VERSION Run Control Options

I thought I’d share this customization for your future post. In the 8.52 days, we used to run VERSION (like RESETVERIONS form), but this always was a headache for browser cache. We would have the usual notice, email, or documents all saying “Please clear your browser cache!”. I din’t know too many commercial sites that plastered that notice on their site, so why should PeopleSoft. So I came up with a solution to deal with cache. I customized VERSION to drive the “content” type objects that get cached on web servers (and browsers), by forcing a version number increment by the number of weeks from a selected start date (version number used in file name). I update all content objects, so this included the tools objects (where upgrades gave most of the problems), and added the code at the end of the VERSION AE program. Doing a tools upgrade always resets the tools objects back to 1, but objects like PT_NAV2_JS_1.js will be completely different from major tools versions. So, this solved the issue. The only cost is extra overhead of re-caching after the VERSION runs, but this showed to be very small and occurred during non-peak times after the maintenance windows.

/* Added incremental versioning for Web Content Objects.
This solution is being implemented to resolve manual need to cache clearing
that lead to corrupted pages.
The sequence is generated based on the number of weeks from Jan 1st, 2012. Every
week this version number will be incremented resulting in a new version number
and new web content cache. VERSION is ran for the monthly maintenance release.
*/
Local number &VER_SEQ;
SQLExec("select TO_NUMBER(TO_CHAR(SYSDATE, 'IW')) + (52 * (TO_NUMBER((TO_CHAR(SYSDATE, 'YYYY')) - 2012))) AS VER_SEQ from Dual", &VER_SEQ);

/* END Version Mod */


We don’t run “reset” anymore with the new VERSION AE options, but do still run a SQL after some tools upgrades/patches that ensure all the content objects change to force browsers to reload cached content (or just customize the tools upgrade CA job/template to not run the “Reset” type of VERSION, and use the fix/enhanced method).

Local number &VER_SEQ;
SQLExec("select MAX(VERSION) + 1 from PSVERSION WHERE OBJECTTYPENAME IN ('PDM', 'CRM', 'SSM')", &VER_SEQ);

MessageBox(0, "", 0, 0, "Web Content sequence number incremented to " | &VER_SEQ);
/* apply proper version changes */
SQLExec("UPDATE PSCONTDEFN SET VERSION = :1 WHERE CONTTYPE IN (1,4,9)", &VER_SEQ);
SQLExec("UPDATE PSSTYLSHEETDEFN SET VERSION = :1", &VER_SEQ);
SQLExec("UPDATE PSVERSION SET VERSION = :1 WHERE OBJECTTYPENAME IN ('PDM', 'CRM', 'SSM')", &VER_SEQ);
SQLExec("UPDATE PSLOCK SET VERSION = :1 WHERE OBJECTTYPENAME IN ('PDM', 'CRM', 'SSM')", &VER_SEQ);
SQLExec("UPDATE PSVERSION SET VERSION = VERSION + 1 WHERE OBJECTTYPENAME = 'SYS'");