Which Version Number Corresponds To Which PeopleTools Object?

Recently somebody asked me "Our “CRM” values in PSLOCK and PSVERSION are growing tremendously and we don’t know why. We will be opening a case with Oracle but … do you know what that “CRM” value is related to? We are not using the CRM product in our PeopleSoft installation."
There is some documentation on the Oracle Support website, but it is not exhaustive and may not be completely up to date.

• E-AD: What is OBJECTTYPENAME in PSVERSION and PSLOCK for? (Doc ID 664848.1)  contains a document that lists the object type names and the PeopleTools table they relate to.  This document was originally published in 2013 and relates to PeopleTools 8.49.
• E-AD: What Tables Are Associated With The New Objecttypenames In PSVERSION In PT 8.50? (Doc ID 1278867.1) lists the new object types in PeopleTools 8.50.

The page in the PTRef utility that describes the relationship of version numbers to PeopleTools tables is one of the few static pages in the tool.  I have now updated it with the information in the above Oracle support notes, but there are other version numbers.
In the previous blog post, I showed how to increment version numbers before updating PeopleTools objects.  I knew RDM (the Record Definition Manager) is the OBJECTTYPENAME for PSRECDEFN because I worked that out by tracing Application Designer while it saved a record change.  That remains the only completely reliable way to determine the relationship.
However, version number matching is also a useful technique, though when it does not provide a completely definitive answer, it dramatically cuts down the amount of work then necessary.
I have written a little PL/SQL code, that is delivered with PTRef, that extracts the maximum version number for each PeopleTools table in PeopleSoft (other than the PS%DEL) tables and stores it on a working storage table (I used the PLAN_TABLE because it is always there on an Oracle database).  Then you can compare the version number on PSLOCK/PSVERSION with the maximum version on the PeopleTools object.
If the version number is 1, you can’t do the match because the version number has never been incremented, at least since it was last reset by the VERSION application engine.
If the version is only updated occasionally you may have some trouble with duplicate matches. In my example, 3 tables have a maximum version number of 80, while only one version number is 80.

RECNAME                   MAX        CNT
------------------ ---------- ----------
PSAEAPPLDEFN               80       3504
PSMSGNODEDEFN              80         78
PSOPRVERDFN                80       1468

I would guess that OPRVM matches PSOPRVERDFN, and the above support notes confirm this, but otherwise, you would have to check that manually with trace.

OBJECTTY    VERSION
-------- ----------
OPRVM            80

Higher version numbers are easier to match because they are less likely to have duplicate matches.
So to return to the original question, what is CRM?  In my sample system, version numbers CRM and SCATM are both 3.

OBJECTTY    VERSION
-------- ----------
CRM               3
SCATM             3

However, only PSCONTDEFN has a maximum version of 3.

RECNAME                   MAX        CNT
------------------ ---------- ----------
PSCONTDEFN                  3       7567

Again not a perfect match, but again Oracle Support Note 664848.1 confirms that CRM corresponds to PSCONTDEFN.  CRM stands for Content Registry Manager.
So the question now becomes what is updating the content definitions, and hence increasing the version number?  It turned out to be an entity registry synchronisation process that was run daily.
It is perfectly legitimate for many updated rows on the PeopleTools table can be given the same version number.  The version number does not need to be incremented again for each row being updated, but then the row-level locks on PSVERSION and PSLOCK created by their updates must be held until the update on the PeopleTools table is committed.  That can increase contention on the version number update.  The alternative is to commit after each update and then increment the version numbers again.  Many PeopleSoft processes do exactly that, and it can, in turn, lead to massive increase in some version numbers.

PeopleTools Table Reference Generator

Like many other PeopleSoft professionals, I spend a lot of time looking at the PeopleTools tables because they contain meta-data about the PeopleSoft application. Much of the application is stored in PeopleTools tables. Some provide information about the Data Model. Many of my utility scripts reference the PeopleTools tables, some of them update them too. Therefore, it is very helpful to be able to understand what is in these tables. In PeopleSoft for the Oracle DBA, I discussed some tables that are of regular interest. I included the tables that correspond to the database catalogue and that are used during the PeopleSoft login procedure. The tables that are maintained by the process scheduler are valuable because they contain information about who ran what process when, and how long they ran for.
I am not the only person to have started to document the PeopleTools tables on their website or blog, most people have picked a few tables that are of particular interest. I wanted to produce a complete reference.  However, with over 4000 PeopleTools tables and views, it is simply not viable to do even a significant number of them manually.  So, I wrote some SQL and PL/SQL to dynamically generate a page for each PeopleTools table and views and put the generated pages on my website.  If you use Google to search for a PeopleTools name you will probably find the reference page.
I have now revisited that code and made a number of changes and improvements.

• I have used a later version of PeopleTools to generate the reference on my website.  The list of PeopleTools tables is no longer defined in PeopleTools by object security, so I have used an independent and somewhat broader definition: Table or View records that are either owned by PPT or whose SQLTABLENAME is the same as the record name.
• There is much less reliance on static pages.  There are now only 3 such pages everything else is generated.  Instead, additional data is loaded from static scripts into the PLAN_TABLE that should always be present in an Oracle database and so it doesn't have to be created.  It should be a global temporary table so there is no problem with debris being left behind or interference with other processes.  That data is then combined with data in the PeopleTools tables during the generation process.
• The utility has been rewritten as a PL/SQL package that should be created in the PeopleSoft Owner ID schema (usually SYSADM).
• The generated HTML is simply tidier, and more consistent.

The source is available on GitHub at https://github.com/davidkurtz/PTRef, so you can download and generate your own reference on your own current version of PeopleTools. An example of the generated output can be found on my website.
The idea of the original PeopleTools tables reference was the people could contribute additional descriptions and information that were not in the PeopleTools tables.  That can still happen, and indeed should be easier, by making changes to the scripts that load the additional data and uploading new versions to GitHub.