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RE: Middle-Tier Inflicted Corruption

From: MacGregor, Ian A. <ian_at_SLAC.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 09:35:14 -0800
Message-id: <26E3EC48949D134C94A1574B2C89466113A6F7@exchange2.slac.stanford.edu>


To the best of my knowledge it did. This suggests that if there is no middle tier, Peoplesoft would rely on the system timestamps of the individual users' desktops. I am, however, no PS expert. We have Peoplesoft administrators to manage the Peoplesoft software, and windows administrators to manage the clients and middle tier. I just take care of the databases.

I've now mined all the data I can from the redo logs. I am now producing reports of all questionable timestamps in the database. It is rare that a Peoplesoft record is created during off hours; except, many Peoplesoft rows are created at "midnight", i.e., they have the time portion of the timestamp truncated.

Ian MacGregor
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
ian_at_SLAC.Stanford.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Hemant K Chitale [mailto:hkchital_at_singnet.com.sg] Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 5:49 AM To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Re: Middle-Tier Inflicted Corruption

Does/did PeopleSoft pick the date from Application Servers or Clients [as in "User's PCs"] ??
Scary and quite dangerous not to rely on one central location -- the database -- for dates.
It is like allowing multiple sequence generators to generate numbers for the same Sequence.

Hemant
At 04:27 PM 02-02-04 -0800, you wrote:
>I haven't had much sleep lately. The other day someone came to ask why
>our Financials Peoplesoft database thought it was 1998. I checked to be
>sure, and the database returned the correct date. I asked them to check
>the client, which in this case is a Citrix farm. Some of those servers
>showed the 1998 dates. The maintainer of that system was queried and replied:
>
>
>"The problem with the clock was due to the old domain controller not
>correctly synchronizing its time with the new domain controller. Which is
>another good reason for building a new domain controller. Because the
>clocks never properly synchronized, when the new domain controller came
>online to backup the failing primary it came up with a time that was out
>of date. This has caused the domain time to be out of sync. It was a
>last vestige of the old domain controller 'OVERLORD'. I apologize for the
>problems it has caused you. If you have any questions about this please
>let me know."
>
>
>
>Peoplesoft (in-the-head) in their ultimate wisdom decided not to use
>the
>date on the database server, but that on the client. I now have these
>incorrect dates sprinkled through the system. Furthermore some have
>propagated from parent to child. I spent most of the weekend mining redo
>logs and believe I have come up with a complete list of the effected
>rows. One cannot ever be 100% sure. The project leaders for each
>Peoplesoft module have these. They will be responsible for implementing
>any corrections
>
>Peoplesoft does not use database enforced referential integrity.
>However
>it does employ unique indexes and calls them primary keys. These keys can
>include dates. If the date of a parent table is corrected in this
>situation and the children are missed, those children are now orphans. If
>a child's record is changed and the parent's missed, same thing. If the
>dates are not changed then reports are incorrect. Perhaps a capital asset
>get's an incorrect receipt date and the depreciation schedule is thrown off.
>
>With database enforced RI I can find the lineage of a key through all
>generations, but that is not so easy when it is program based.
>
>I am open to suggestions as to how to best remedy this stituation
>
>
>Ian MacGregor
>Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
>ian_at_SLAC.Stanford.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Hemant K Chitale
Oracle 9i Database Administrator Certified Professional http://hkchital.tripod.com {last updated 24-Jan-04}



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Received on Wed Feb 04 2004 - 11:35:14 CST

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