Entity Attribute Data Order and File Format
Entity attribute data is processed in a particular order and file format.
Data Order
The Oracle Utilities Opower platform processes files according to the order received and dated. The last record received for a row of identical date and time will be considered a replacement and only the final updates will be retained in the system. Therefore, if multiple files are received on the SFTP server in the same timeframe (as would be done for historical data files), then the files must be named so that the file with the oldest data has the oldest date/timestamp, allowing the system to process them in the appropriate order. See Entity Attribute File Name Conventions for more information.
File Format
The following file format conventions apply to all files generated for transfer:
- All data files must be sent as tab-delimited text in .tsv or .txt format. The same number of tabs must exist in each row.
- Files must use UTF-8 encoding so that both Latin and non-Latin characters can be supported. Note: The only fields that do not yet support non-Latin characters are
premise_idandemail. Contact your Delivery Team if you need to send non-Latin characters for these fields, so that a workaround can be provided. - Rows can use "line feed" and "carriage return / line feed" as valid end-of-line separators.
- It is strongly recommended that files be compressed for transfer. Zip and gzip compression are supported, but gzip is strongly preferred. Files can be sent uncompressed, but compressing the files will greatly decrease the transfer time. Zip files must contain only one file each. There should be no directories in the zip file.