Elasticsearch for PeopleSoft

Starting with PeopleTools 8.55.11, Oracle has added a new search engine technology to PeopleSoft with Elasticsearch 2.3.2. This technology follows Verity for applications prior to PeopleSoft 9.2 and Oracle SES for 9.2 applications.

In order to ease the transition fromOracle SES to Elasticsearch, it is possible to have both technologies coexist, but it should be noted that SES will no longer be supported after April 30, 2018 for PeopleTools ≤ 8.55. In addition, for version 8.56, only the Elasticsearch technology is now supported.

For anyone who has had trouble installing SES properly, installingElasticsearch will make you feel better about PeopleSoft search engines. This is done simply by launching a script and is executed very quickly. No need for a Fusion Middleware architecture based on a Weblogic domain and a dedicated database: Elasticsearch is started and the indexes are stored directly in the chosen file system.

As far as the definition of search indexes in the PeopleSoft application is concerned, there is little or no change: Query (connected or not), categories and search definition are still used and deployed.

It is rather on the data and attachments indexing part that we should look for significant changes. Since version 8.55.11, this integration has evolved a lot. Initially, the indexing used Integration Broker mechanisms and required careful monitoring of the Application Engine PTSF_GENFEED indexing processing. If we add to the operating difficulties, the complexity of error management and the difficult to control performance, the expected objectives were rarely reached.

Oracle has identified these limitations and as of PeopleTools 8.55.17, a feature called DirectTransfer, which bypasses Integration Broker by having thePTSF_GENFEED Application Engine and Elasticsearch communicate directly, has been introduced for attachment indexing. If it radically improves the treatment of attachments, we still have the same problems for the other objects.

It is finally from the version 8.55.19 that Oracle has generalized the DirectTransfer and streamlined its architecture. No more indexing processing that does not succeed because of a blocked queue, no more timeouts to set, … However, if you wish, you can go back to the old way of working by disabling the new parameter DirectTransfer appeared in the search options. Note that in these options, you can also set other parameters such as the number of managers (Handles) in order to increase the parallelism. However, be careful not to saturate the queue on the Elasticsearch side or you will be rejected…

Also note that if you bypass the Integration Broker for indexing, you still need the Integration Gateway for searches and it must be properly configured.

For version 8.56, it is from patch 8.56.04 that we find the same evolutions. In both cases, it is necessary to install the ElasticSearch 2.3.2_04 patch.

On the hardware side, it is wise to plan for one or more dedicated servers for Elasticsearch depending on performance and expected availability (clustering). Oracle’s minimum recommendation is 4 CPUs and 32GB of memory, but 64GB is strongly recommended. Half will be allocated to the Elasticsearch JVM and the rest will be used by the Lucene cache.

In conclusion, if you want to migrate your 8.55 environment to Elasticsearch or implement search in 8.56, installing the patches mentioned in this article will allow you to start with Elasticsearch for PeopleSoft.

Note that Elasticsearch is an open source product under Apache license, capable of indexing any type of document. Its scope of use is therefore not limited to PeopleSoft. It is therefore possible to take advantage of its implementation through PeopleSoft to generalize it to other indexing and search needs…

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