Understanding Analytic Tools

This chapter contains overview information and discusses:

XML Publisher for PeopleSoft.
PeopleSoft Analytic Calculation Engine.
PeopleSoft Query.
PeopleSoft Tree Manager.
PS/nVision.
PeopleSoft Cube Manager.
Crystal Reports for PeopleSoft.
SQR for PeopleSoft.
PeopleSoft Process Scheduler.

Understanding Analytic Tools

PeopleSoft applications offer a wide range of query and reporting possibilities. These include the standard reports we deliver, as well as the reporting tools you can use to customize reports or create new ones. Enterprise PeopleTools reporting and decision support capabilities enable you to perform numerous tasks, such as create queries, create reports, and create online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes.

Your database contains a wealth of information that you've carefully entered, maintained, and secured for the ultimate purpose of generating timely, meaningful, presentation-quality reports as well as provide online analytical options. Our reporting and decision support capabilities enable you to access the data you need and present it in the form that is most useful for the decision makers in your organization.

XML Publisher for PeopleSoft Enterprise

Oracle provides a standalone Java-based reporting technology named XML Publisher (XMLP) that streamlines report and form generation. Enterprise PeopleTools is leveraging this technology with XML Publisher for PeopleSoft Enterprise, which provides native XMLP technology for PeopleSoft Query as well as any PeopleSoft application.

XMLP separates the data extraction process from the report layout. XMLP provides the ability to design and create report layout templates with the more common desktop applications of Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat, and renders XML data based on those templates. With a single template, you can generate reports in many formats (PDF, RTF, Excel, HTML, and so on) and in many languages.

XML Publisher for PeopleSoft provides an environment for the power business user to manage templates, data sources, reports, translations, content components, and to produce reports according to a user-defined criteria. XML Publisher for PeopleSoft also can burst reports, such as annual wage statements for employees, electronically.

See Also

Getting Started with XML Publisher

PeopleSoft Analytic Calculation Engine

PeopleSoft Analytic Calculation Engine combines a calculation engine plus several Enterprise PeopleTools features that enable application developers to define both the calculation rules and the display of calculated data within PeopleSoft applications. The calculated data is used for the purposes of multidimensional reporting, data editing, and analysis.

Application developers create analytic models which define the rules used to calculate data. To display the data to end users, application developers create PeopleSoft pages that include a specific type of grid—an analytic grid.

End users can view, analyze, and even make changes to analytic model data. When end users save any changes made to the analytic model, PeopleSoft Analytic Calculation Engine recalculates the data and sends the calculated data to the application database.

PeopleSoft Query

PeopleSoft Query provides a user friendly, intuitive way to quickly generate ad-hoc and scheduled reports from any data stored in your PeopleSoft tables. Users can design and run queries using any supported web browser. Designers of queries do not need to write or be familiar with Standard Query Language (SQL). In addition, users who are less technically savvy can run predefined queries. Queries can be as simple or as complex as necessary. You can run queries from a web browser and then download the data as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

See Also

Getting Started with PeopleSoft Query

PeopleSoft Tree Manager

The PeopleSoft Tree Manager enables you to arrange data into a hierarchal format that can then be used in other areas, such as report generators, OLAP, chartfield field combination editing in PeopleCode, and security. Casual users have a familiar and easy-to-understand interface, as well as all of the functionality required for creating and maintaining trees.

PeopleSoft Tree Manager enables you to:

Present summarization rules visually.
Give the system a single place to look for summarization rules.
Provide simpler selection and updating of values in reports, ledgers, or security profiles.

PS/nVision

PS/nVision is a sophisticated tool for creating business reports in Microsoft Excel. Working within Microsoft Excel, you create a report layout that defines both the data to retrieve and the format of the report. Using PS/nVision, you can create report layouts that summarize information from your PeopleSoft database and use the DrillDown feature to expose the supporting details. You can share report layouts across multiple business units and time periods, creating reports that "roll" from unit to unit or period to period without changing the data-retrieval criteria.

