System and Server Administration Overview

You use PSADMIN for managing application server domains, PeopleSoft Process Scheduler domains, integration server processes, search domains, and so on. PSADMIN also enables you to configure and manage the behavior of servers with respect to a wide range of PeopleTools infrastructure elements, including:

• Tuxedo and Jolt.

• PeopleCode debugging.

• Caching.

• Analytic server framework.

• Transactional SQL requests.

• Performance enhancement.

• PeopleSoft Query.

• Integration Broker.

• Email.

• Real time event notification.

• Performance Monitor.

• MultiChannel Framework.

You launch and run PSADMIN using a command line interface.

The analytic server framework provided by PeopleSoft is a general server infrastructure designed to meet the needs of PeopleSoft products that process large amounts of data in memory. It provides a stateful model of client/server connectivity that these products require to be part of the PeopleTools system, by keeping track of configuration settings, transaction information, and other data for a session. For example, client software could request that an analytic model or optimization model be recalculated in one transaction, then retrieve the results of the calculation on that model at a later time. A server process handles these requests, and maintains the model state and calculated data in memory between the requests. Additional transactions can then modify the model and perform recalculations on it without shuffling all of the data between the client and the server or dumping all the data to a database, thus preserving in-memory performance.

When a program doesn't “maintain state” or when the infrastructure of a system prevents a program from maintaining state, it’s known as a stateless program or system. It can’t take information about the last session into the next session, such as settings the user makes or conditions that arise during processing. All session state is maintained by the client and is transferred to the server with each request. As long as an application server is up and running, a user’s session remains active and functional, and any application server can perform requested transactions.

However, with some products, such as Analytic Calculation Engine or PeopleSoft Optimization Framework, running a calculation on a multi-dimensional model is likely to produce far more data than is reasonable to shuttle between a client and server to maintain a stateless connection. For performance reasons, the calculations are performed completely in memory. If these calculations were to be synchronized and stored in the database so that a stateless connection could be maintained, performance would suffer significantly.

PeopleSoft supports Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere web servers, which provide the same basic functionality to support PeopleSoft applications, including a console interface, secure sockets layer (SSL), and reverse proxy servers (RPS).

Each web server has its own way of accomplishing its functionality, and each adds its own extra features that you might find useful to your PeopleSoft system. This PeopleBook provides supplemental information about configuring and administering the web servers where it has particular relevance to PeopleSoft.

PeopleSoft Configuration Manager is a Microsoft Windows application that simplifies development workstation administration by enabling you to adjust PeopleSoft registry settings from a central location. You can set up one development workstation to reflect the environment at your site, then export the configuration file, which can be shared among other workstations. You can also define separate profiles for connecting to different PeopleSoft databases.

PeopleSoft configuration parameters are grouped on the Configuration Manager pages according to the function, feature, or tool that they control.

• Startup settings.

• Display settings.

• Business Interlink settings.

• Trace settings.

• Workflow settings.

• Remote call settings.

• Developer workstations.

• Importing and exporting environment settings.

• Defining configuration profiles.

The PeopleTools utilities are a set of various configuration and administration interfaces that serve as a browser-based method of setting numerous system settings. These utilities, most of which are available through the PeopleTools Utilities menu, provide the ability to configure, maintain, or launch a wide range of features, including:

• The System Information page.

• The message catalog.

• The spell check dictionary.

• Translate values.

• Application server caching.

• SQR customization.

• Table management and sharing.

• Backward compatibility.

• Remote database connection.

• File attachments.

• Stored URLs.

• Mobile data synchronization (deprecated).

• Update tracking.

• Platform-specific database features.

• Database auditing.

• International settings.

• Optimization utilities.

• PeopleSoft Ping.

You can use the PeopleCode Debugger to interactively debug a PeopleCode program's configurations of a two-tier connection to the database or a three-tier connection to the database. You can temporarily override the PeopleSoft Configuration Manager trace settings for PeopleCode and SQL programs.

With Jolt, PeopleSoft provides the options of configuring load balancing, session pooling, domain connection passwords, and (for some special configurations) Jolt Internet Relay. Load balancing enables you to route requests to servers according to the ability of a server to handle a given request load. Powerful, dedicated servers can take a higher load while less powerful servers can take a lighter load. Session pooling enables user sessions to share web server connections, which is a more efficient use of system resources. The domain connection password enables you to add a connection password to the session between the PeopleSoft Internet Architecture and the application server. Jolt Internet Relay enables you to route connections from one web server to another, perhaps through a fire wall, for specific configuration or security needs.

This topic lists the delivered default timeout settings for the web server, application server, PeopleSoft Process Scheduler, and PeopleSoft Internet Architecture (PIA).