Take 3: Jolt Session Pooling Covered....

Take 3: Jolt Session Pooling Covered....

Before reading this entry (always a friendly warning first!), please read about my two blog entries that I posted earlier. This entry is kind of closure to my previous topic "Jolt Session Pooling". If you still have decided to read this one, you cant complain about not able to understand this one....

In our last blog entry, we talked about Jolt Session Pooling. As I stated earlier, Jolt Session Pooling is enabled by default in Tools Version 8.48 and later. Considering this new feature(!), there are some things that are changed due to this parameter single change starting with Tools 8.48 and later....

Also, we talked about the sevlets (like psc, psp etc) that are having 'definitions" in the web.xml file (under DOMAIN/PORTAL/WEB-INF directory). So, back to our main point.. why JoltPooling needs to be disabled for all the servlet entries in the web.xml file to resolve the "download to excel" button to work... Probably you have guessed it already.

The key point here is, when Jolt Session Pooling is enabled, the session is shared across all the servlets. The existing sessions are shared across multiple servlets within weblogic server. This is supposed to be provide good performance results. There are no dedicated sessions. As of now, I know some of the effects of this change in 8.48 environment:

1) "Download to Excel" button not working

2) Tuxedo is unable to list the online users on the system

3) "View Attachment" is not working

If you know anything else due to this "Jolt Session Pooling" enabled option causing in Peoplesoft, please write on the comment below for me to know and learn. My policy is to share the knowledge and feel free to learn. :)

To know more about Jolt and Weblogic, I would recommend you to read the BEA documentation about "Using BEA Jolt with BEA Weblogic Server" Guide. I am going to write some new things going forward... One of my favorite: Inter Process Communication in the Unix System and Peoplesoft. Check this blog later.. Until Next time - Vijay Chinnasamy PMP

Take 2: Jolt Session Pooling Continued....


In our last blog, we talked about Jolt Session Pooling. That was kind of introduction to this concept I suppose. I am now going much deeper into this parameter to understand how this parameter works with Peoplesoft context (also I am interested to know more about this parameter anyway!)...


A quick look at the web.xml file at PORTAL/WEB-INF folder can
give you a list of servlets that Peoplesoft application uses: Some of them
are:

• psc
  


• psp
  


• cs
  


• xmllink
  


• PSAttachServlet
  


• psreports
  


• SchedulerTransfer
  


• SyncServer
  


• monitor
  


• ppmi etc...

I am not going into each and every servlet that Peoplesoft uses and their details. That is out of scope for my explanation here. And, primarily because, I do not know about them neither... However an overall understanding of this will definitely help us to understand the underlying architecture behind the Peoplesoft Internet Architecture.


For each and every servlet that Peoplesoft uses, there exists a definition at web.xml file. For simplicity sake, this file can be treated as Servlet Configuration File and it is an XML file by nature. If you work with weblogic and Java J2EE, they call this file as Deployment Descriptor Elements. I find it hard to remember that way. So, just to keep things easy, consider this web.xml file as Servlet Configuration File created as part of application deployment...

We are talking here for Peoplesoft technology. We dont need that much gory details to know about weblogic (we need to know some basics!). Just basics. A weblogic server has many servlets that is used for processing requests. A servlet basically connects to the Tuxedo using a session pool manager, which assigns a session based on availablity etc. This session is, then, connecting to the Tuxedo system (application server) using Jolt Server.

So, back to our main point.. why JoltPooling needs to be disabled for all the servlet entries in the web.xml file to resolve the "download to excel" button to work... Probably you have guessed it already. Check this blog later.. Until Next time - Vijay Chinnasamy PMP

Peoplesoft Jolt Session Pooling

Okay, long time no see! I am back. I had some project and personal commitments that I needed to complete during last year. One of my project commitment was, obviously due to the reason that I moved to a new project. Also, coincidently I moved to a new location in another country which added some more complications with my new project assignment...

I had a goal last year (2007) to become a certified PMP. PMP is an acronym for Project Management Professional offered by PMI (Project Management Institute). I took the training from my company starting of the year 2007. And eventually I have become PMP after spending quite a considerable time. That was my personal commitment that delayed me from writing in this blog.. So, long story short, I am going to write again in this blog. All that I know about Peoplesoft and Unix (Dont laugh, I will try!).

We had a situation recently in our UAT environment. The "download to Excel" button is not working. You should be aware of what this "Download to Excel" button I am talking about. For those who are unable to guess, here it is. It is a small image, just like an excel sheet, that will be shown on the right corner of the any tabular output from Peoplesoft application ( Example Process monitor, Reports etc).

I started doing some research (still!). You know where to start first. You guessed, right, Peoplesoft Customer Connection. They recommended to try disabling JoltPooling in Web Server. This directive is available in web.xml file for the weblogic web server.


Starting with Tools 8.48, Jolt Pooling is enabled by default. What does this mean? Let me explain this from the scratch. As you are aware, web server makes a connection to app server using Jolt. If you enable Jolt Session Pooling , the user connections between web server and app server are simply shared. This setting is expected to minimise system resources by sharing the user connection by pooled sessions...

Web.xml file is an xml file that has directives for all the peoplesoft servlets that the web server uses ( for example, psp, psc etc). Every servlet is set to JoltPooling set as true by default starting with Peopletools Version 8.48. All we did was, disabled JoltPooling on all of these servlets. And this issue is resolved.

Is the issue really resolved? Not exactly, I will say. We still need to find why Jolt Session Pooling needs to be disabled to make "Download to Excel" button to work. Mystery continues.... Until next time.



- Vijay Chinnasamy PMP