Security Under the Hood
Understanding PeopleTools 8 Security Tables
Posted on 1/16/2007 (originally published in print on 5/1/2004)
by Cayce Balara
Whenever you start playing with PeopleTools tables, you are venturing where PeopleSoft did not intend for you to go. In essence, you're "getting your hands dirty" with the nuts and bolts of the system. I've always enjoyed this kind of exploration of any system, especially PeopleSoft, since there's just so much going on under there. There's no arguing that armed with only a SQL editor and a solid knowledge of the PeopleTools table structures, you can get a lot of useful information that's not available through the standard PIA interface. One of the areas where this concept shines the brightest is with Security in PeopleSoft 8.
PeopleSoft security has experienced some changes in the move to PeopleSoft 8, some for the better; some ... not so much. You used to have to remember which of 3 or 4 different applications was the one where you changed someone's access to ; now most of security is gathered together in one place (though there are still some outliers that are hard to find/remember). One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the fact that you don't have a very good "window" into the underlying structure of the security system. PeopleSoft provides some reports to give you a little access and answer some questions you might have about the security setup in your system, but in a practical sense these glimpses of security don't tell the whole story and often leave you with incomplete information.
For instance, in an HCM 8.8 environment on PeopleTools 8.43, I can navigate to PeopleTools > Security > Review Security Information and find a ton of reports (you can also access them through various security pages). Under the heading User ID Queries, for instance (See Figure 1), I find query reports that will tell me To which Permission Lists does this User ID belong? or Which pages can this User ID access? Under the heading Role Queries, I find similar query reports that will answer the questions To which Permission Lists does this Role belong? or Which pages can this Role access? The problem with these reports is that they provide skeletal information. The User ID Permission List Query, for example, lists the key name of the permission list, but fails to give you a description that hints at what the permission list might include.
Figure 1
PSQuery at Heart
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