1. Implementation Guide
  2. Implementation Tools
  3. File Transfer Services

File Transfer Services

File Transfer Services (FTS) for the Retail Analytics and Planning cloud services are being made available in this release, replacing SFTP in new environments. They will allow you to manage uploading and downloading files to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage, which is an internet-scale, high-performance storage platform that offers reliable and cost-efficient data durability.

Access to files is through a pre-authenticated request (PAR), which is a URL that requires no further authentication to upload or download files to the cloud. To retrieve a PAR, you must use the appropriate file transfer REST service. These new services will enable you to import files to and export files from Object Storage used by the solutions. The primary role of these services is to ensure that only valid external users can call the service by enforcing authorization policies. Where supported, the files can be compressed (zipped) before upload.

The general flow of activities involving FTS and an external integrating system are as follows for transferring files into our cloud service:

  1. The third-party solution calls the service, requesting pre-authentication to upload files from Object Storage, including the incoming prefix and file name. On receiving the PAR, the file is uploaded using the URL included within the response. A PAR has a validity of 10 minutes; an upload can take longer than 10 minutes but after it is returned it must be started within that period.

  2. The cloud service batch processing will retrieve the files from Object Storage, after they have passed an anti-virus and malware scan.

  3. The batch processing will delete the file from Object Storage to ensure it is not re-processed in the next batch run. The batch processing uncompresses the file and processes the data.

Object Storage Process Flow

To interact with FTS you must use the REST APIs provided. The table below lists the API end points for different file operations.

Operation Method FTS API Endpoint

Ping

GET

{baseUrl}/services/private/FTSWrapper/ping

List Prefixes

GET

{baseUrl}/services/private/FTSWrapper/listprefixes

List Files

GET

{baseUrl}/services/private/FTSWrapper/listfiles

Move Files

POST

{baseUrl}/services/private/FTSWrapper/movefiles

Delete Files

DELETE

{baseUrl}/services/private/FTSWrapper/delete

Request Upload PAR

POST

{baseUrl}/services/private/FTSWrapper/upload

Request Download PAR

POST

{baseUrl}/services/private/FTSWrapper/download

The {baseUrl} is the URL for your RAP service that is supplied to you when your service is provisioned, and can be located from Retail Home as it is also the platform service URL. Refer to the Required Parameters section for additional parameters you will need to make FTS requests.