Understanding Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)

Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) is a separately licensable component of Oracle Utilities Customer Care & Billing that works in tandem with the Oracle database feature of the same name.

For general information about the ILM process and how ILM works with OUAF applications, refer to the Information Lifecycle Management chapter of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework Administrative User Guide.

This section provides an overview of the components used by the Information Lifecycle Management functionality.

ILM-Enabled Maintenance Objects: Retention Period

The majority of Maintenance Objects support a single retention period. They can either inherit the system-wide retention days that are configured on the ILM Configuration master configuration or they can have a retention period specified via the Maintenance Object option ILM Retention Period in Days.

CCB ILM-Enabled MOs

The CCB MOs support only a single retention period and many CCB MOs do not support the BO level setting.

The table below summarizes maintenance objects that are enabled for ILM. Information on this table includes:

ILM Eligibility Algorithm Type: The algorithm type description contains and specific consideration that are considered when determining if the record is eligible for ILM. Please review the algorithm type for the details including object cascading.
Restrict By Status: If the framework ILM eligibility algorithm (F1-ILMELIG) is used, the restricted status as delivered with the system are shown.


Maintenance Object	ILM Eligibility Algorithm Type	Restrict By Status
Adjustment	C1-ADJILMELG	N/A
Bill	C1-ILMELG-BL	N/A
Bill Segment	C1-ILMELG-BS	N/A
Billable Charge	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. Status: Canceled
Case	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. Status: Closed
Customer Contact	C1-CCILMELIG	N/A
Customer Relationship Request	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
Customer Service Request	C1-CSILMELG	N/A
Customer Service Request Person	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
Customer Service Request Account	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
Customer Service Request Premise	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
Customer Service Request SA	F1-ILMELIG	No
Customer Service Request Service Location	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
CS Request Consumer Contract	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
Customer Service Request Contract Product	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
Field Activity	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. Statuses: Complete, Canceled
Financial Transaction	N/A. The eligibility criteria checks are directly in the crawler batch process algorithms. Refer to C1-FTCRL batch control in the application.	N/A
Market Charge	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
Market Payment	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
Market Usage	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
Match Event	C1-MEVILMELG	N/A
Meter Read	C1-ILMELG-MR	N/A
Order	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. Statuses: Complete, Canceled
Payment Arrangement Request	F1-ILMELIG	Yes. BO final status.
Payment Event	C1-PEVILMELG	N/A
Response	F1-ILMELIG	No
Usage	F1-ILMELIG	No

Adjusting Eligibility of Non-Final Transactions

As delivered, Oracle Utilities Customer Care & Billing maintenance objects allow non-final transactions to be eligible for archive. This is a logical approach when transactional data has a very long retention period.

If non-final transactions should not be eligible for archive this can be controlled at either the Maintenance Object (MO) or Business Object (BO) level:

MO - ILM Restrict By Status (Y/N): Setting this to "Y" opts into the ability to restrict archiving by status. This is required to be set for either of the MO or BO level restrictions to be considered. To enforce the status, it requires that either the ILM Restrict By BO Final Status (Y/N) option or ILM Final Status Field Value option is also configured.
MO - ILM Restrict By BO Final Status (Y/N): Setting this to "Y" indicates that the transactions for the MO must be in a final status to be eligible for ILM. A status is considered to be final, based on the BO lifecycle configuration. This can be overridden by the BO option Final Status Required for Archive (Y/N). This is only applicable for an MO that is maintained by business objects.
BO - Final Status Required for Archive (Y/N): Setting this to "Y" indicates the transactions for this particular BO must be in a final status. This setting overrides the MO level ILM Restrict By BO Final Status (Y/N).

The following table helps to illustrate how these three settings impact whether a given transaction must be in a final status:


MO: ILM Restrict By Status	MO: ILM Restrict By BO Final Status	BO: Final Status Required for Archive	Final Status Required for Eligibility?
N	Y	Y	N
N	Y	N	N
N	N	Y	N
Y	N	N	N
Y	Y	N	N
Y	Y	Y	Y
Y	N	Y	Y
Y	Y	Not Provided	Y
Y	N	Not Provided	N

Note: There are a few MOs that do not support the BO level setting. To best understand how these fields are interpreted for an MO, refer to the detailed description of the algorithm plugged into the ILM Eligibility system event for the MO. For example, the generic ILM Eligibility Based on Status (F1-ILMELIG) algorithm does not support the BO level override option.

Proactive Archive Eligibility for Transactional Data

Some types of transactional data can be analyzed for archive eligibility as they are received rather than waiting until their retention period has expired. This means that these records are judged ready to be archived as they are created and do not need to be read, analyzed, and updated during the ILM crawling process. This greatly reduces the number of records to be crawled at the end of the retention period and shortens the window of time required for ILM crawling. This approach exists in Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management and Oracle Utilities Customer to Meter. For more information, refer to the user documentation of these applications.