Formatting date and numbers in XML publisher

We had this requirement to display currency symbol along with the numbers. Negative numbers were required to be displayed in brackets(no sign). It is pretty easy  but sometimes it is the easy stuff that kills most of our time.

 Here are the steps:
1. Double click on the field to open up BI publisher properties.
2. In the formatting section make sure that the type is number
3. Enter $#,##0.00;($#,##0.00) for the format

PS Query converts date to character in 'YYYY-MM-DD' format. We needed to display in MM/DD/YYYY format. This can be done by modifying the query but I found it easier to make a slight change in the template.
Here is the trick : xdoxslt:ora_format_date(FIELDNAME,'mm/dd/yyyy')

Formatting Number as Money:  ?format-currency:AMOUNT_1;’USD’;'true'?
Page Break: ?split-by-page-break:?

Integration Broker and Proxy Servers

We recently moved our web servers to new Windows Server 2008 box (64 bit) for PT 8.51.08 upgrade. During testing we noticed that none of the Integration Broker modules were able to communicate with out of network web services. We kept getting "Host cannot be resolved" error. After getting the networking team involved we found out that new boxes were set up to use a proxy server. Well, after reading up peoplebooks and online forums I found out how to set up Integration Gateway to use proxy servers. It is very simple and here are the steps involved:

1. Open up PS_HOME\webserv\WEBSITE_name\applications\peoplesoft\PSIGW.war\WEB-INF\integrationGateway.properties and search for "Proxy webserver section". In this section you would find ig.proxyHost and ig.proxyPort. Assign correct values to these fields and make sure to remove the '#' sign. You can also access this file online through peopletools > Integration Broker > Quick Configuration > Advanced Gateway Setup > Gateway Setup Properties. Default userid is administrator and password is password.
2. Don't forget to restart the web server