ERP Associates, Inc.

It was a rainy Tuesday here at OOW, but it was definitely worth making it to the sessions.   The sessions I attended today were more “what’s new in Tools 8.5” focused, and I spent a little more time with the Integration Broker component specifically.

Like a lot in PeopleTools components, Integration Broker started humbly as the service bus to integrate different PeopleSoft applications.  It wasn’t entirely standards-based and proprietary components showed up there (like the PSCAMA tags).   It was enhanced over the years to become more SOA focused and the last integration broker enhancement release was PeopleTools 8.48 released in 2006 (if memory serves).  Going forward, Integration Broker remains THE integration tool for PeopleSoft.  99% of all integration with other Fusion Middleware components continues to go through Integration Broker, and that’s not expected to change.

If the 8.48 release was relatively deep with a few major redesigns, the 8.50 changes are broader, with lots of minor enhancements.  Without going into too much detail, here’s what’s new for Integration Broker in 9.0:

• Reusable message parts
• Improved Gateway Logging allows you to turn logging on and off in the PIA without restarting, and individual transactions go to individual files making it easier to find what you’re looking for.
• You can now create service handlers based on Application Engine, and off-load IB processing to the process scheduler while maintaining guaranteed message ordering.
• Improved Statistics – you’ll just have to see it for yourself
• Security Enhancements – Message encryption of the header, body, or everything is delivered via a 3^rd party component.  Also check the release notes about SAML and Enforcement and Overriding.  And if you want to revert back to the pre 8.48 way of messaging without requiring authentication tokens you can set it on a service-by-service basis.
• Bulk Load Handler lets you use any schema definition to load directly into a database.  It’s open to non-rowset messages and it’s simple to map the XML message to the part tables.
• Service Test Tools offer simple ways to test your messages online. I also like what they did with Sendmaster.
• Bulk Activation gets you past the details of activating a bunch of services all at once, along with the related service operations, routings and handlers.
• Empty XML tags can now be suppressed – no more blanking data in your receiving application!
• IB load balancing is easier than ever with master/slave configuration templates.

And those are just the major features, there’s actually more there that you’ll just have to discover for yourself.  Here are some more new PeopleTools 8.50 features you might find interesting:

• PIA is now decoupled from the App Server and the Web Server.  Set the PS_SERVER_CFG environment variable to indicate where you want your appserv/<domain> structure to go.  What this allows you to do is to make your PS_HOME directory read-only which makes it more secure.  I’m not sure this isn’t a solution in search of a problem, but I’ll have to spend some time with it to decide.
• Jolt Pooling can be enabled for Portal, Integration Gateway and Reporting separately.
• Oracle VM Templates are being delivered and can be imported into Oracle VM Manager. I think I said these would run on Xen yesterday, I stand corrected.

What is conspicuously absent this year is any new information about Fusion Applications.  Last year at least you had executives assuring customers that they’re still diligently working hard on Fusion (even if details were sparse) but this year the silence is deafening.  I wonder if Larry Ellison is going to surprise everyone with a major Fusion announcement in his keynote tomorrow afternoon – there has been some speculation along those lines.  Time will tell.

In my spare time this week I was able to get HCM 9.1 up and running on my Amazon EC2 instance. I haven’t had much time to play with it yet, but the navigation alone is totally amazing.  If you want to see it let me know and I’ll e-mail you the link.

BTW, the blogger meet-up was great.  Many thanks to Alex Gorbachev of Pythian for organizing it.  Well done!