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LIGHTLY TECHNICAL OBSERVATIONS ON PEOPLESOFT, SQR, AND RELATED AND UNRELATED TOPICS

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PeopleSoft Environment Usage

Over the last two weeks I've outlined some ways of setting up your PeopleSoft environments (databases) to enable development and support. I've discussed having multiple testing environments at one step on the migration path vs. multiple testing steps on the migration path. Two common configurations are the three-step path (DEV - TST - PRD) and the four-step path (DEV - TST - UAT - PRD). Which is better?

As with so many things, it just depends. However, a major consideration involves your data access policy. If developers are restricted from seeing production data (or at least restricted from changing production objects), then I'd recommend at least four steps on the migration path. Here's why.

If developers cannot see production data, then obviously they are not allowed to migrate objects to production. Another group will do this. It might be DBAs or some separate production control group. Now, suppose that we have a three-step setup (DEV - TST - PRD). Developers migrate from DEV to TST, and the production control people migrate from TST to PRD. That won't work. First, the production control people have only one chance to practice the migration—and it's on the production migration. That is very risky. Second, the modification cannot be tested on "real" data, since TST would need to be "scrambled" to allow developers access to it. (Never restrict developers from trying out their changes in TST!) It's just a mess, so let's look at the four-step variation instead.

Consider the roles of four groups of people: Developers, testers, end users, and the production control group. In a four-step (DEV - TST - UAT - PRD) configuration, each group has access to environments as shown below:

Group Environments
Developers DEV, TST
Testers TST, UAT (and sometimes PRD)
End Users UAT, PRD
Production Control TST, UAT, PRD

In this setup, we'll assume that DEV and TST contain "scrambled" data and UAT and PRD contain "real" data. Developers make their changes in DEV, test them, and then migrate them to TST. They do another quick test in TST to ensure that the migration was complete and accurate. The testers (functional team or QA group) check out the changes in TST and then request migration to UAT. The production control group migrates the objects to UAT using instructions provided by the developers. The testers do another quick test in UAT to ensure that the migration was complete. The end users then look at the change in UAT. (The quality of testing at this point tends to vary wildly across companies, departments and individuals. The value to be derived here is mostly in the areas of "acceptance"—does the change reflect the users' requirements?—and training of the end users.) If all goes well, the production control group migrates the objects from UAT to PRD, doing exactly the same steps they performed the first time (TST to UAT). Note that production control does not ask for the instructions again; the same instructions as before are used. If for some reason there is a separate step for the production migration, the developers must inform production control in advance. In almost all cases, this migration should be the same as before.

Using this structure, everyone has adequate opportunities to test both the actual change and the migration procedure. Both must be accurate, of course, but the migration test is often neglected and this results in unpleasant surprises in production. Of course, you could have other steps along the way. But I recommend at least these four steps where data access is an issue or where developers do not migrate their own changes to production.

