Understanding Developing Transform Programs Using PeopleSoft Application Engine

Following are some points to keep in mind when working with transform programs:

• Each transform program step operates on the message content that results from the previous step, so you can break your transform program into a sequence of discrete steps.

• Multiple transform actions within a step can produce unwanted effects, so insert each XSLT or PeopleCode action in its own step.

• XSLT works only on XML DOM-compliant data, so PeopleSoft Integration Broker assures that both outbound and inbound messages are in XML DOM-compliant form when transform programs are applied to them.

• XSLT is not supported by PeopleSoft on the OS/390 or z/OS operating systems. Transformations must use PeopleCode on these platforms.

A transformation can modify an entire message until it no longer resembles the original. So can a data translation. In a transformation, you must hard-code what you want to accomplish, whereas the data translation relies on a repository of codeset metadata that you define. This means you can establish consistent rule-based translations and reuse the same translation rules without having to reenter them.

Although you can combine transformation and data translation in a single transform step, it’s better to keep these processes in separate steps and produce a modular program that you can more easily maintain, with code you can reuse in other transform programs.