Customer Reviews

PeopleSoft PeopleTools Tips & Techniques (Oracle Press)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is hands down the best book available for advanced PeopleSoft programmers. Each chapter builds upon the one before so it's very much a training guide as well as a reference manual. The great thing is that once you reach the end of it (no I haven't yet, I'm still working through it) you'll have some really nice bits of code you can use. The chapter on AWE (Approval Workflow Engine) was particularly well done I thought.

If you work on PeopleSoft software professionally and are serious about development you should really have this book in your collection. It opened a whole new world of possibilities for me and I've been using PeopleSoft for many years.

Here are some more observations:

1) To get the most out of this book you should have access to a PeopleSoft database that you can try things out on. It is heavily based on teach-by-example where concepts are introduced and then reinforced by code that you create and run in PeopleSoft. Actually typing the code for yourself will strengthen your understanding of the concepts presented as well as give you visual feedback.

2) A lot of the book covers Java, JavaScript and AJAX integrations into PeopleSoft. The author assumes that you already know these languages and does not attempt to teach them to you, other than at a very high level. So don't buy this book expecting to learn those languages.

3) If you are new to PeopleSoft development you won't get much out of this book. The target audience here is the seasoned PeopleSoft developer.

4) Many of the topics introduced are not documented anywhere else - at least to my knowledge. This makes the book particularly valuable in my view.

5) If object based PeopleCode is something new to you then I would get this book for that alone. It's covered very nicely.

I wish the Kindle version was available when I bought it but, oh well :-)

Having attended Oracle Open world session conducted by Jim ( for the past few years) , I was very eager to get a copy of this book.

It is an excellent book for seasoned peoplesoft programmers who would like to learn something above and beyond what peoplesoft delivers and use javascript/java within peoplesoft.

It is loaded with examples and each chapter builds on the next. It covers quite a few advanced topics.

The book will not teach you basics. So if you are trying to learn Peoplesoft or any specific application, please do not buy the book. Buy this when you have a strong understanding of what peoplesoft has to deliver.

To a great extent, the book assumes that you know Peoplesoft as well as java, javascript( even if you have rudimentary knowledge, you will find value in this book. )


I am still working my way thru the books which is sure to become my reference book for a long time to come.


I am extremely happy with my purchase.

If you are a seasoned peoplesoft programmer, I highly recommend you buy the book.You will not be disappointed.

I was very pleased with this book after I read it. It is well written, the examples are concise and clear. But best of all, the topics presented are advanced and provide an in-depth view of the possibilities the PeopleCode / Java / JavaScript platform may deliver.

This book extends the PeopleCode experience beyond the concepts found in other books and PeopleBooks. If you have experience writing applications in PeopleCode, this book is an excellent reference, I have purchased additional copies for my development team.

I have been developing in PeopleSoft since version 3.0, so I was a little skeptical when I first saw the book. In my experience with PeopleSoft development, there hasn't been a good reference book that has ever been on the market. With that said, this book is worth purchasing and would be beneficial to any PeopleSoft developer.

I used the first two chapters on Application Classes and the File Attachment API to help me on my current project. Enough said!

Can't say I am overly impressed with this book.

It is wordy, but has little code in it. Lots and lots of English paragraphs explaining what a more concise author would have expressed in a third the space. Because it is so spread out, it is difficult to quickly come to grasp with what a particular technology brings to the table.

Some of the examples are pretty advanced, to the point where I struggled to follow some unfamiliar subjects, despite having worked in PeopleTools for 15+ years. Yet, the author insists on also tagging along folksy programming wisdom to people who are presumably pretty senior programmers. So we get a lecture about "Spartan Programming" (i.e. tight code). Or "Fluent Interfaces". Sorry, please get to the point, don't digress.

