Understanding the Push Notification Framework

The Push Notification Framework updates the user interface with real time changes that have occurred on the server tier. The framework enables the PeopleSoft Internet Architecture to push data directly to the end user’s display. To bring this feature to your PeopleSoft application, PeopleTools takes advantage of these elements in our server architecture:

  • WebSocket push technology on the web server.

  • Tuxedo event broker on the application server.

Image: Push Notification Framework

The following example illustrates how the Push Notification Framework architecture operates within these layers of the PeopleSoft infrastructure:

  • Browser layer

  • Web Server layer.

  • Server Runtime layer.

Push Notification Framework Architecture

In the architecture shown the example, the Tuxedo Event Broker running on the application server interacts with websockets in web server to dispatch events from the server to the end user’s browser.

The key elements in this framework are:

  • Event: A state change in the system, causing the notification publication.

  • Publisher: Publisher raises the event during the state change on the application server.

  • Subscriber: Interested in events occurring on the server or browser.

  • Websockets: Provides full duplex communication channels (simultaneous in both directions) between browsers and web servers.

    Note: For the Push Notification feature to work, your browser should support the websocket technology. Newer browser versions support this technology.

  • Tuxedo Event Broker: The Oracle Tuxedo Event Broker is provides asynchronous routing of application events among the processes running in a Oracle Tuxedo application. It also distributes system events to the application processes configured to receive them.

Development tasks for implementing the Push Notification feature can be categorized as follows:

Function

Tasks

Event Definition

  • Define events.

  • Define event collections.

  • Associate events to collections.

Subscription

  • Subscribe to an event.

  • Subscribe to an event collection.

Publishing

Use PeopleCode API.

System administration tasks for implementing the Push Notification feature include:

  • Enabling Push Notifications in the active web profile for the PIA domain on the web server.

  • Enabling Push Notifications for the application server domain(s).

  • If events will be generated by processes run through Process Scheduler, you need to enable Push Notifications for the Process Scheduler domain(s), and the domain gateway feature between the Process Scheduler domain(s) and an application server domain enabled for Push Notification.