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I work in IT at a university and I'm working with about 5 different departments to develop a new process for students to apply to a specific school within the university (not the university as a whole). We're using a web-based college application vendor and adding the applicant questions for the school itself to the main university application. Currently the main application feeds into PeopleSoft. The IT staff here is building a new table to hold just our school's applicant data. I want to be able to access that data from PeopleSoft for use in external applications, but our IT staff doesn't really seem to understand what I'm requesting, as they simply tell me I can have access to the PS query tools. The problem is, I don't want to run just ad hoc queries, I want to be able to connect from outside PeopleSoft and show current data within the external app.

I am unable to find documentation or get a clear answer to my question. Does PeopleSoft support access via a web services API or anything similar, and does that sound like the right direction for me to take?

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  • Out of curiosity, are you trying to make all of the data at PeopleSoft visible, or just the stuff that you have in your separate table? If the later, why not just throw up a quick website to make it visible?
    – Peter Rowell
    Commented Nov 26, 2012 at 20:23
  • @PeterRowell, it's just the specific table they're creating for me. A website is one option I have, but getting to the data in order to populate the site is the real challenge here.
    – trpt4him
    Commented Nov 27, 2012 at 1:15
  • If all you need is read-only access, then getting your IT group to give it to you should be straightforward. If it isn't, then you are dealing with Mordac, Preventer of Information Services, in which case I recommend a little interdepartmental escalation. Remember to use catch phrases from the original document that created this program (e.g. "this failure to act prevents broadening our student/revenue base"), it can be very effective.
    – Peter Rowell
    Commented Nov 27, 2012 at 1:39
  • I thought PeopleSoft has web services for querying some of its tables.
    – user93165
    Commented Jun 6, 2013 at 0:38

3 Answers 3

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All that is needed to query the PeopleSoft database is to install the PeopleTools 2-tier client (aka the development tools) on a PC. The client will install an ODBC driver from which you can then create a DSN. Your application can then communicate with PeopleSoft through the DSN connection. Technically you don't need the development tools (and the IT staff probably doens't want to give you the dev tools), but that's ok, all you really need is the ODBC driver. You will also need to work with the IT staff (in particular the DBA) to set up a user account in the database granting you the necessary permissions to the tables that must be queried. And finally ... you will need to have an understanding of the database schema so you may build your query statements. PeopleSoft has thousands! of tables and thousands! of views. Your query will most certainly involve more than just the one table that the IT staff is creating for you.

Not for the faint of heart, but the full PeopleTools 8.52 documentation can be found on Oracle's web site: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E25741_01/psft/html/docset.html

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  • Thanks. I actually specifically requested a read-only login to access the table (or view, possibly) that I'd need, and their answer was essentially, use the query tools in PeopleSoft. I understand their unwillingness to allow a direct Oracle connection but I just don't know what alternatives I might have to allow me to access current data as needed, as opposed to manually running a query once a day and importing into the other system (ugh).
    – trpt4him
    Commented Nov 27, 2012 at 1:18
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PeopleSoft's Integration Broker has supported XML over HTTP for a good decade. As web services standardized, PeopleSoft's Integration Broker provided SOAP/WSDL based integrations, as well as plain text (allowing for JSON, CSV, or whatever). This has all been possible as of PeopleTools 8.42. PeopleTools 8.48 made web services based operations (WSDL, etc) easier. PeopleTools 8.52 delivered a REST listening connector. PeopleTools 8.53 delivered JSON support to the Documents module.

Query and direct database access aren't the only way. Customers have been building the types of integrations you require for a long time.

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Would a delivered query work? The can create an SQR which will process the query at any given time through process scheduler and delivered it to your email

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    Could you expand on how such a solution would be architected and used based on the assumption that it would work?
    – user40980
    Commented Mar 21, 2014 at 15:06
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    If you edit this post to describe how this may help solve the problem and provide details needed, please flag this post for review and undeletion. Please see this guide to answering questions for more information.
    – Thomas Owens ♦
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 10:41

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