ERP Associates, Inc.

I’m going to Oracle OpenWorld again this year, and I just finished building my schedule.  Wow.  This year there are so many sessions I want to attend in the same time slots that I won’t be able to see a fraction of what I want to.  Guess I’ll have to skip the session on how to author blue-ray disks using Java in favor of a product roadmap session I need to attend.  You see, I’ve started a new project and I have a whole laundry list of stuff I need to come up to speed on.  I’m sure it’ll be an informative but exhausting week – it always is.

Gazing into my crystal ball, I’m expecting to hear more about the Fusion applications that were introduced at the end of the 2009 OOW.  I think Oracle isn’t re-inventing all of the functionality in their mature ERP/CRM product lines like PeopleSoft, JDE, EBS, and Siebel.  But all the same I’m expecting to see some products that are ready for launch and looking snazzy with the deep integration with BI and other apps that Oracle has invested so heavily in.

Speaking of BI, I’m looking forward to seeing the new release of OBIEE.  BI apps just look cool, and their functionality makes things like PeopleSoft Matching functionality seem boring in comparison.  I'm hoping to see support for a ton of data sources and the ability to publish interactive reports to latest generation mobile devices.  Unfortunately I think I missed the BI boat at some point in my career, so bring on the 3-way match!

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Servers are becoming more powerful as manufacturers are finding new ways to get more cores into a CPU.  Today it’s not uncommon to see hexa and octa-core processors shipping at the same price points the dual- and hexa-cores shipped yesterday.  Where manufacturers once got their performance improvements through raw CPU speed, they are now getting their getting the majority of performance improvement through more cores in their processor chips.

Unfortunately the economics of additional cores for performance aren’t the same as improvements through improved clock cycles because software manufactures have largely tied their technology licensing to the number of cores on a system, and their pricing isn’t decreasing as the number of cores on these new servers increase.

For example, say you buy a basic server with two hexa-core processors, so you’re looking at 12 cores on the box.  Now let’s suppose the list price for Oracle Database is $47,500 per core.    So your list price to run an Oracle database on your new server will be $285,000.  And that’s not counting tuning packs, diagnostic packs, management packs, or even maintenance -- which is calculated as a percentage of the base price.  It turns out the cheapest part of this equation may be the hardware!

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Remember the old days (circa 2006) when doing disaster recovery involved shipping tapes to an off-site storage facility and provisioning emergency hardware at a disaster recovery facility?  Well, fast forward to 2010 when virtually unlimited hardware and disk storage are cheap and plentiful.  Making real-time backups to the cloud (with the right software) is not only doable but almost a no-brainer.  But once your backup is in the cloud, the next logical step would be to launch a virtual instance of the server that you backed up.  But that’s like, Star Trek futuristic stuff, right?

Well no more.  CloudRepica has a Software as a Service offering that does just that.  Their enterprise-grade replication software is capable of creating real-time disk images of any server.  Then they combine that with the unlimited disk resources and phenomenal reliability of the cloud to create a real-time disk backup and recovery service.  This offering is packaged and delivered in a Software as a Service model where you pay only a monthly fee.  There are no upfront costs, no licenses, no hardware, no media, no consulting labor and no facilities costs.

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Suppose you have a spreadsheet full of invoices that you want to load to PeopleSoft.  If you’re running PeopleSoft 8.9 or later, that’s easy. You use the voucher load spreadsheet to get them into the system and then run Voucher Build to turn them into vouchers.  But what if you want to load Single Pay vouchers?    That’s something that the spreadsheet voucher load won’t handle.

Okay, so maybe use the ExcelToCI spreadsheet to populate the VCHR_EXPRESS component.  Good luck with that.  If you’ve ever tried then you’ll know all about the "First operand of .null" error.   I spent some quality time with a component interface built off of that component and the PeopleCode debugger.  Unless you’re ready to change some PeopleCode --  maybe a lot of PeopleCode --  I don’t recommend it.

I had one client create a couple of SQR’s to upload single pay vouchers as regular vouchers, then change them to single pay vouchers after voucher build runs.  That solution works well (and if you want to know the details let me know), but if you’re not looking for a high-volume solution it might be overkill.

I recently stumbled across a way to do spreadsheet uploads with a simple spreadsheet macro that doesn’t depend on component interface.   Basically you make an Excel macro open up a browser and key the data in for you.

