PeopleSoft Application Server

What is the PeopleSoft Application server?

The Application server is the portion of the Peoplesoft pure internet architecture which is used to handle the business logic and bulk of the workload of the PeopleSoft system.

What is the technology of the Application Server?

Oracle Tuxedo is used to process transaction requests. Oracle Jolt interfaces Java and makes the tuxedo technology to extend to web based environments.
The server processes can be configured for unique purpose, some processes can be used to handle the browser data, while others can be used for Integration broker requests.

How to make use of the Application Server?

The web server will have a configuration.properties file which contains information about the application server to which it needs to connect. The IP address and Jolt Port of the application server is mentioned in that file, now the requests will get directed to the application server which has been configured.

The application server can have multiple domains each one containing multiple server processes running. The request from the webserver will get forwarded to the application server which has the appropriate Jolt port as mentioned in the configuration.properties file. Each application server domain will have an appropriate psappsrv.cfg file which will be created when the domain is deployed. The psappsrv.cfg file contains all the domain information, including the JSL port and the database connectivity details.

How to handle the application server?

The application server is handled using the psadmin utility, which is created as part of the people tools installation. The psadmin utility helps in creating, configuring,deleting and maintaining the application server domains.

PeopleSoft Web Server

What is the PeopleSoft Web Server?

The PeopleSoft Web server is a Java-enabled web server which handles the browser transactions and also supports the PeopleSoft messaging technology. It basically contains a collection of servlets to handle a range of PeopleSoft transactions.

We will discuss on the below sections:

1. Server Software Elements:

When PeopleSoft software is installed, a variety of PeopleSoft web servlets are installed in the web server. A supported servlet container must be installed to use these servlets in our application. The below listed software run on the PeopleSoft web server,

a. Web Services -- The web services manage the web server software which should be Oracle WebLogic or IBM Websphere.
b. Servlet Engine -- The servlet engine is tied to the web services software, but in some cases it can be installed separately as well. The servlet engine contains all the PeopleSoft servlets.
c. Java Servlets -- Java is a platform independent programming language which is used for creating web based applications. The web server contains servlets which require java executables to be invoked.

2. The PeopleSoft Servlets:

The PeopleSoft servlets which are present in the web server are as below,

a. Portal Servlet -- The portal servlet is used to manage the requests and formatting when the client users access PeopleSoft via the Peopletools portal. It is used to handle homepage personalizations, content searches and content access.
b. Integration Gateway Servlet -- This servlet offers publish/subscribe messages between the message nodes. The gateway is used to handle PeopleSoft to PeopleSoft messages, third-party to PeopleSoft messages and PeopleSoft to third-party messages.
c. Report Repository Servlet --  This servlet helps in managing the output of the processes run using the batch server. It distributes the output reports such as crystal reports so that it can be accessed easily over the internet.

3. Oracle Jolt:

Oracle Jolt forwards the requests received by the PeopleSoft servlets to the application server. The Oracle Jolt is an extension of the tuxedo technology over the communication layer between the Java based web server and the C++ based application server. So basically the web browser sends HTTP request to the web server, the servlet in the web server connects to the Jolt port configured in the configuration.properties file of the web server and Oracle Jolt converts the request into a format understandable by Tuxedo which runs in the application server, which in turn will fire the SQLs against the database to fetch the desired output. The below Diagram explains the need for Oracle Jolt and Tuxedo.


Note: The Oracle Jolt and Tuxedo should both be installed in the application server.