Auto Numbering

There are a number of ID fields in PeopleSoft that are auto-numbered. A good example is the EMPLID (employee ID) field. The field EMPLID_LAST_EMPL stores the last system allocated EMPLID. This field can be found in the PS_INSTALLATION table. This means the next time a person (EMPLID) is created, they will get the value in in the EMPLID_LAST_EMPL field of the PS_INSTALLATION table + 1.

Getting the Next Number

Now you might think that if you wanted the next available ID for such a field, you would need to write some PeopleCode to increment the value by 1. However, this isn't necessary as there are two delivered functions to do this for you:

GetNextNumber

GetNextNumberWithGapsCommit

Note that the function GetNextNumberWithGaps is now deprecated.

What's the difference?

GetNextNumber doesn't auto-commit. This can lead to table locking issues if there are a lot of transactions requiring the sequence number field. GetNextNumberWithGapsCommit commits immediately after getting the next sequence number.

GetNextNumber can only increment by 1. GetNextNumberWithGapsCommit can increment by more than 1.

GetNextNumber can only be called in a SavePostChange event. GetNextNumberWithGapsCommit can be called form any PeopleCode event (according to PeopleBooks anyway ...).

GetNextNumberWithGapsCommit can use a SQL WHERE clause when updating multiple sequence numbers at the same time.

GetNextNumber examples:

GetNextNumber(PS_INSTALLATION.EMPLID_LAST_EMPL, 9999999999)

GetNextNumber("PS_INSTALLATION", "EMPLID_LAST_EMP", 9999999999)

The value 9999999999 is the maximum value of the EMPLID_LAST_EMPL field which has a length of 10.

GetNextNumberWithGapsCommit examples:

GetNextNumberWithGapsCommit(PS_INSTALLATION.EMPLID_LAST_EMPL, 9999999999, 1)

The extra parameter with a value of 1 means the increment value (in this case increment by 1).

Finding where sequence numbers are stored.

Try searching for fields that end in _LAST e.g. in App Designer search for fields with %_LAST.

The PS_INSTALLATION (and product related PS_INSTALLATION tables) store a lot of these fields