ago. But now It’s web services, a cheat code to a hard to win game. Web Services are a bunch of code within a system which is modular and acts as a plug and play for the users who require a specific service.

By now, web services are far capable, far scalable, far reusable, far accessible and far user friendly to the users. Lets see how Peoplesoft had mastered the Service Oriented Architecture and the various chunks like

• Web Services Creation
• Web Services Publishing, and
• Standards and Technology Behind Web Services

in the following posts. Integration between Peoplesoft and Java Based applications as well as Peoplesoft and Microsoft Sharepoint Services are basically driven by SOA.

Kronos Data Collection Manager – DCM

Be it a Software Industry or Hardware Industry, wherever there is a considerable amount of workforce involved, Time and Attendance plays an important role. Especially, the automation of the time and attendance process. Its the Kronos Workforce Timekeeper that tops the list on the day of chequered flag. Lets see how Kronos does it ,..

Having known that Kronos Workforce Timekeeper is used for processing the time and attendance Data of the workforce in an organization, Lets concentrate on the “Data Collection Manager” of kronos. DCM is a set of applications that enables the interaction between data collection devices or clocks and a host application like kronos workforce timekeeper.

DCM constitutes the

• Communication Monitor,
• Device Manager,
• Device Work Rules,
• Event Manager, and
• Sentinel Service applications.

Communication Monitor: When an employee swipes in the access card to enter his/her workplace, the exact time is captured/collected in a collection device such as clocks, biometric devices,.. The collected information needs to reach the host application for further processing, If there is a data flow error or when a collection device is down, then we use the communication monitor to test device communications and its transactions.

Device Manager: is used to check the status of the collection devices and to configure the device firmware. Start and Stop services of the data collection devices is one of the frequently used features of the device manager during the configuration and re-initialization of the device.

Lets see more about pay rule, work rule, their associations and few interesting facts about event manager and sentinel service in the next post.

**DCM – Data Collection Manager
**DCD – Data Collection Devices

To Know More Vistit: Kronos

Part I – Peoplesoft and Microsoft Active Directory Single sign on Setup

Hi Friends, Its been a long time that I had posted in our Pitstop

May be because I have been kept busy with the work load and also the 2008 Formula One Championship,.. Its was too good to watch the thundering drive to the chequered flag by the team ferrari and hardly was concentrating on the opponents pitstops,…

Here we go,.. I would like to bring in the ‘technical collaboration’ (term taken out of air) between the Microsoft Active Directory and Oracle-Peoplesoft. You may find a lot of information on this in the Internet and other related material of interest to you. So I thought of listing down some of the basic aspects that needs to be concentrated while we are into a single sign on process.

• Gathering the correct ‘Connect String’ Information from the Active Directory (LDAP)
• Selecting a Network Analyzer Tool to be used to trace the data packet movement – Just in case if we head into connectivity problem, and
• Configuring the Schema Cache on the Peoplesoft Environment.

Do post in queries if you do happen to run into any issues when you are performing single sign on or when you need more information on the procedure.

I’m happy that i had a very quick pitstop here back on track and will be back soon

Read more About: Peoplesoft

Instant Peoplesoft Cloning Refresher Kit

Here are the instant refresher steps for performing a peoplesoft clone.

• The target system – the system to which the Peoplesoft Instance to be cloned.
• The source system – the system from which the Peoplsoft Instance is cloned.
• Oracle Application 9i with the patch at version 7 is installed in the target system.
• Application and Web Server is also installed in the target system
• The Database structure files from PSHOME from the source system is copied to the target system’s separate drive.
• Update the domain names and coordinates in the TNS Listener files
• Configure the application and web server domain names

Points to Ponder

• Before initializing the activity, the very first step would be to shutdown the source database using
  • Set Oracle_SID = Domain Name, and
  • Connect Sys as Sysdba shutdown immediate
• Shutdown the Application Server in the Source system
• Shutdown the Web Server in the Source system
• Access the Oracle\Oradata\Domainname and copy the *.dat files to the target system
• Make sure all the control files, data files and redo log files are in place in the destination system
• Execute the ‘alter database backup control file to trace’ in the source system
• Make sure that the file is created under Udump folder as a result of the above script
• Make the necessary changes in the file and save it as *.sql
• Copy the parameter file names initdomainname.ora under oracle\ora92\database and edit the coordinates and parameters in order to reflect the target system’s features
• Startup Nomount; and execute the script generated from the source system
• Update PSDBOWNER Set DBNAME =”New Domain Name”
• Use NET Configuration Assistant wizard to configure the listener with the parameters for TNS, Host Name, IP Address, System Name(Target System) and perform a test
• Using the configuration assistant, test for the access of Peoplesoft Application Designer , Data Mover with the same user access credentials of the Source system database
• Configure the Web Server by providing the domain name, Peoplesoft web site name and startPIA.exe; Make sure that the environment variables are also set for JavaHome.

Workforce Modelling and Intelligence

Login to the url http://helix.hexaware.com/Innovation/ and navigate to the menu HRIT>SOD>Thursday forums to view the presentation as well as the video of Princeton Softec’s Optim and Human Concepts Workforce Modelling and Intelligence tool – Orgplus.

To know More About: Enterprise Solution

Peoplesoft Time and Labor Vs Kronos Workforce Timekeeper Part II

Peoplesoft Time and Labor Vs Kronos Workforce TimeKeeper
Kronos Workforce Timekeeper
The process of making historical edits using Timekeeper 5.0 is much the same as it was in Timekeeper 3.4.
Add Historical Amount (formerly “New Historical Amount” in TK v3.4)
Required fields (note these in the screenshot below):

• Historical Date (formerly “Apply to Date” in TK v3.4)
• Pay Code
• Amount (hh:mm)
• Include in Totals for Effective Date (formerly “Add to selected timeframe” in TK v3.4) Selecting this option ensures the information is sent to payroll for processing and payment.
• Impact Accruals

Peoplesoft Time and Labor: Adjustments to Payable Time
We may need to make an adjustment to payable time that has already been paid by Payroll. This type of adjustment is called a Record Only Adjustment and is made using the Adjust Paid Time page. When you make an adjustment of this type, it is for record keeping purposes only. The time you add / adjust is not processed by Time and Labor nor is the time sent to payroll.

Using the Adjust Paid Time page, one can add / delete time, or change existing payable time that has already been processed by the payroll system and has a payable status of Distributed. All the time reporting fields appear on the Adjust Paid Time page for editing. You can change any field except the Payable Status, and TRC Type fields. After you make adjustments using this page, the system does not process the time further. It does not run it through Time Administration or send the time to payroll. Time and Labor does publish the payable time to your Project Costing application.

For further details please refer the People soft People books.

Please Visit to learn about: Kronos Workforce