App engine excercise

Application Engine

Exercise #1: The Basics - Increase Amt

In this exercise, you will create an AppEngine program that accesses an employee pay rate table to increase the hourly pay rate for a specified department.

Table name: PS_GBUT_AETRN1_TBLField name: AMTWeb navigation: Tools Training > AE Training > AE Objects > Employees

You will need a project to “contain” the objects created in this exercise. This may be a new project or you may open an existing project.

To create a new project:

1. Click on File, New… or Click on

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2. In the “New” pop-up window, click on Project, then click on OK

Your Application Designer workspace should appear as shown. Note the messages in Results tab of the Output window indicating that a new project containing 0 objects has been opened.

3. Save your new project. Click on File, Save Project As…, type a name for your project (please follow established naming conventions explained in UNTSP Standards document found in the Shared Documents section of the EIS Developer Forum website), for this class please use GBUT_TRNTECHxx (where xx is your computer number) then click OK. You will then see the project name displayed in the Project workspace as well as on the Title bar for AppDesigner.

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Alternately, to open a project:

1. Click on File, Open… or click on

2. In the “Open Object” window, eithera. Type the entire name of the project in the “Name” box and click

on Open, or b. Type a partial name in the “Name” box and press ENTER to get

a list to choose from. Then either double-click the project you want to open or click on it once to highlight and click on Open.

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Project Workspace

GBTR_00GBUT_TRNTECH00

GBUT_TRNTECH00

Now that you have a project, you are ready to create an AppEngine program.

To create a new AppEngine program:

1. Click on File, New… or Click on (see “Create New Project” for where this button appears on the toolbar)

2. Click on “App Engine Program” and then click OK

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GBUT_TRNTECH00

GBUT_TRNTECH00

3. You should now see a “skeleton” AppEngine program containing a “MAIN” section and one step labeled “Step01” displayed in the Object workspace

4. Open the AppEngine Program Properties window:

a. Click on orb. Click on File, Object properties orc. Press ALT-ENTER on your keyboard

5. Click on the “Advanced” tab and “check” the “Disable Restart” box. It is important to disable restart of a program while testing to prevent problems with rerunning the job. Once the program is tested, “Disable Restart” may be “unchecked” to test restart processing. Click OK to close the Program Properties window.

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Object Workspace

6. Save your new AppEngine program. Click on File, Save As… or Click

on . Type a name for your program (please follow established naming conventions explained in UNTSP Standards document found in the Shared Documents section of the EIS Developer Forum website), then click on OK (or press ENTER).

Note: You must save your AppEngine program before the SQL or

PeopleCode Editor windows are accessible.

7. Now you need to add some Actions to your program (so it will actually do something!). To insert an Action (without inserting another Step along with the Action), either

a. Right-click on the area to the left of “Step01” and click on “Insert Action”. or

b. Click once on “Step01” to highlight it and click on

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GBUT_00_EX1

The default action (“SQL”) will be inserted directly below “Step01”.

8. Double-click in the area to the left of the SQL Action to open the SQL Editor.

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Right-click in this area and click on Insert Action

9. Type the following SQL command into the SQL Editor window:

UPDATE PS_GBUT_AETRN1_TBL SET AMT = AMT + (AMT * 10/100) WHERE DEPARTMENT = 'TRNTECHxx'

Please substitute your computer number for the xx in “TRNTECHxx”. This command will increase the hourly pay rate by 10% for all employees in your department.

10. Click on to check the syntax of the SQL statement. Important note – this will not validate that your SQL is correct (i.e., correct table name, correct field names, etc). It will basically reformat your SQL the way it wants it to look. Misspelling names or misplaced commas or parentheses will cause runtime errors.

11. Close the SQL editor window.

12. This program should also write a message to the Process Scheduler Message Log to indicate the action completed successfully. Because this message should be written out only if there were no errors encountered with the SQL executed in “Step01”, the message should be in a step by itself. To insert a Step and Action in one motion, either

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Double-click in this area to open the SQL Editor

a. Right-click in the area to the left of “Step01” and click on “Insert Step/Action” or

b. Click once on “Step01” to highlight it and click on

Your display should now look like this:

13. Since you don’t need a SQL action in the new “Step02”, change the action performed to “Log Message” using the Action drop-down list.

14. The Log Message Action uses the PeopleSoft Message Catalog, which is accessed via the web. Any message used in this Action must already exist. Navigation to the Message Catalog is PeopleTools > Utilities > Use > Message Catalog.

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Click here for a drop-down list of Actions

15. Once you have selected “Log Message” and tabbed off that field, the parameters available for the Action will change to appear as shown.

