PeopleSoft Object Owner: (OBJECTOWNERID)

Many years ago PeopleSoft introduced the object owner id which helps identify pretty much every PeopleSoft object (records, pages, content references, etc….) into where that object belongs.

This past week while working on a security matrix, the matrix needed to be broken down by module.  While with a little SQL magic and a little help from Excel and its filters the task was made significantly easier. In order to get a listing of the object owner ids within the system you can use look them up in the PSXLATITEM table.

SELECT * FROM PSXLATITEM WHERE FIELDNAME = ‘OBJECTOWNERID’ ORDER BY FIELDVALUE

If you want a specific application, Finance Objects have objectownerid starting with “F”, Human Resources “H”, Supply Chain “D”, Campus Solutions “S”, PeopleTools = “PPT”.  I also found some modules had multiple objectownerid values.

This handy bit of SQL courtesy of my friend Issam came in really handy, I honestly had never worked with the “WITH” function.  This code is specific to SQL Server 2014, but with a tweak or two it will work in Oracle 12 without an issue.  I am sure it will run in earlier versions, but as I have limited experience with the “WITH” function, it was only tested with MSSQL 2014 and Oracle 12c.

WITH PR (PORTAL_NAME, PORTAL_PRODUCT, PORTAL_SEQ_NUM, OBJECTOWNERID, PORTAL_OBJNAME, PORTAL_LABEL, PORTAL_REFTYPE, PORTAL_URI_SEG1, PORTAL_URI_SEG2, MYPATH) AS (
SELECT P.PORTAL_NAME, P.PORTAL_PRODUCT, P.PORTAL_SEQ_NUM, P.OBJECTOWNERID, P.PORTAL_OBJNAME, P.PORTAL_LABEL, P.PORTAL_REFTYPE, PORTAL_URI_SEG1, PORTAL_URI_SEG2, cast(P.PORTAL_LABEL as varchar(4000)) AS MYPATH FROM PSPRSMDEFN P
WHERE P.PORTAL_LABEL = ‘Root’
AND P.PORTAL_NAME = ‘EMPLOYEE’
UNION ALL
SELECT P_ONE.PORTAL_NAME, P_ONE.PORTAL_PRODUCT, P_ONE.PORTAL_SEQ_NUM, P_ONE.OBJECTOWNERID, P_ONE.PORTAL_OBJNAME, P_ONE.PORTAL_LABEL, P_ONE.PORTAL_REFTYPE, P_ONE.PORTAL_URI_SEG1, P_ONE.PORTAL_URI_SEG2, cast( (MYPATH + ‘ –> ‘ + P_ONE.PORTAL_LABEL) as varchar(4000)) AS MYPATH FROM PR P INNER JOIN PSPRSMDEFN P_ONE ON P.PORTAL_NAME = P_ONE.PORTAL_NAME
AND P.PORTAL_REFTYPE = ‘F’
AND P.PORTAL_OBJNAME = P_ONE.PORTAL_PRNTOBJNAME WHERE P_ONE.PORTAL_LABEL <> ‘Root’ AND P_ONE.PORTAL_NAME = ‘EMPLOYEE’ )

SELECT PORTAL_NAME, PORTAL_PRODUCT, PORTAL_SEQ_NUM, OBJECTOWNERID, PORTAL_OBJNAME, PORTAL_LABEL, PORTAL_REFTYPE, PORTAL_URI_SEG1, PORTAL_URI_SEG2, MYPATH FROM PR;

GO

I had to recreate a database in SQL Server the other day and my database user did not have privileges to recreate the database, so I found the following code which worked like a charm to drop all the tables in the database.  This example deletes all tables that start with PS, which drops all the PeopleSoft tables:

declare @SQL nvarchar(max)

SELECT @SQL = STUFF((SELECT ‘, ‘ + quotename(TABLE_SCHEMA) + ‘.’ + quotename(TABLE_NAME)
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE Table_Name LIKE ‘PS%’
FOR XML PATH(”)),1,2,”)

SET @SQL = ‘DROP TABLE ‘ + @SQL

PRINT @SQL

EXECUTE (@SQL) — uncomment to actually delete the tables

As part of my post go-live procedures I was trying to do some comparisons from the pre-upgrade environment to the actual production environment.  Usually this is very straight forward and can be done using the Linked Server.  As it turned out the linked server was already configured however when I tried to do the sql lookup on the PSOPRDEFN table I got an error.

Msg 7411, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Server ‘mvDBSERVER? is not configured for RPC

To re-enable the RCP commands for the linked server you can do it in the options GUI or from the query window:

exec sp_serveroption @server=’myDBSERVER?, @optname=’rpc’, @optvalue=’true’

exec sp_serveroption @server=’myDBSERVER?, @optname=’rpc out’, @optvalue=’true’

Now when I run [myDBSERVER].[PREUPGDB].[dbo].[PSOPRDEFN] I get the results I am looking for!

Here is a handy little script to figure out what permissions have been granted to a user in SQL Server. For example the connect id user for PeopleSoft needs to have select access to the PSACCESSPRFL, PSOPRDEFN and PSSTATUS tables.  The default connect id is ‘people’.

select p.name, p.type_desc, pp.permission_name, pp.state_desc, pp.class_desc, object_name(pp.major_id)
from sys.database_principals p left join sys.database_permissions pp on pp.grantee_principal_id = p.principal_id
where p.name = 'people'


I often get asked about performance issues with SQL Server. I often find with a quick check that the data and log files for the database are being stored in terrible inefficient ways. I am not going to argue local disks versus SAN storage in this post, as more often then not my clients are moving to virtualized environments so the storage is on a SAN or on a centralized disk array of some sort.

Lets start with one big drive is not a good way to run an Enterprise Database. I appreciate that SQL Server is easy to setup and get working, but making it work efficiently and effectively takes a little more understanding then accepting the default prompts during the install.

1. Have a small drive setup to run the OS layer of the machine, I have found 40gb is usually more then sufficient for this.
2. Storing Data files: these should be stored on a drive that is within a RAID 5, 6 or 10 configuration.
3. Storing Log Files: these should be stored on a drive that is within a RAID 1 or 10 (however, 5 or 6 will work too).
4. Storing TEMP DB Files: these should be stored on a drive that is RAID 1 (however, 5,6 or 10 will work too).

In a lot of cases, items 2,3,4 are all stored on the same drive. This maybe fine for non-critical stuff, but you will want your Production environments split up. The most common drive configuration I see is RAID 5 or 6, but in bigger SAN’s you will see RAID 10 often. Now that drives are relatively cheap I find disk arrays to be very cost effective for organizations and offer up great flexibility. This is one area that I recommend buying good equipment. Additionally, take speed over capacity and quantity over capacity. The faster the data can be read and/or written makes a difference, and the more drives you have the more heads you have for reading and/or writing.

Lastly, know what is sharing your storage areas. If you have a SAN that is carved up and server multiple databases or environments, you will end up spreading the read/write ability of the equipment across those environments. This is a common problem I see where people will say there must be something wrong with PeopleSoft because it isn’t doing anything and is still slow, but if you dig into the available resources you will find another application is hammering the resources which are shared with PeopleSoft, and therefore PeopleSoft is working fine it just doesn’t have any available resources to run effectively.