So it is never really clear who the book is for. Junior PS staff? No, too advanced, not enough _relevant_ PeopleTools background. Senior staff? Why all the basic programming background and roundabout explanations? It might be a better fit for a senior PeopleSoft person not very familiar with other programming environments. Possible - some PS people show a surprising lack of general programming savvy at times (for example, no one apparently manages to explain USEEDIT values in terms of bit mask testing and especially not w.r.t. SQL bit mask operators). Still, that's an odd choice to make and somewhat patronizing.

On a Kindle, all this fluff means that the book is anything but a quick read. You can read several pages before seeing any code. Then you might see 2 or 3 full pages of code, lots of which is not that relevant. Not at all the presentation I prefer and I would have avoided this book had I known about that. The basic idea is not unlike the "XYZApplication Cookbook", except that you get many less recipes so it doesn't cover nearly as much ground.

Last, but not least, I have a related reason why I question its usefulness.

Some years back, I was reading Oracle's support forum, where a user, was venting some frustration. Apparently, he had spent a goodly amount of time on something that was not working before he remembered a PeopleSoft "feature" that was causing the issue. He fixed his code, and was apparently feeling sheepish about his oversight. But, as it was a rather counter-intuitive, if not wrong, behavior from PeopleTools, he concluded with "on days like this you can really hate PeopleSoft". Or something to that effect. And then posted the whole thing as a "don't get caught by this" warning. Nothing really critical, except for that small barb. No rant to Oracle to fix their stuff, nothing like that (no, it wasn't me or anyone I know).

Now, I really like PeopleSoft. It is a great platform, very productive for power users. But it does have gotchas. On the whole, these in no way invalidate the system. But, yeah, they annoy you when you get caught out. So I sympathized with the guy as I knew what he was talking about. This isn't a big project snafu issue, this is a small technical glitch.

Next post in the forum thread is by Mr. Marion. He tears into the user, putting him right back in his place, albeit politely. He has no right to criticize PeopleSoft. He is way out of line. And so, on, for at least half a page. The customer is always right? Not here, that's for sure. I have done tech support myself and I would never presume to lecture even the most incompetent customer that way. Not good for business or my job security.

My point with this is: any software technology will have gotchas, things best avoided, features best not used. PeopleSoft has a fair amount of those, since it such a complex system with so much implied behavior. Some options have implications which don't become apparent for years, for example until you upgrade.

When you buy a programming book, you rely on the author being straight up and telling you about risks. For that reason, I usually avoid books put out by the vendors themselves. This being one of the few recent PS books I made an exception. But I can't shake the feeling that this book would not go out of its way to point out any pitfalls or shortcomings. Case in point, try troubleshooting page issues caused by a web lib for which security permissions have not been granted. Fun!

To conclude on a more positive note. Yes, some of the coverage is pretty impressive in showing what you can do with PS. The Java integration comes to mind. If you happen to have a need for a particular feature that he happens to cover it is easily worth the money. There is no better book on the market. I just wish it had had a better editor to prune it down to the essentials. Then he would have been able to cover more ground and it would have been a much better book for it.

2.5/5, rounded up to 3 only because of the lack of competitors.

This book includes well-explained examples and code that actually works properly! If you have at least a moderate amount of exposure to PeopleTools development, you'll be fine going through the examples. Highly recommended.

Great book with good examples but need more detail discussion on each topic. The author writes the book assuming the reader has a good understanding of PeopleTools. However, like all books of this nature, the discussion on each topic barely penetrates the surface to get into the nuts and bolts of how the internals work. For example, in AWE the author mentions using application classes in workflow criteria but there are no examples. Ironically, you won't find much discussion of workflow criteria and application classes on Oracle's website either. This is still a great book and would recommend it for those that want a better understanding of PeopleTools.

PeopleSoft People Tools: Tips & Techniques offers keys to different productivity tactics using PeopleSoft applications from Oracle. Proven methods and best practices compliments this analysis of tactics and applications, from merging Java with PeopleCode to using runtime loggers and tracers for testing, and writing your own Java applications. Advanced development libraries will consider this unique discussion a 'must'.