Compare Process

The Application designer upgrade tools are designed to streamline the process of merging system objects, such as records, pages and PeopleCode from one PeopleSoft Database to another. Once you install PeopleSoft for the first time, you customize it for your business requirements by changing the Pages, Records, Menus etc. Since PeopleSoft also delivers new applications with changes, these changes may be distinct from the changes you have made or they could overlap in some area. For this, when you perform an upgrade, you have to decide whether to keep the modification you have made or accept the modification made by PeopleSoft. This is done by Compare Process, where you compare the application between 2 databases, the Source and the Target.

• The Source Database is the source of new changes (usually New Release)
  
  
• The Target is the database to which you are moving these changes (Copy of Production or Production Database)
  

There are 3 steps during the compare process which would need to decide which components you want from the source and then merge them into your target database. The 3 core steps of the compare process that utilize the Application Designer Upgrade tools consist of the following procedures:

Compare Compares the objects between the Source and the Target databases and produces a PeopleSoft Project that identifies objects with differences the 2 databases.

Report Produces reports that detail the differences between the objects in the project Copy Merge the source database and target database using the entries identified during the compare process that have been marked for updates.

The PeopleSoft system uses several system tables PSRELEASE and the various definition tables, to record modified data time and which operator modified the object. This PSRELEASE table contains rows of data for every release level at which the database has ever existed. It has 2 columns, RELEASEDTTM and RELEASELABEL. The first column RELEASEDTTM contains a date time stamp identifying when each release level was stamped. RELEASELABEL identifies the release level. When comparing 2 databases, you can compare on date or on release level. Both methods use data and time to determine the object status. Each PeopleTools Object type record for example, for object type of Records, there is a PeopleTool table called PSRECDEFN, this would include 2 columns like LASTUPDORPID and LASTUPDDTTM which would tell us who the last updated Oprid is and Last updated date time.

There are various Object Status like:

• Unknown The default status of all non-comparable objects
  
• Absent Found in other DB and not in this one.
  
• Changed The LASTUPDOPRID value is “PPLSOFT” and its LASTUPDDTTM value is greater than datetime stamp of the Comparison Release database, which indicate the new release has the modified objects
  
• Unchanged The LASTUPDOPRID value is “PPLSOFT” and its LASTUPDDTTM value is less than or equal to the datetime stamp of the Comparison Release database, which indicate the PeopleSoft last modified the object prior to the
  Comparison release.
  
• Changed* The LASTUPDOPRID value is not “PPLSOFT” and its LASTUPDDTTM value is greater than datetime stamp of the Comparison Release database, which indicate the you modified the object since the Comparison release.
  
• Unchanged* The LASTUPDOPRID value is not “PPLSOFT” and its LASTUPDDTTM value is less than or equal to the datetime stamp of the Comparison Release database, which indicate that you modified the object prior to the Comparison release.
  
• Same The object has been compared and is defined the same in both the databases.

Once the compare process is done, it assigns default actions for each object depending on what needs to be done to make the Target database consistent with source. The action types include:

• Copy - the Object will be copied to the target database
  
• Delete - the Object will be deleted from the target database
  
• CopyProp - For Record Definitions Properties, choose to copy the
  record properties without copying Record Fields.
  
• None - Appears if the objects are identical in the source and target database.