PeopleSoft Advanced Configurator 9.1 PeopleBook

Getting Started with PeopleSoft Advanced Configurator

This chapter provides an overview of Advanced Configurator architecture and discusses:

Additional documentation for Advanced Configurator.
Testing and administration tools.
Advanced Configurator architecture.
Advanced Configurator interfaces.
Other sources of information.
Advanced Configurator implementation.

Additional Documentation for Advanced Configurator

This section lists the documentation for PeopleSoft Advanced Configurator that is available in the Configurator installation and on My Oracle Support.

Testing and Administration Tools

This section discusses the tools available for testing and administration.

Configurator includes two tools to help you validate your model and its associated solution. The Solution Tester and the Model Tester provide valuable troubleshooting information. Solutions require updating to reflect changes in the product or service.

Note. The Administration Tool can help you track and manage versions as well as service, compile, and run models remotely.

Advanced Configurator Architecture

This section describes the basic elements of Advanced Configurator architecture:

Application server
Web server
Relational databases

Application Server

The application server, such as Oracle WebLogic , has three "tiers" within it: dynamic presentation logic, business logic, and database abstraction.

Dynamic presentation

This tier is used to process any presentation content that is determined at run time. It is conditional based upon user actions and selections, and can be personalized.
Business logic

This tier houses the Configurator models and other product components.
Database abstraction

This tier contains calls to the database so that designers do not need to know which specific database is being used. It also maintains connections to any databases that might be utilized.

After the dynamic content is processed by these "tiers," it is then passed to the web server for display in the browser.

Web Server

Web servers are used as the static presentation tier. A web server displays static HTML pages and images. It also displays the HTML results of the processed Java Server Pages (JSPs) after the application and database servers have compiled the dynamic information.

Relational Databases

The relational databases contain any external data that you use in product models. Examples of these might be third-party product tables, catalogs, or marketing information. This data can be refreshed without requiring business logic to change. This allows for a flexible and maintainable system.

Advanced Configurator Interfaces

The PeopleSoft Advanced Configurator interacts with industry-standard applications commonly used for web development and deployment. Java 2 Enterprise Edition compliance and Oracle WebLogic® application certification combine to provide a fast, scalable, and secure configuration service.

PeopleSoft Advanced Configurator interacts within a multi-tier structure called the Lightning Architecture™ that is based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology.

The following diagram shows the architecture of Advanced Configurator.

Advanced Configurator architecture

Other Sources of Information

In the planning phase of your implementation, take advantage of all PeopleSoft sources of information, including the installation guides, table-loading sequences, data models, and business process maps. A complete list of these resources appears in the preface in the PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 Application Fundamentals PeopleBook, with information about where to find the most current version of each.

Advanced Configurator Implementation

This section discusses:

Implementing an integrated Configurator solution.
Implementing a standalone Configurator solution.

Implementing an Integrated Configurator Solution

If you intend for users to configure the product from within a PeopleSoft CRM application, you do not need to create a user interface (although it is still an option). PeopleSoft CRM pages can provide the user interface for you, requiring only that you specify the pages' data content. Optionally, you can create a custom user interface using JSP.

Step	Reference
1. Install Configurator and set it up for integration. (For integration with PeopleSoft CRM Order Capture).	PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 Installation Guide
2. Build a model of the product(s) or service(s) using the PeopleSoft Visual Modeler.	See Product Modeling with a Component Model, Product Modeling with Compound Models.
3. Deploy the solution files to the production environment using the Advanced Configurator Administration console.	See Advanced Configurator System Administration.
4. Set up the solution schema.	See PeopleSoft CRM Order Capture Integration.

Implementing a Standalone Configurator Solution

A solution that runs on PeopleSoft Advanced Configurator independent of other PeopleSoft applications requires a custom User Interface in addition to the configuration model. Advanced Configurator is also extensible, and the solution may include Java implementations of the Configurator interfaces.

Step	Reference
1. Build a model of the product(s) or service(s) using the PeopleSoft Visual Modeler.	Product Modeling with a Component Model Product Modeling with Compound Models
2. Build a UI. Create the JavaServer Pages for the User Interface using the provided templates and, if desired, Dreamweaver extensions.	See Building a Custom User Interface.
3. Write Java extensions for any custom functions and modify the JSP pages as needed.	See Application Extensions. Also consult the PeopleSoft Advanced Configurator API Reference Guide in your server installation root\ bea\wlserver_10.3.1\config\CalicoDomain\applications\CalicoApp\calico\apidocs.
4. Deploy the solution files to the production environment using the Configurator Administration Console.	See Advanced Configurator System Administration.