Understanding Mass Change in Campus Solutions
Important! Mass Change is a deprecated product. Support will be maintained for this product, but no new development will be produced for Mass Change. It is strongly recommended that you use Application Engine instead. For more information on PeopleSoft Application Engine, see PeopleTools: Application Engine.
Campus Solutions provides many tools to process information. However, because much of what you do is unique to the institution, the application enables you to create your own unique processes. One way of performing this task is to create mass changes. For communications, checklists, and comments you can also use Campus Community's 3C engine.
See Understanding the 3C Engine
The PeopleSoft Mass Change utility is a SQL generator that you use to perform high-volume business transactions, such as updating data for multiple students without accessing each student record online. Its function is similar to PeopleSoft Query, but while PeopleSoft Query retrieves data from the database, the PeopleSoft Mass Change utility makes changes to the database.
The PeopleSoft Mass Change utility is commonly used for these tasks:
Performing high-volume, set-oriented transactions.
Copying data from table to table.
Archiving table data.
Performing transactions not normally supported through the pages.
Note: The mass change types and templates delivered with Campus Solutions should serve as examples for your particular needs. The functionality provided is representative of common business practices; however, you may need to modify the delivered mass change types and templates to fit your specific requirements.
Mass change is a way of breaking down statements that alter data (such as update, insert, and delete statements) into a hierarchy of three components: types, templates, and definitions. The end user only needs to alter the simplest level to change the parameters used in a particular run. The PeopleSoft Mass Change utility includes these three components:
Types are the lowest level components.
A mass change type defines the type of SQL statements to be generated, the records involved, and the sequence in which they run. Application developers familiar with SQL and the database design typically define mass change types.
Templates are built upon mass change types.
Mass change templates are used to specify which fields make up the WHERE clause of the SQL statement and which fields can be hard-coded with a particular value. Application developers typically define mass change templates.
Definitions are built upon mass change templates and are generally created and run by end users.
Mass change definitions are used to specify the values and operators for each field in the statement's WHERE clause and default fields and to generate the actual SQL statement.
You can run mass change definitions individually or combine them into mass change groups and run them together.
Note: Anyone who defines mass change types or templates should have both a solid understanding of SQL and an extensive knowledge of the PeopleSoft database in question.
See PeopleTools: Data Management