What is PUM?

PUM is the new terminology which came along with the PeopleSoft applications release 9.2. PUM stands for PeopleSoft Update Manager. PeopleSoft Update Manager drastically changes the way you maintain your PeopleSoft applications.

As of present you might be doing all your maintenance, bug fixes or patches via bundles issued by PeopleSoft. The bundle method is cumbersome and involves a lot of cost. Though you have bought only one product, to update the product, you might end up in applying a bundle which includes bug fixes for all the products in that suite. Then testing these bugs against your own customizations and applying them take a lot of your time and money. The problem becomes more serious when there are dependencies between the bundles. Sometimes, the bundle 18 might be dependent on bundle 15 which in turn might be dependent on bundle 12 and so on. What this means is that, to apply bundle 18, you might have to apply bundle 15 first and so on. Eventually you end up in applying all the bundles. Imagine the situation where you are trying to apply a fix of 1 line code change and finally you end up in applying the whole bundle packages which cumulatively crosses 1000 code lines.

PUM is the answer for the problem from PeopleSoft. The PeopleSoft Update Manger will help you to select and apply the particular fix alone which you are looking for. This is called as selective patching. If you want to get a fix from PeopleSoft, to resolve an error message on a page, go to PUM and search for the error details or the bug details and you will find the resolution of your problem. Just select that bug alone and create the change package for applying it to your production system. No need to worry about dependencies with the PUM model. If there is any dependency, the PUM system will automatically include all the changes required for your resolution into the single change package. Most of your work is done by the PUM system and the only thing you need to do is to test and apply the change package generated by the PUM system.

How this system works? You might be how you generate the change packages. Earlier it used to be zip files, but since it became selective patching, zips alone won’t work out. PeopleSoft has come up with the approach of virtual images. You can download the maintenance image for various releases from the Oracle Support center.  You can host the machine with these images which contain all the required servers deployed. Once it is up, you may select the fixes required for your maintenance and proceed to change package creation. You can then deploy the change package created directly to your test or production database depending on the IT strategy.

 Some organizations always like to apply all the fixes released by the PeopleSoft regardless of whether they have faced that issue or not. If you are among one of such organizations, you might be wondering whether you have to select all the bugs or issues reported manually and then create a change package. Luckily PeopleSoft has an answer to your question too. PeopleSoft is providing an option called “Make Me Current”. If you select that option in the PUM, your change package will include all the fixes that has gone till that image. Thus applying the package will make your application current with the PeopleSoft release mechanism.

Why there are too many images? Each of the bug will be reported or fixed in different points in the time line. So all the fixes till a fixed period of time comes up in an image. Any fix that is falling in the next window will come up in the next image and so on. So what is the best image for you to download? Always download the latest image released by the PeopleSoft as it is a cumulative image and contains fixes for all the bugs reported from image 1 till the last image. So you might be getting a chance to apply other relevant bugs or features pertaining to your module. So far so good, but the golden question that you might of thinking of will be “can I start using it right away?”. The answer will be a mixed one; yes you can use it only if your application is on PeopleSoft 9.2. For the prior releases you still have to go through the hurdles of bundles and maintenance package.

For an overview on the image concepts, view the below video from Oracle PeopleSoft channel on YouTube.