PeopleTools is the proprietary software development environment that was created by the PeopleSoft

PeopleSoft

PeopleSoft, Inc. was a company that provided Human Resource Management Systems , Financial Management Solutions , Supply Chain and customer relationship management software, as well as software solutions for manufacturing, enterprise performance management, and student administration to large...

 Corporation.
The PeopleTools consist of Application Designer, Application Engine, Data Mover, PeopleCode

PeopleCode

PeopleCode is an object-oriented proprietary language used to express business logic for PeopleSoft applications. In its fundamentals, PeopleCode syntax resembles other programming languages. Some aspects of the PeopleCode language, however, are specifically related to the PeopleTools environment...

 and various other developer tools.

Application Designer

The Application designer is the core application used to create and customize PeopleSoft applications. The following is a brief list of the functions that can be undertaken in Application Designer:

• Field Definition
• Record Definition
• PeopleCode
  PeopleCode
  PeopleCode is an object-oriented proprietary language used to express business logic for PeopleSoft applications. In its fundamentals, PeopleCode syntax resembles other programming languages. Some aspects of the PeopleCode language, however, are specifically related to the PeopleTools environment...
  
  
• Page definition
• Page Group (component) definition
• Menu Definition
• Business Process design (workflow)
• Project definition

Applications can be built or customised in a development environment, then assembled into a project for migration to test and live environments.

Current and Future releases

Since Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...

 acquired PeopleSoft, Oracle has significantly increased its development of the PeopleSoft tools with Version 8.51 as the current "latest and greatest" version of PeopleTools.

At Oracle's October 2006 trade show convention, Oracle stated that PeopleTools V8.49 has more man hours of development than any other version of PeopleTools ever released.

In spite of this recent effort of PeopleTools development, the future of PeopleTools is certainly in doubt as Oracle has also explicitly stated that Oracle's JDeveloper

JDeveloper

JDeveloper is a freeware IDE supplied by Oracle Corporation. It offers features for development in Java, XML, SQL and PL/SQL, HTML, JavaScript, BPEL and PHP...

software development environment is where the future of PeopleSoft development will reside.

Major Versions and General Availability (GA) Dates

• 8.53 - September 2012 (at Openworld)?
• 8.52 - September 2011 (at Openworld)?
• 8.51 - September 2010
• 8.50 - September 2009
• 8.49 - April 2007
• 8.48
• 8.47
• 8.46
• 8.45
• 8.44 - December 2003
• 8.43
• 8.42
• 8.41
• 8.40

• 8.1x
• 7.1x