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Methods for Loading Provisioning Data

You must load billing-related provisioning data into Oracle Billing Insight before loading billing files. The billing data load process loads billing fact data only. Provisioning data includes additions, deletions, updates, and cancellations (expirations) to the company, account, service agreement, and hierarchy-related objects identified in the billing file. The data must exist and be up-to-date before loading a billing file, or the load will fail. For information about provisioning data, see Methods for Loading Provisioning Data.

You can load provisioning data into Oracle Billing Insight using one of the following methods:

• RESTFul Web Services (Recommended load method). Using Web services to manage billing objects lets you update provisioning data in real-time, making this data always current in Oracle Billing Insight and, therefore, automatically available when you upload the billing file. This option speeds the availability of provisioning data. (If you use Web services to load data automatically in real-time, then there is no need to run data load jobs in the Command Center.) For information about using RESTFul Web services, see Web Services Reference for Oracle Billing Insight.
• The ProvisioningData Batch Job. The ProvisioningData job lets you load provisioning data in batch from a provisioning data file containing the required data and format. You must load provisioning data before loading billing data. You can create the batch provisioning input file in one of two ways:
  • Creating a custom process (Recommended for batch data load). Write a custom process to extract incremental object provisioning data from your data source file into an input file in the specified format for batch loading. The required input file format is described in Implementation Guide for Oracle Billing Insight. For details on creating a batch provisioning input file using a custom process, see Using a Custom Process to Create a Batch Provisioning Input File.
  • Using the AWK Extraction tool. The AWK extraction tool provides an alternative way to extract object provisioning data from your billing data file into an input file. For details on using the Extraction tool, see Using a Custom Process to Create a Batch Provisioning Input File.