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Setting Up Server Keys for Siebel Loyalty

Server keys are used for batch components, not for realtime components. For more information about batch and realtime components, see Setting Up Server Components for Siebel Loyalty.

Server keys are used for two reasons:

• To distribute members across different servers and processes, for load balancing.
• To make sure that only one process is processing a member at any time. (Within the process, the engine makes sure that only one processing thread is processing a member at any time.)

The application automatically assigns the least-loaded key to new members.

Using Server Keys for Load Balancing

The number of different keys you should define depends on:

• The number of servers available.
• The number of processes that can run on each server.
• The number of keys you assign to each server - process number combination.

It is recommended that you assign ten keys to each server - process number combination to allow the administrator to do load balancing by shifting keys from one process to another.

For example, imagine you determine that you need five server processes to process loyalty transactions. You have two servers available that can each run three processes, but one of them is already running another process.

It is possible to create only five keys and assign them to the five available server processes, as shown in Table 7.

However, if you created only five keys, the administrator would not be able to manually switch keys from one process to another, if one process is overloaded.

Therefore, it is recommended that you define fifty keys. Initially, you assign ten of these keys to each process. If one of the processes is overloaded, the administrator can reassign one or more keys from that process to other processes.

To set up server keys

1. Navigate to the Loyalty Program Administration screen.
2. In the link bar, click Server Key Map.
3. In the Server Key Map list, add a record for each server key and complete the necessary fields, which are described in the following table.

   Field	Comments
   Key	Enter a name for the server key.
   Server Name	Enter the name of the server that will process members who have this key.
   Process #	Enter the process number for this server that will process members who have this key.
   # of Members Assigned	Displays the number of members assigned to this key.

To balance the load on servers

1. Navigate to the Loyalty Program Administration screen.
2. In the link bar, click Server Key Map.
3. In the Server Key Map list, change the server name (if necessary) and the process number for some of the keys being processed by server process that are overloaded.

Registering New Components as Keyed or Unkeyed

You can create new components if it is necessary for your deployment. For example, you can create different components to separate the processing of tiers and transactions.

If the new component is keyed, it creates a request for each of the unique keys (server + process number), and if the component is unkeyed, it creates only one request for the process.

New components should be unkeyed if they are used for realtime processing and keyed if they are used for batch processing.

When you create new components, to specify whether they are keyed or unkeyed, you must list them in the appropriate LOV in the LOV Administration view of the Applications Administration screen. All engine components are listed in one of the following LOVs:

• LOY_ENGINE_COMPONENT_KEYED
• LOY_ENGINE_COMPONENT_UNKEYED

To create a Loyalty Batch Engine, the type must be Business Service Manager. Use the following syntax:

create component definition Loy1 for component type "Business Service Manager" component group LoyaltyEngine run mode Batch full name "Loy1" description "Loy1" with parameter LOYEngineSleepTime = 5