Domains

An application server domain is the collection of server processes, supporting processes, and resource managers that enable connections to the database. You manage each domain with a separate configuration file, and you configure each application server domain to connect to a single database. A single application server machine can support multiple application server domains running on it. You configure an application server domain using the psadmin utility located in the PS_HOME\appserv directory on the application server.

A one-to-one or a many-to-one relationship can exist between application server domains and a database. In the simplest case, you configure a single application server domain to connect to a single PeopleSoft database. In a more sophisticated environment, you can configure multiple application server domains, with each domain connecting to the same PeopleSoft database. The opposite is not true; a single application server domain cannot be used to connect to multiple PeopleSoft databases.

For example, suppose that you have installed three databases, HRDMO1, HRDMO2, and HRDMO3, and you want to enable browser requests to each database. In this case, you must configure at least three application server domains, one for each database. As demand increases, you may need to configure multiple application server domains per database, for redundancy, fail-over, and performance reasons.

You can configure multiple application server domains under a single PeopleSoft configuration home directory, or PS_CFG_HOME. In this context, PS_CFG_HOME refers to the PeopleSoft high-level directory on the application server, not the file server. PS_CFG_HOME is the directory in which you installed the PeopleSoft application server configuration files when using the Server Transfer program.

psadmin creates a directory beneath PS_CFG_HOME\appserv for each application server domain that you configure. Using the previous HRDMO example, suppose that you decided to name the application server domains the same name as the database to which they connect. In this case, psadmin creates subdirectories \HRDMO1, \HRDMO2, and \HRDMO3 beneath the PS_CFG_HOME\appserv directory on the application server.

Starting an application server domain starts the set of server processes associated with that domain, such as PSAPPSRV, PSQCKSRV, and PSSAMSRV. Each server process establishes a persistent connection to a PeopleSoft database, and this connection acts as a generic SQL pipeline that the server process uses to send and receive SQL.

Each server process uses the same SQL connection to facilitate requests from multiple sources. From the RDBMS perspective, each server process within a domain represents a connected user.