Oracle Retail Data Extractor

for Merchandising

Oracle Retail Data Extractor for

Merchandising 15.x
July 2016
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Contents
Solution Overview .................................................................................................................... 1
Business Problem .............................................................................................................................. 1
Technical Architecture ..................................................................................................................... 2
RDE Application Components ..................................................................................................... 2

Processing Steps and Data Flow............................................................................................ 5

Processing Schedules ............................................................................................................. 7
Appendix A: Glossary.............................................................................................................. 8
Solution Overview

Business Problem
Frequently Retailers need to integrate data from a variety of on-premise transactional
systems such as Retail Merchandising System (RMS,) Retail Sales Audit (ReSA,) Merchandise
Financial Planning (MFP) with Retail Insights Cloud Services (RI) to enable analysis and
reporting.
The Oracle Retail Data Extractor for Merchandising (RDE) application provides the
capabilities to extract, transform and format data from these applications for uploading into a
cloud environment for loading into Oracle Retail Insights Cloud Services.
In addition, the RDE application can also be used for extracting data to be loaded into an on-
premise deployment of Oracle Retail Insights as well. The only difference in an on-premise
scenario is the file movement is achieved without the need of SFTP file transfer; a simple
copy or move of the files is all that is needed in an on-premise RI deployment.

Oracle Retail Data Extractor for Merchandising 15.x 1

Technical Architecture

High Level Architecture and Data Flow

The diagram above shows on the left how RDE extracts data from the RMS database into RI
staging tables and then into flat files that are compressed together into a single file that is
uploaded using SFTP to a cloud environment where the data is loaded back into matching
staging and then loaded into the presentation tables of the RI application. In some case
additional data from other applications may be inserted into the RDE staging tables directly
for extraction and uploading as well, an example of this would be store traffic data.

RDE Application Components

Database objects such as synonyms and views for accessing RMS data.
Data staging tables designed to hold dimensional data or fact (transactional) data.
Oracle Data Integrator mappings for extracting data from RMS and storing the extracted
data in staging tables, and then from staging tables to flat files.

2 Oracle Retail Data Extractor for Merchandising

Dimension table examples:
W_EMPLOYEE_DS personal information about employees belonging to this
organization as well as its extended organization.
W_PRODUCT_DS information about the products of various product types including
finished goods, raw materials and other types of products from the CRM, ERP and other
source systems.

Fact table examples:

W_RTL_INVADJ_IT_LC_DY_FS inventory adjustment transaction amounts item/
location/ day.
W_RTL_SLS_TRX_IT_LC_DY_FS sales fact data at the
item/location/day/transaction/voucher/customer/promotion/customer order level.
The flat files that are created to transmit the data contained in the staging tables are UTF-8
format with pipe characters | as field separators, enclosing characters for strings can
optionally be defined for use (example double quote .)

Flat file examples:

W_EMPLOYEE_DS.dat:

||||Allen_Sample1|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||ASAMPLE||||||||||||||||||||N||||||||N||||1|ASAMPLE|||||||||||||||||-1|-
1||||||
||||Beverly_Sample2|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||BSAMPLE||||||||||||||||||||N||||||||N||||1|BSAMPLE|||||||||||||||||-
1|-1||||||

W_PRODUCT_DS.dat:
SMALL
ITEMS||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||EA|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||2016-12-
19;00:00:00||||||||1|123456789012||||||||6~92~94~102~102|||||||||||||||||||||N||||
|6~92~94~102~102||||||123456789012
BIG
ITEMS||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||EA|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||2016-12-
19;00:00:00||||||||1|987654321098||||||||18~18~24~686~9801|||||||||||||||||||||N||
|||18~18~24~686~9801||||||987654321098

W_RTL_INVADJ_IT_LC_DY_FS.dat
1234|123456789|2016-12-19;00:00:00|RTL_INVADJ_REASON|9|-1|-56.7|-9.09|2016-12-
19;00:00:00|||||-1|2016-12-19;17:19:45|-1|2016-12-
19;17:19:45|1||USD|1||||123456789~123~12-JUL-7~RTL_INVADJ_REASON~1|USD|||
1235|987654321|2016-12-19;00:00:00|RTL_INVADJ_REASON|9|-1|-589.66|-89.98|2016-12-
19;00:00:00|||||-1|2016-12-19;17:19:45|-1|2016-12-
19;17:19:45|1||USD|1||||987654321~129~19-JUL-19~RTL_INVADJ_REASON~1|USD|||

Oracle Retail Data Extractor for Merchandising 15.x 3

 W_RTL_SLS_TRX_IT_LC_DY_FS.dat
0123456789|123456789|111|-1|-1|2016-12-19;00:00:00|-1|R|1234|-
1|1|12.99|8.99|0|0|0|0|0|1|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0||0|0|0|0|2016-12-19;00:00:00|||||-
1|2016-12-19;11:50:13|-1|2016-12-19;11:50:13|1||USD|2||||0123456789~123456789~-
1~19-DEC-16|USD||||-1|-1|-1|0|0|8|1|0|0|-1
9876543210|987654321|29|-1|-1|2015-04-09;00:00:00|-1|R|1479|-
1|1|8.99|5.88|0|0|0|0|0|1|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0||0|0|0|0|2015-04-09;00:00:00|||||-
1|2016-12-19;11:50:13|-1|2016-02-17;11:50:13|1||USD|2||||9876543210~987654321~-
1~19-DEC-16|USD||||-1|-1|-1|0|0|1|1|0|0|-1

4 Oracle Retail Data Extractor for Merchandising

Processing Steps and Data Flow

High-Level Processing Steps

1. Optionally data from other sources (example: Store traffic data) can be loaded into the
RDE staging tables.
2. The regular batch processing controlled by the retailers on-premise batch process
scheduling tool executes the integration mappings that are needed to extract the data
from the source application systems, and then initiates the batch process steps to extract
the staged data from tables to flat files (this can include the data staged from other
sources.)
3. The prepared flat files (usually between 50 and 150) are then compressed into a zip file
and uploaded to the designated cloud SFTP directory for that cloud customer.
4. For other cloud based applications that are not in the same cloud environment, zip files
can be prepared in the designated format and uploaded to the same designated cloud
SFTP directory for that cloud customer. When all of the data is submitted, an empty file
named COMPLETE is then created in a subdirectory named COMMAND in the
designated cloud SFTP directory for that cloud customer. The presence of this file
indicates that all the data has been submitted and the batch processing in the cloud can
begin.
5. When the COMPLETE file appears in the COMMAND subdirectory batch
processing is initiated which includes scanning the submitted zip files, moving the files

Oracle Retail Data Extractor for Merchandising 15.x 5

 into the cloud file system, archiving a copy of the submitted zip files and decompressing
the files.
6. Decompressed files are then loaded into the staging tables in the cloud environment.
7. Staged information is then further transformed and loaded into the presentation tables of
the RI application.

6 Oracle Retail Data Extractor for Merchandising

Processing Schedules
The processing frequency and schedule vary from implementation to implementation.
Typically processing occurs on a nightly basis, with special processing occurring on a
quarterly basis to perform data maintenance on new partitions for positional fact tables such
as inventory balance, retail price, base cost, etc.

Oracle Retail Data Extractor for Merchandising 15.x 7

Appendix A: Glossary
Term Definition

RDE Retail Data Extractor for Merchandising

RI Retail Insights (Cloud Services)

RMS Retail Merchandise System

ReSA Retail System Audit

MFP Merchandise Financial Planning

Relate Customer Engagement Cloud Services (MICROS Relate)

8 Oracle Retail Data Extractor for Merchandising

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