Understanding the Eight Steps of Application Development

Application development is a systematic process. Between the design and implementation of the application, you define and build application definitions, establish relationships, implement security, and test every aspect thoroughly. When developing in the PeopleSoft environment, it is helpful to look at the development phase as an eight step process:

  1. Design the application.

  2. Create field definitions.

  3. Create record definitions.

  4. Build application data tables.

  5. Create page definitions.

  6. Define components.

  7. Register components.

  8. Test the application.

Step One - Designing the Application

Create a development plan. The first phase of development in any environment is always planning. Designers might spend 80 percent of their time designing a sound plan before they work on the first step. In PeopleSoft applications, you will need to fully understand the other seven steps of development to design a good plan. When you finish the development plan, you should have a business requirements document that specifies the tables required and the relationships among them, a list of required definitions (fields, records, and so on) complete with detailed specifications and naming conventions, mock-ups of page layouts, and a navigational hierarchy that will give users access to the pages you create.

Step Two - Creating Field Definitions

Field definitions in PeopleSoft are slightly different from other environments. Designers define fields apart from any tables they may belong to and ensure that they can be reused in any number of separate database tables. The field definition is the basis for all the steps that follow.

Step Three - Creating Record Definitions

PeopleTools-based applications are table-based systems. When creating a record definition, you are actually defining two layers of information: the record level and the field level. At the record level, you define the structure of the database table, and the ultimate purpose of the record definition, and how the system will use the definition. At the field level, you define the characteristics of the fields and any online processing that you want to occur behind the scenes when a user enters data.

Step Four - Building Application Data Tables

After you define a record definition, you must create or build the underlying SQL tables that house the application data that users will enter online in the production environment. This build process is the centerpiece of the data administration features in PeopleSoft Application Designer. The build process takes all of the properties of a record definition and creates a database table from them. Unless you complete this step, no table will exist in the database to accept the application data.

Step Five - Creating Page Definitions

Pages are the user interface for the application. Pages present data to the users and enable them to enter data into the application data table created in the previous step. In this step, you add page controls to a page, associate the page controls with record fields, and configure appearance of the page. The system displays the page to users in a browser window as HTML.

Step Six - Defining Components

Component definitions represent complete business transactions in PeopleSoft applications and are central to navigation and security access. A component holds one or more pages that the user navigates between using tabs or links. In this step, you define the search record and search attributes, the processing mode, and the toolbar buttons that appear at the bottom of each page in the component.

Step Seven - Registering Components

The Registration Wizard makes registering a component easy. In this step, you attach the component to a menu, assign security access for users, and place navigational links in the registry. After you register a component, the user interface is complete and you can view the application in the browser.

Step Eight - Testing the Application

The final step of application development is to thoroughly test the application before delivering the finished product to users. You must test all aspects of the application by opening a transaction in your browser and entering test data into the application. As issues arise, you can cycle back through each of the previous steps to resolve the issues.