Issue #21 – 21st November 2012
News and Latest Developments
One week on from Oracle’s Engine Yard investment InfoWorld speculates on the motivations behind the move (which we were initially surprised about given Oracle’s strong focus on Java, and Engine Yard’s Ruby, PHP, and Node.js applications).
The Economic Times reports that SAP has made some in-roads into Oracle’s lead in India, and Oracle is determined to reverse the slide.
PeopleTools 8.52.12 has been released. The release notes document is linked to above (support login required).
Functional
Group Build and Aggregate Functions
The team from HROI Consulting have spotted a couple of gotchas while using the Group Build functionality and aggregate functions within Query.
PeopleSoft 9.2 – The Perfect Fit Gap Tool 
Derek Tomei posts on IT Toolbox with a short piece on why the Cumulative Feature Overview tools that we’ve mentioned in previous newsletters are a vital tool when preparing for upgrade.
Technical
The SQL Merge Statement
Succeeder Jeremy talks about the ANSI SQL Merge statement, shows code samples, examples of when to use it, and uses a work we’d never heard of before … ‘UPSERT’.
Linking between PeopleSoft Components in HTML
Chris Malek from the Cedar Hills Group blog shows how to create simpler pages for your Self Service users.
AWE Mass Approval
Jim Marion shows how to loop through a series of Approval Workflow Engine transactions and approve them. This isn’t the sort of code you’re going to need every day, but will save you a lot of time when you have this requirement.
Reading
Steve Jobs, the $60 light bulb and the future of technology
An interesting read about the direction technology may be heading, and some of Steve Job’s observations certainly seem to be coming true in the way that Apple – and latterly Oracle – are engineering their systems.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: The ultimate disrupter 
Another industry titan – this time Jeff Bezos of Amazon – is profiled. With Amazon’s Web Services platform they’re dominating the cloud infrastructure market that Oracle is now starting to show an interest in. How did an online retailer beat technology incumbents like Oracle to the IaaS game?
Watching
The Calmest IT Guy in the World
A series of semi-amusing videos covering Oracle RAC, Active Data Guard and Flashback.
And Finally…
The scariest chart in the history of computing
Posted by Aaron Levie – CEO of Box – this chart shows the market share of computing platforms over the last few decades. Whilst it’s interesting to see the rise and fall in fortunes of the various companies, the last few years are looking very ominous for Microsoft.
The PeopleSoft Weekly newsletter 