Understanding Strategies, Test Environments, Sizing Impacts, and Indexes

This chapter discusses:

• Base currency conversion strategies.

• Conversion test environment setup.

• System sizing impacts and system resources.

• Creation of indexes before running the conversion.

Base Currency Conversion Strategies

This section discusses:

• Conversion timeline.

• Conversion project team.

• Example of an approach to the conversion.

Conversion Timeline

In the weeks and months prior to converting the existing company base currency to a new base currency, you should begin carefully planning the conversion strategy. Unlike other JD Edwards EnterpriseOne conversions, the base currency conversion requires a company-wide effort by application and system administrators before, during, and after the conversion. Our research indicates that, depending on the size of the database and the regularity with which you run integrity reports and correct data issues, the base currency conversion process might require from three to six months to complete.

Conversion Project Team

Many companies establish a conversion project team consisting of a project team leader, application administrators, system administrators, end users, IT personnel, and so on. The project team defines the scope of the conversion and creates a project plan to ensure a successful conversion. The project team should set up a method to track the progress of the project, making sure that issues are handled in a timely manner and that the project stays on schedule and within budget.

The conversion project team is responsible for running and testing the base currency conversion in a test environment before running it in the production environment. First, the project team should complete the preconversion, conversion, and postconversion tasks in a test environment, correcting any data issues in both the test and production environments. Later, when the team is satisfied with the results of the conversion in the test environment, they should complete all of the tasks again in the production environment.

Prior to running the base currency conversion, the project team should review and complete the preconversion tasks documented in this guide. The preconversion tasks can take weeks, or even months, to complete. If you clean up the tables and review and correct the integrity reports on a regular basis, you can expect to spend less time completing the preconversion tasks.

After running the base currency conversion, the project team should review and complete the postconversion tasks documented in this guide.

This is a list of some suggested project team tasks. Use this list to generate discussion within the company and help you plan the conversion strategy:

• Set up project objectives, scope, assumptions, resources, roles, and responsibilities.

• Define the skills required by the project team and assign people to the team.

• List the milestones and target dates for the project.

• Plan a reporting method to keep management informed of progress.

• Schedule a kick-off meeting to discuss and finalize the project plan.

• Create an issues list.

  Include risks, questions, concerns, and so on, and assign a project person to each issue.

Throughout the conversion, the project team should review and update the project plan, track the progress of the conversion, and identify and resolve issues.

Example of an Approach to the Conversion

You can approach converting the existing base currency to a new base currency in many different ways. Each company is unique and has its own internal business requirements. Many manufacturing companies, for example, might convert to a new base currency during an off-peak season or holiday when disruptions are less notable, whereas other companies might convert at the beginning of a fiscal or calendar year. Make sure that you discuss the conversion with the auditors and base the decision on the business requirements and, if applicable, any legal requirements.

This is an example of how you might approach converting to a new base currency at the beginning of a calendar year. Use this example to generate discussion within the company and help determine the conversion strategy that works best.

A Japanese company plans to convert their base currency from the Japanese yen (JPY) to the Canadian dollar (CAD) at the beginning of a new calendar year (January 1, 2010) using this approach:

1. Complete entering year 2009 entries in the existing base currency (JPY) between December 31, 2009 and January 9, 2010.

   Limit the number of year 2009 transactions entered during those 10 days.

2. On January 10, 2010, copy the production environment. This copy is the audit trail for 2009 and prior year books.

3. If auditor adjustments are required for year 2009, enter them in both the copy of the production environment (step 2) and the production environment (step 4).

4. Convert the production environment to CAD as of January 10, 2010.

5. Enter transactions for year 2010 in the production environment, using January 1, 2010 as the start date for the transactions.

Conversion Test Environment Setup

To help ensure the success of the base currency conversion, complete the preconversion, conversion, and postconversion tasks in a test environment before you complete them in the production environment.

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne provides these environments for conversion testing in the software:

• Conference Room Pilot (CRPxxx, where xxx = release, such as CRP733).

• Testing (TSTxxx, where xxx = release, such as TST733).

Verify that one of these environments is installed at the site and use it for the base currency conversion testing. By running and completing the conversion in one of these test environments, you can continue to run the daily operations in the production environment while preparing for the conversion in a test environment. Companies with multiple environments should test the conversion separately for each environment.

The test environment should contain a copy of the most current production data. Make sure you refresh the test environment from the production environment before you begin testing the base currency conversion.

Complete the preconversion, conversion, and postconversion tasks on data in the test environment. If you test only a portion of the data, the results are incomplete and do not apply to the actual conversion in the production environment. Remember that you must correct any data issues that you identify in the test environment in both the test and production environments.