16. Click on the box below “Message Set:” and type the Message Set number (see the UNTSP Standards document found in the Shared Documents section of the EIS Developer Forum website for the appropriate range of Message Set numbers for your application). Then click on the box below “Number:” and type the number for the message contained in the specified message set that you wish to use. For this exercise, use Message Set 20101 and Message Number 1.

17. Save your program.

Now, you are almost ready to test your AppEngine program! In order to run an AppEngine program, you must first create a Run Control Page and a Component to contain the page, add the Component to a Menu, and set Security for the Component.

To create a Run Control Page:

If you do not need to accept input parameters from the user when this AppEngine program is executed, you can use the generic Run Control Page delivered by PeopleSoft. You can do that for this exercise because you are not accepting input from the user. (Note: For an example of creating a Run Control Page that includes parameters, please see Exercise #2.)

To create a Component for the Run Control Page:

1. Click on File, New… or click on

2. Click on Component, then click on OK

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3. On the toolbar, click on Insert, then Page into Component. Click on “PRCSRUNCNTL” to highlight and click Insert.

4. Before the Component can be saved, a search record must be

specified. Click on to open the Properties window and click on the “Use” tab. Select “PRCSRUNCNTL” as the search record, and then click on OK.

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5. Click on File, Save… or click on .

6. Type a name for the Component (please follow established naming conventions explained in UNTSP Standards document found in the Shared Documents section of the EIS Developer Forum website) and click on OK.

You next need to add the Component to a Menu…however, since we can’t all update the menu at once, the instructor will do this for you. Please let the instructor know when you are ready to have your run control component added to the menu):

The instructor will also perform the necessary steps to add security to the menu item for you during class.

The last step before you can run the AppEngine program you’ve created is to create a Process Definition for the PeopleSoft Process Scheduler. This step must be completed whether you are running the AppEngine program two-tier, three-tier, or n-tier.

To create a Process Definition:

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GBUT_00_EX1

1. On the web, navigate to PeopleTools > Process Scheduler Manager > Use > Process Definitions

2. Click on the hyperlink “Add a New Value”

3. Click on the lookup icon and then click on Lookup4. Click on the hyperlink “Application Engine”5. Type in the Process Name – This must match your AppEngine

program name!

6. Click on Add7. Click on the “Process Definition Options” tab8. In the Component section of the form, click on the Lookup icon and

select your Component (this will be the Component that contains your Run Control Page)

9. In the Process Groups section of the form, click on the Lookup icon and select the permission list used with this AppEngine program (in this exercise use ALLPANLS)

10. Click on Save

Believe it or not, you are finally ready to run your AppEngine program!

First, check the hourly pay rate on the employees in your department. This can be accomplished either by accessing the records through the web navigation listed at the top of this document.

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Process name should be GBUT_xx_EX1(where xx is your computer number).

To execute your AppEngine program via the web:

1. Navigate to the Menu Item you added (Tools Training > AE Training > TRNTECHxx > Increase Pay Rate 10%” (where xx is your computer number) menu. The Run Control Search Page will be displayed.

2. If you have an existing Run Control ID you want to use, you can type the name (or partial name) and click on Find. If you want to add a new one, click on the hyperlink “Add a New Value” then type a value for the Run Control ID and click on Add. This can be any value you wish…it does not need to match the AppEngine program name and can be reused.

3. When the Run Control Page is displayed, click on Run.

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Click here to run AE program

4. A page containing a list of all Process Definitions linked to this Component (via Security) is displayed. Since the Process Definition name must match your AppEngine program name, this provides the link that PeopleSoft will need to know which program to run. Click on OK to submit the Process Scheduler Request.

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Click here to complete submittal of request

Note: If this page comes up and no processes are displayed, then you forgot to create a Process Definition for your AppEngine program.

5. The display will return to the Run Control Page and display your Process Instance. You can now click on the hyperlink “Process Monitor” to view the progress of your program execution.

You should be able to locate your program in the list.

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The Process Monitor can also be found at PeopleTools > Process Monitor > Inquire > Process Requests.

6. Click on the hyperlink “Details” next to your process instance. A page showing information about your program’s execution is displayed.

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7. Click on the hyperlink “Message Log”. This will display anything written to the Message Log (remember the “Log Message” action you added to your program?). The first message was written by our program. The second message is a default message that writes out for any AppEngine program to indicate the log file was written to the report repository.

8. If your program had not completed successfully, the hyperlink “View Log/Trace” could provide meaningful information for troubleshooting.

9. Lastly, you should verify that your program did what it was supposed to by checking that your employees got a raise!

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