Parallel Background Processes

Many processes have been designed to run in parallel in order to speed execution. For example, the billing process in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing can be executed so that bills are produced in multiple "threads" (and multiple threads can execute at the same time).

Fastpath: The documentation for each background process provided with the system indicates if it may be run in parallel. Open the help index and navigate to the index entry labeled background processes / system processes to find the list of system processes for an indication of which processes can be run in parallel.

By default the system distributes the data for the multiple threads using the primary key of the main table of the process. For example, if you are running BILLING in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing with multiple threads, the batch process distributes the accounts across the multiple threads. The Account ID is 10 digits long so if you run it with 4 threads, the records are processed as follows:

Thread 1: Account IDs 0000000001 - 2500000000
Thread 2: Account IDs 2500000001 - 5000000000
Thread 3: Account IDs 5000000001 - 7500000000
Thread 4: Account Ids 7500000001 - 9999999999

Note that the multi-threading logic relies on the fact that primary keys for master and transaction data are typically system generated random keys.

Note: Overriding the thread ranges. Your implementation has the ability to override the thread ranges if certain data in your system takes longer to process. For example, imagine you have a single account in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing that has thousands of service agreements (maybe the account for a large corporation or a major city). You may want to set up the thread ranges to put this large account into its own thread and distribute the other accounts to the other threads. To do this, you should create the appropriate batch thread records ahead of time in a status of Thread Ready ( 50) with the key ranges pre-populated. Note that the base product does not provide the ability to add batch thread records online. If you are interested in more information about this technique, contact Customer Support.