PS/nVision works within spreadsheets. You access PS/nVision features from a special PS/nVision menu within Microsoft Excel to create templates (layouts) for data retrieval. Once you create a report layout (XNV file), you can use it to automatically format data. PS/nVision selects data from your PeopleSoft database using ledgers, trees, and queries.

PS/nVision enables you to extend the rich querying features that PeopleSoft Query offers. For example:

With PeopleSoft Query you can generate tabular reports without formatting, and with PS/nVision you can deliver well formatted, easy-to-read reports.
PS/nVision enables you to produce matrix reports in which you can use multiple ledgers or queries to define the reports.
PS/nVision provides dynamic features, such as bursting and nPlosion, unavailable in static query results.
PS/nVision offers built-in logic to detect detailed ledger metadata in multiple financial environments.

See Also

Getting Started with PS/nVision

PeopleSoft Cube Manager

PeopleSoft Cube Manager provides a framework for modeling your OLAP cubes through its design tools. This framework supports the definition of all dimensions, attributes, measures, and cubes that you might want to build from PeopleSoft sources. All of these definitions can be shared across cubes to ensure that OLAP results are consistent across your enterprise.

What you design in PeopleSoft Cube Manager can be used across all target OLAP platforms supported by PeopleSoft. PeopleSoft Cube Manager provides all these benefits while achieving a nearly platform-independent solution. The majority of a cube's design attributes can be applied to Hyperion Essbase, Cognos PowerPlay, or a generic Star Schema. PeopleSoft Cube Manager also enables you to leverage your existing PeopleSoft metadata to define the cube structure.

Crystal Reports for PeopleSoft

Crystal Reports enable you to generate clear and easy-to-read reports presenting data from your PeopleSoft applications. You can generate standard reports already created and saved in Crystal, or you can create your own custom reports.

Generating formatted output in Crystal involves two steps. First you create and save queries in PeopleSoft Query, and then you create report definitions in Crystal to format the fields (columns) used in the queries. You can generate reports in a variety of different formats, including text files, Microsoft Word documents, and spreadsheets.

SQR for PeopleSoft

SQR for PeopleSoft is a powerful enterprise reporting system that provides direct access to multiple data sources. The SQR for PeopleSoft tools make it possible to create clear, professional reports from complex arrays of information systems.

SQR is a specialized programming language for accessing, manipulating, and reporting enterprise data. With SQR, you build complex procedures that perform multiple calls to multiple data sources and implement nested, hierarchical, or object-oriented program logic.

The high-level programming capabilities that SQR provides enable you to add procedural logic and control to data source calls. You can use SQR to write other types of applications, such as those for database manipulation and maintenance, table loading and unloading, and interactive querying and displaying.

See Also

Getting Started with SQR for PeopleSoft

PeopleSoft Process Scheduler

PeopleSoft Process Scheduler enables you to schedule and manage the execution of PeopleSoft batch processes. With PeopleSoft Process Scheduler you can:

Schedule recurring processes to run on any date or time interval that your business requires, such as monthly, daily, hourly, or by the minute.
Create jobs (groups of processes) that run several processes and conditionally schedule successive processes based on the status of a previous process in the job.

The primary role of Process Scheduler is to support the PeopleSoft application environment. With a PeopleSoft application, you might want to run certain processes (batch programs, reports, and so on) behind the scenes of the online system. Running reports, posting journal entries, loading benefit enrollment forms, and calculating payroll deductions are all examples of processes that you might want to perform offline.

Using PeopleSoft Process Scheduler can streamline your business practices by enabling you to take advantage of the distributed computing environment at your site, whereby you can schedule performance-sensitive jobs to run on a powerful server while the online system is still available to end users.

Note. While the PeopleSoft Process Scheduler runs all types of online and offline programs, it's primarily used to support your reporting environment.