Peoplesoft and SQR

Happy New Year! I resolved to take out the garbage for pickup on January 2. Mission accomplished. Now that you have quit smoking and lost weight, it’s time to work on some real challenges for professional self-improvement.

Here are 13 Peoplesoft professional resolutions for 2013. Pick a few and get started now, or save them for your next performance review when your manager wants to set goals for the coming year. (I have done all of these over the course of my PeopleSoft career, so I’m setting my sights for the January 9 garbage pickup.)
Continue reading ‘13 Peoplesoft Resolutions for 2013’ »

Cardinals and Ordinals

As a child, I learned about cardinal and ordinal numbers. I just checked Wikipedia and found that my understanding of them is … childlike. I remember cardinal numbers as non-negative integers; 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on. I remember ordinal numbers as first, second, third, and so on.

The difference is as follows. Suppose we have ten numbers listed from smallest to largest; 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29. (Can you guess how I chose them?) The first number is 2. The second number is 3. The ninth number is 23.

Continue reading ‘Views You Can Use: Ordinal Numbers’ »

One of our readers, John, recently posted a question on the SQR Dates blog entry:

“I need to subtract from date in the format years, months, days. For example, I want to subtract 5 years, 2 months and 3 days from the current date.  How can this be done in SQR?”
Continue reading ‘Date Arithmetic Breaks the Laws Of Arithmetic’ »

I shouldn’t claim that this bug appears in every SQR program written for the Peoplesoft environment.  It’s not even in every SQR program that takes run control parameters.  But I bet it is in most of them.

Continue reading ‘The Bug in Every Peoplesoft SQR Program’ »

Please come back on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 for an exciting announcement.

Continue reading ‘Another Special Announcement’ »

Please come back on Tuesday, April 6, 2010 for an exciting announcement.
Continue reading ‘A Special Announcement’ »

Last week we discussed finding the best Peoplesoft page, and the menu path to that page, for viewing and updating a particular database table.  We have a similar need to find the menu path to the run control page for a particular batch process.
Continue reading ‘From Process To Peoplesoft Page’ »

When I discuss data with my colleagues in the Human Resources and Payroll departments, we speak different languages.  I talk about tables and columns.  They talk about menus, tabs, and pages.  “You need to change EEO4CODE in PS_JOBCODE_TBL,”  I’ll say.  They’ll reply, “You mean, select Setup HRMS, Foundation Tables, Job Attributes, Job Code Table, and the Job Code Profile tab?”  There are pages I’ve never visited and they’ve never used a SQL browser.
Continue reading ‘From Database Table To Peoplesoft Page’ »

PS_EMPLOYMENT used to be a SQL table.  Now it is a SQL view that joins PS_PER_ORG_ASGN, PS_PER_ORG_INST, and PS_JOB.  Of course, PS_JOB has two subselects to pick a single value of EFFDT and EFFSEQ for each value of EMPL_RCD.  The subselect for EFFDT is unusual and it may not behave the way the designers intended.

Continue reading ‘PS_EMPLOYMENT Bug Report’ »

Some people use the term “rounding error” to indicate that an answer is right enough, although not perfectly right.  Those people think “accurate” and “precise” are two different concepts.  They may be experimental scientists or programmers, but they aren’t working in Accounting.  Accountants cannot and should not leave journal entries alone with rounding errors.
Continue reading ‘Rounding Error’ »