Submitted by John St. Peter
Changes to PeopleSoft typically tables happen one of 4 ways. In all cases, the vast majority of the time the changes add new tables or add existing columns. Although it does happen, it is very rare that tables are dropped or the characteristics of columns are altered.
Local developers make changes
We typically push a few changes into PeopleSoft systems weekly. Those changes are funneled through a single person. When those changes involve tables, the DBAs (Database Administrators) are made aware of them because they have some extra steps to do. Typically, DBAs do the work with tables without closely examining the impact. For example, if we know that a table has changed, we can fire off a process that makes the changes without us needing to know what has changed.
PeopleSoft-delivered patches are implemented
PeopleSoft delivers patches to HR, Financials, or CS approximately quarterly. In these cases, the process of applying the patches generates some jobs that make changes to tables. If we think the changes might impact an application outside of PeopleSoft that is relying on that data, we examine those jobs to manually identify the changes. In these cases, DBAs could know of the changes ahead of their going into production and notify affected parties.
PeopleSoft applications are upgraded
This happens every 3-5 years per application, and they often contain a number of table changes. Again, most are new tables, or new columns. An upgrade occasionally drops some tables if they are not relevant to the upgraded application, or it may change a field name. For simple changes (table X is now called table Y) we may choose to update all queries as a part of the upgrade itself. For other types of changes, we might just let the power users know that they will have to review queries that touch tables x, y, and z. In this case, too, DBAs could know the table changes ahead of go-live.
PeopleTools upgrades
This happens every year or two. It impacts tables that are peripheral to the application, but might be used in a few queries (the PeoplSoft Query tables themselves would be in this group). Once more, DBAs could know about the table changes ahead of the changes going into production and notify affected parties.