|
Kevin Reschenberg
has over 20 years of experience in IT and holds an MS in
computer science. A former senior consultant and
process specialist with PeopleSoft Inc., he now works
with PeopleSoft customers as owner of Orange County,
California-based SparkPath Technologies, Inc. |
Application Designer Tidbits
A few
miscellaneous tips...hopefully you will find at least
one useful item here.
More work space: If you are constantly resizing
the project area on the left and the output/results area
on the bottom, try these quick toggles. Alt-0 removes or
restores the project area and Alt-1 toggles the output
area. These simply hide those areas without affecting
their contents--so you can run, for example, a "find
object references" even if the output area is hidden,
and then show or hide that area without losing the
output. (There is also a toolbar button called "project
workspace" to toggle the project area.)
Open related objects: After doing a "find object
references", just double-click on a line in the results
to open that object or PeopleCode program.
Add objects to your project: While viewing an
object, you can easily add it to your project (even
without changing it) by hitting F7.
Use the output tabs: You ran a "find object
references" and opened an object and then added it to
your project. Now the output area says "1 object(s)
inserted". Do you need to rerun the find? No. The output
behind the various tabs stays there until you replace
it. Just click on the Find Object References tab.
Interpret %SQL: Have you ever opened a view
definition only to be faced with numerous nested %SQL
clauses? Right-click on the definition and then select
"Resolve Meta SQL" from the pop-up menu. Look in the
output area to see the full definition, with all %SQL
clauses replaced.
Easier compares: No, I don't have any advice
about reading a page compare report! This concerns
database-level compares, such as those you might run
during an upgrade. Before you print another tall stack
of compare reports, consider this tip. Run your compares
as usual. Then, instead of printing the reports, just
close those windows. Click on the Upgrade view tab.
Double-click on an object type to see the list of
objects found by the compare. Go to File|Print and print
that list. How does this help? Experience will
show that a small percentage of the differences require
your attention. These lists will give you a way of
organizing your efforts. As you focus on particular
objects, you can run separate compares on just those
objects as needed.
Database and login ID: Do you find yourself
always entering or changing the database name and login
ID when starting up App Designer? Go to Configuration
Manager and change the defaults there.
Unexplained results: Did a "find object
references" search return objects without the reference
you were looking for? Did a compare return weird
results, such as "same/same" when the object doesn't
even exist? Clear your local cache. It is probably
called C:\PS\CACHE\databasename. Just exit App
Designer, delete that folder, and restart App Designer.
Until next time...
 Email: kevin@sparkpath.com |