Before I explain how it works, I just want to let you know that you need to be familiar with Excel macros and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code.  You also need to know a little about Application Programming Interfaces (API’s).  And a little knowledge about the HTML Document Object Model (DOM) wouldn’t hurt.  But if you meet most of these qualifications you shouldn’t have any trouble at all in making this work – no special PeopleSoft App Designer access or knowledge required.

And one more caveat:  This was built on PeopleTools 8.48 and Financials 8.9.  Due to how the script works it’s likely it won’t work for PeopleTools releases beyond 8.49.

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Sure, Amazon Web Services is great for geeks and small companies with nothing to lose, but what if your company is in the Fortune 1000?  Can you really trust Amazon (or any cloud provider for that matter) with your employees, vendors, customers, and all of the associated confidential data like credit card numbers and tax ID’s? 

That’s something I’ve been struggling with lately.  We have successfully used AWS to spin up demo environments of PeopleSoft Enterprise, Hyperion, GoldenGate.  We used demo data as opposed to any customer-specific data which has been fine so far.  And I must say that AWS is an incredible tool to get the software up and running and build a sandbox for evaluation purposes.  But the next logical step would be to use AWS to host conference room pilot and prototyping environments to support our initial requirements gathering efforts.  Beyond that we’ll want to build Dev and Test environments.  And all of these environments will need real data from existing systems.

We can certainly procure the hardware and host these environments in house, but I’m thinking about AWS because we could postpone our hardware purchases until closer to the end of the requirements gathering phase when we can be more precise about our needs.   So I did some research and here are some of the things I’ve learned.

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In our neck of the woods, the Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer.  Hope that you get to enjoy a little time off and a hot dog or two.  And I hope that this month's newsletter has a few tasty treats for your brain.  Enjoy!

The latest issue of the newsletter (for June 2010) is now available online:
http://swtest.workshopmultimedia.com/jun2010.htm

Back issues (back to 1999) are also available from the contents page:  http://swtest.workshopmultimedia.com/. 

Also, I'm always looking for items to include in the newsletter. If you'd like to contribute, please send me an e-mail. Your contribution will be noted with appropriate attribution. Thanks!

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Regards,
Tim Jones

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Quotable Quotes

Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.  –George Polya

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.  –Chinese proverb

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.  –C. S. Lewis

The end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.  –William Faulkner

Conformity is the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth.  –John F. Kennedy

Many live in dread of what is coming. Why should we? The unknown puts adventure into life...  The unexpected around the corner gives a sense of anticipation and surprise. Thank God for the unknown future.  –E. Stanley Jones

There’s no sense in being precise when you don’t even know what you’re talking about.  –John von Neumann

Technology is nothing.  What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.  It’s not the tools that you have faith in—tools are just tools.  –Steve Jobs

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In my recent podcast I interview Karen from Chesapeake Energy about Chesapeake's PeopleTools 8.50 Upgrade.  She was generous enough to share their issue list, and so I wanted to pass it along.  I hope you find it helpful!

The new auto-complete functionality does not allow you to select using the mouse. You must use your up and down arrows and the ‘Enter’ key.

• Oracle supposedly has this fixed in 8.50.05.

External URLs – No longer work the same way they did before. Previously, URLs on content references that contained escape sequences would function correctly, but now PS replaces the “%” in the escape sequence with another escape sequence, “%” which breaks the URL.  To work around, it was necessary to replace the escape sequence with the value it replaced (e.g. replacing with an actual space character).

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Quotable Quotes

All good work is done in defiance of management.  –Bob Woodward

 Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.  –Albert Schweitzer

 You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.  –Jack London

 We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.  –Douglas Adams

 You are more likely to be successful, overall, if you participate joyfully with projects and goals and do not think your life depends on achieving the mark because then you will be better able to connect to people all around you… When you are oriented to abundance, you care less about being in control, and you take more risks… In a measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set a context and let life unfold.  –Rosamond Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility, pp. 21

 For even as it is better to enlighten than merely to shine, so is it better to give to others the fruits of one's contemplation than merely to contemplate.  –Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae

 For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.  –Vincent van Gogh

 Accountability breeds “response-ability”.  –Stephen R Covey

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Here are the long-awaited videos from our PeopleSoft 8.9 Installation Exercise from February 15th. You'll remember that was the day I needed to install PeopleSoft 8.9 on to an AWS instance, and I decided to do it in a GoToMeeting session so whoever wanted to could "look over my shoulder", ask questions and participate. It was more of a collaboration than a training session, and there were plenty of times I hit issues that the group bailed me out on. So I learned a lot, especially about SQL Server. Hopefully everybody else did too.

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