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PS Commenting code 04-02-2008
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PS Page layout with group boxes 01-09-2008
PS Meta-SQL wrappers 12-19-2007
PS Derived record PeopleCode 12-05-2007
PS A Cancel button 11-28-2007
General "Leading" the test effort 11-07-2007
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PS Derived records 09-19-2007
PS Positioning elements on pages 08-29-2007
General Thanks 08-22-2007
SQRSQR "code alerts" 08-08-2007
PS Styles in HTML Areas 08-01-2007
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PS PeopleCode event order 06-27-2007
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PS Selecting styles for page fields05-16-2007
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General Contractor networking 04-25-2007
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PS Effective and data entry dates04-11-2007
PS A PeopleSoft home page 04-04-2007
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General The data doesn't lie 03-14-2007
PSSQRHyperion acquisition 03-07-2007
General Taking ownership 02-28-2007
PS Source control 02-21-2007
PS Sandboxes 02-14-2007
PS Migration instructions 02-07-2007
PS PeopleSoft environment usage 01-31-2007
PS Multiple environment strings 01-24-2007
PS Multiple testing environments 01-17-2007
PS PeopleSoft support environments 01-10-2007
General A single source of truth 01-03-2007
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PS Navigating the component buffer 12-20-2006
PS JavaScript and styles 12-13-2006
PS SQL for common HR queries 12-06-2006
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PS Followup 11-15-2006
PS Expanding subrecords 11-08-2006
PS Bind variables 10-25-2006
PS Attaching objects to projects 10-18-2006
PS Partial transaction completion10-11-2006
PS The multi-process component 10-04-2006
PS Employee rows lost to security09-27-2006
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PS Empty-string compares in SQL 09-13-2006
SQRNulls, blanks, empty strings 09-06-2006
General Company policy 08-30-2006
PS Auto-lookup exclusion 08-23-2006
PS Effective status 08-16-2006
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PS Translate value changes 07-26-2006
General Updating views 07-19-2006
General Set-based updates 07-12-2006
PS SQL set-based processing 07-05-2006
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General 2-way documentation 06-14-2006
PS Interfaces as views 06-07-2006
PS Hijacked fields 05-31-2006
General Agile software development 05-24-2006
General Working within Waterfall 05-17-2006
General Over the Waterfall 05-10-2006
PS Experimentation in PeopleSoft 05-03-2006
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PS Testing direct DB updates 04-19-2006
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General Support problem? Call FBI! 03-29-2006
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PS JOB table and SetIDs 03-01-2006
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PS Compare and Report options 02-15-2006
PS Comparing and migrating projects 02-08-2006
PS Object security in App Designer 02-01-2006
PS Automation of App Designer 01-25-2006
General Contractors on PS projects 01-18-2006
General "Smart coding" 01-11-2006
SQRDebugger tricks 01-04-2006
PS EFFDT and component processing12-28-2005
PS Referential integrity 12-21-2005
PS Menu navigation using SQL 12-14-2005
SQRA coding standards wish list 12-07-2005
PS More App Designer options 11-30-2005
PS Pages in App Designer 11-23-2005
PS Finding objects on the menu 11-14-2005
PS Magic search record fields 10-31-2005
PS Documenting object attributes 10-24-2005
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PS Speeding up App Designer 10-03-2005
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PS Good ideas that sometimes aren't09-19-2005
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PSSQRFTP options 08-29-2005
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PS Spring cleaning 08-15-2005
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PS Change control in App Designer08-01-2005
PS App Engine: disadvantages 07-25-2005
PS App Engine: advantages 07-18-2005
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General Creating Excel files 07-05-2005
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SQRSQR arrays 06-13-2005
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PS Running the in-place conv 05-09-2005
PS Searching for fields in DB 05-02-2005
PS Converting setup data 04-25-2005
PS Associating effective-dated tables 04-18-2005
PS Upgrading without an upgrade 04-04-2005
PS Scheduling patches 03-28-2005
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PS Basic tools 03-14-2005
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PS User indexes 02-14-2005
PS Page changes in App Designer 02-07-2005
General Generate SQL from SQL 01-31-2005
SQRSQR report viewer 01-24-2005
General Bug or enhancement? 01-17-2005
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General Issue tracking 01-03-2005
PS PeopleSoft 10? 12-27-2004
PS Purging tables 12-20-2004
PS Acquisition 12-13-2004
PS Exporting PCode as text 12-06-2004
PS Simplify SQR code 11-29-2004
PS New site for SQR info 11-22-2004
PS Comparing objects 11-08-2004
PS Applying SQL-from-SQL 11-01-2004
General Generating SQL with SQL 10-25-2004
General Generating SQL 10-18-2004
PS Scrambling data 10-11-2004
PS What's going on with PS? 10-04-2004
SQRPrint positioning in SQR 09-27-2004
PS Oracle vs. PeopleSoft 09-13-2004
General Word, email, and lava lamps 09-06-2004
PS Custom run control: tips 08-30-2004
PS Custom run control: building 08-23-2004
PS PeopleCode, behind the scenes 08-16-2004
PS Language-specific pages 08-09-2004
SQRUsing substitution variables 08-02-2004
SQRSQR substitution variables 08-02-2004
PS HTML areas 07-19-2004
SQRRecursion in SQR 07-12-2004
SQRSQR code formatting 07-06-2004
SQRDebugger beta release 06-28-2004
PS Application Designer tidbits 06-27-2004
PS Configuration for custom SQR 06-14-2004
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PS EFFDT again 05-24-2004
General Change-only interface: impl 05-17-2004
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PS Component PeopleCode 04-25-2004
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