POS - Outbound: Data Distribution Process (SAP Library

POS - Outbound: Data Distribution Process

Purpose

This process describes a regular data distribution procedure. Normally, the system distributes data at regular intervals, for example, every night, in the background.

Prerequisites

Initialization must have been carried out successfully for the stores concerned, and the programs for change messages must be planned for periodic execution in the background.

Process Flow

In the course of a working day, you make changes to master data as and when needed (new articles are added, prices are changed, and so on).

Every time a master data record is changed, the SAP system creates a change pointer (that is, a reference to the data record is created).

The SAP system reads and analyzes the change pointers, is able to identify the master data records concerned and prepares them in IDoc format. This is the main task of the report for distributing POS data.

So that you can judge whether condition changes, for example, are relevant to a store, a few additional activities are carried out:

The beginning or end of the validity period for an individual condition must be within the period under review or the amount in an existing condition must have changed.
Since conditions valid for a generic article can apply to variants, the associated variants are also determined when changes are made to a generic article.
Prices can exist at different organizational levels. If a condition changes, the system determines the stores that are affected. If condition records that occur earlier in the access sequence exist for these stores, the system ignores these stores, as the condition does not apply to them.
When IDocs are prepared, the system checks whether the article was listed in the store at an earlier period or whether it is currently on sale there.
If the period during which the article is on sale expires, that is the article is no longer to be sold, the SAP system sends a deletion request to the stores.

The data for the individual objects in an IDoc is always given in full. If a relevant attribute for an article changes, a completely new record is prepared for this article for the IDoc.

IDoc data is passed on to the IDoc interface which creates the IDoc files in the file system. Both the SAP system and the POS converter must be able to access the directory in which the files are located.

IDoc files are store-specific. If a change is made to article A, and the article is carried in stores 1 and 2 but not in store 3, two IDocs are prepared for article A: one for store 1 and one for store 2. Store 3 does not receive an IDoc for article A, as the article is not relevant to that store.

Once all the relevant IDoc files have been created for a store, the SAP system automatically creates a trigger file. This file signals that all the files for the store are ready for transmission. In the SAP system, IDoc files are then created for the next store.
The POS converter searches for trigger files in the directory that is defined in the port descriptions for the status files. If it finds a trigger file for a specific store, it converts all the IDoc files for that store into files that can be read by the POS system in the store.
At a time specified by the user in the POS converter, the POS converter creates a communication link to the POS server in the store, and transfers the newly formatted files to this server.
The data is transferred from the store’s POS system to a separate database. The POS systems and other store systems then have access to the current data.

The transfer status is regularly reported back to the SAP system right up until the last step has been carried out. Then the POS server takes over control of the data.

Results

You can display status information and any errors that occur during IDoc creation or conversion in the POS interface monitor.

See also:

POS Converter

POS Interface Monitor

Automatic Updating of Documents Following Condition Changes