About Loading and Reloading Data for Service Regions

Because the service region information is cached, it must be loaded into the caches from the Siebel database when the service is started periodically to synchronize updates. Initial loading and reloading of data are automatic processes. The data for a service region is automatically copied to the caches each time the server is restarted, and manually copied by clicking the Load buttons. Repeating component jobs can also automatically load service region data by using the Appointment Booking Service business service. For more information, see Creating Workflows to Reload Data for Service Regions to the Appointment Booking System Cache and Troubleshooting the Appointment Booking System and Optimizer.

Every night, information must move from the ABS (future) cache into the Optimizer (present) cache. For example, if today is July 1st, then the Optimizer horizon holds all activities from July 1st to July 7th. The ABS horizon is defined as 14 days, so the ABS cache holds all activities from July 8th to July 15th. Both horizons are measured from the beginning of the Glued period. The end of the Optimizer horizon is set to the same calendar day (at midnight) as the start of the ABS horizon.

On July 2nd, the old July 1st data is no longer necessary. It is in the past and discarded. At the same time, the Optimizer horizon is still 7 days out, so the Optimizer must load the July 9th data into the Optimizer cache. However, before the data can be loaded into the Optimizer cache, the data must be unloaded from the ABS cache. If the data is in both caches at the same time, then the data can change in both engines simultaneously. Therefore, the activities and data for July 9th are released from the ABS cache, and then loaded into the Optimizer cache.

When a service region is loaded, it is not available for requests. The request is returned with a return code.

When the data from a service region is first loaded, the Optimizer assumes that the data coming from the Siebel database was previously optimized. So while generating an initial solution, the Optimizer tries to retain the assignee and the sequence of activities for each field service engineer. It also retains the time stamp of this load in the cache.