Important! If you decide not to complete the preconversion, conversion, and postconversion tasks first in a test environment and instead complete them in the production environment, be aware that JD Edwards EnterpriseOne does not support or help ensure the success of the base currency conversion. The risks involved in converting the production environment without first preparing and testing the conversion in a test environment are consequential to the operation of the company. The potential risk for downtime, hastily made decisions, and incorrect converted data must be taken very seriously.

System Sizing Impacts and System Resources

Review the information about sizing impacts and system resources and use it as a guideline to help you determine the size and disk space requirements needed for the base currency conversion. If you have concerns about sizing impacts and system resources and performance, contact your hardware representative.

This section discusses:

• Sizing impacts on the F0911, F0902, and the Conversion Audit File for Euro Conversion (F0086) tables.

• System resources and performance.

Sizing Impacts on the F0911, F0902, and F0086 Tables

To determine the sizing impacts that the base currency conversion might have on the system, make sure that you understand how the conversion programs process and convert data. The conversion programs convert only records with amounts that are in the existing base currency.

These programs also:

• Create foreign currency (CA) records for domestic-only transactions in the F0911 and F0902 tables.

• (Optional) Based on preference, create records for the converted amounts in the F0086 table.

Sizing Impacts on the F0911 and F0902 Tables

For companies that have transactions in the domestic currency only and that plan to convert their base currency, the conversion has a sizing impact on the F0911 and F0902 tables. Domestic-only transactions do not contain a foreign amount and, therefore, do not have a corresponding CA record. If no CA record exists in the F0911 and F0902 tables, the conversion program creates one based on the AA record. If the company has a large number of domestic-only transactions, this impacts the size of the tables. For domestic-only transactions, you can expect the number of records in the F0911 to double after running the conversion and the records in the F0902 table to double after running the repost.

Use these formulas to calculate sizing impacts:

• (Sizing impact on F0911 table) = [(number of domestic-only transaction records × F0911 table size) + (F0911 table size before conversion)]

• (Sizing impact on the F0902 table) = [(number of domestic-only balance records × F0902 table size) + (F0902 table size before conversion)]

• (The number of domestic-only records) = (total of AA records) - (CA records).

Sizing Impacts on the F0086 Table

Before you run the base currency conversion, you specify whether you want to create an audit record in the F0086 table for a particular table conversion. At a minimum, the conversion creates one record for each record converted.

Important! The ZJDE model plan that you copy and use as the basis for the plan was specifically designed to create audit records for each table converted. Although creating audit records is recommended, you should be aware that doing so can impact processing time greatly and requires additional disk space.

Eight to and from amount fields are in the F0086 table. If the amount fields on a record exceed that number, the conversion creates additional audit records. For example, the F0902 record has 22 amount fields. This means the conversion program creates three F0086 records for each F0902 record that it converts.

The conversion programs create multiple F0086 records, as indicated in this table:

To calculate the sizing impact on the F0086 table, use this formula:

(Sizing impact on F0086 table) = (number of records to be converted for a particular table) × [(F0086 table size) × (number of F0086 records written per converted record)]

System Resources and Performance

Based on the way in which the programs for the base currency conversion process and convert data, you must clean up the data tables and, as much as possible, remove detailed records from them before you run the conversion. By doing so, the conversion programs use less disk space, which improves processing time. Pay particular attention to the size of the F0911 and F0902 tables.

When you run the conversion in the test environment, use the performance monitor that the operating system vendor provides to estimate system resources and performance. The performance monitor enables you to track CPU processing, amount of I/O, and memory consumption, and it should help indicate what you can expect for system resources and performance when you run the conversion in the production environment.

This example shows the number of records in several tables before and after the conversion; use this as an example only because actual results vary:

Creation of Indexes Before Running the Conversion

When processing records, many of the programs for the base currency conversion use data selection and data sequencing that do not have indexes. If conversion programs cannot find indexes, they try to build them. This takes an inordinate amount of processing time and causes serious performance problems.

The programs for the base currency conversion process millions of records, making performance a critical issue. By creating indexes before you run the conversion, you can help improve the time that it takes to process records.

Determine whether indexes have already been created for the tables that you are going to convert. For those tables in which indexes have not been created, be prudent and consider creating indexes for larger tables only.

Important! A qualified database administrator should be present when the databases are configured and maintained. The database administrator must understand how to maintain the database, which includes how to create indexes.

Creating Indexes Before Running JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Base Currency Conversion

The type of database that you use determines whether you use the Where or Order By clause to create an index.

See Clauses for Conversion Program Indexes.

1. Compile a list of tables in which you want to create indexes.

2. Create an index for each table.

   Use structured query language (SQL) to run the Create Index command for the database.

3. For Oracle and SQL server databases, update statistics for the tables involved using the Analyze Table (Oracle) or the Update Statistics (SQL Server) command.

4. Run the base currency conversion.

5. After you successfully complete the base currency conversion, delete the indexes that you created in step 2.