Batch Process and Scheduling

Batch services are lists of commands or jobs executed without human intervention. A batch window is the time frame in which the batch process must run. It is the upper limit on how long the batch can take. Batch services are used for importing and exporting data and for generating targets. The retailer must decide the best time for running the batch process within the available batch window.

How often to upload updated sales and inventory data and how often to re-create targets must be determined:

• The retailer must consider at what interval to load the latest sales and inventory data. Though the source transaction system is likely to change daily, the retailer must consider how frequently to load the actualized sales and inventory data. A weekly load of transactional type data is supported, since the base intersection is at week. It is recommended that some information from a transactional system, such as RMFCS, be loaded daily. For example, On-Order that can change on a daily basis.

• Product availability and seasonal changes can be reasons for recalculating the targets. This can also be triggered by the addition of new products and availability of substantial new sales and inventory history.

The recommended batch schedule for MFP Cloud Service is to load historical and actual data on a weekly basis. All hierarchy changes can be loaded on a weekly basis.

In MFP Cloud Service, batch tasks can be controlled by a system administrator by using the Online Administration Tools. The tools are a predefined set of online administration tasks that are pre-configured for MFP Cloud Service. Those tasks, in turn, call the required batch services with preset parameters to perform the required tasks. The jobs scheduled in the OAT tools can be monitored using the Online Administration Status Dashboard for status of each of the steps the batch is doing. For more information on the Online Administration Tool tasks, see the Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning Cloud Service Administration Guide.

In MFP Cloud Service, the entire batch process is controlled using a set of batch control files and the RPAS batch framework. A predefined set of batch services reads those control files during the batch process. Though users cannot make any changes to underlying batch services/scripts, they can make some changes to batch control files to support their batch schedule.

For more details about the list of batch control files, the batch process using them, and details about updating them, see the batch framework in the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition Implementation Guide.

The customer can use JOS/POM if RAP integration is used and if implemented to schedule pre-configured daily and weekly batch tasks in MFP. Those tasks scheduled using JOS/POM in turn call the same Configured batch tasks under the Online Administration Tool tasks. For more details about scheduling of tasks using JOS/POM, see the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Service Administration Guide. For more details about the MFP schedule in JOS/POM, see the Appendix: MFPCS Scheduling in JOS/POM.