Oracle Configurator - Setting Up Real Item Substitution (Doc ID 2133616.1)

Last updated on JUNE 09, 2022

Applies to:

Goal

Starting with Configurator build 12.1.3.31.10 and 12.2.6, new Real Item Substitution (RIS) functionality has been added. This document covers the necessary setup to add this feature to a new or existing Bill of Materials (BOM). This new feature is intended to address a situation which is prone to high maintenance and resource usage that eventually leads to performance problems. This can occur when a customer has mutex Option Classes with thousands of options underneath where these options typically gets selected via Property Based Compatibility rules based on the associated user defined attributes and does not drive any selections. From a maintenance perspective, frequent changes to these option classes require frequent model refreshes and publications. From resource usage perspective, the same structure is duplicated in the CZ (Configurator) sub-schema on the database side, consuming more memory to cache this data for runtime sessions.

With this Enhancement Request, a single placeholder item needs to be created under such option classes, and with some additional minimal setup one can avoid requirement of refreshing the BOM (Bill of Materials) and republishing the model when there are changes to these option classes. Since this data is not part of current model structure during a runtime session, it does not get cached saving memory consumption which will help to improve system scalability.

This functionality is intended to assist with models that have the following features:

• Mutex Option Classes that have a high quantity of associated options.
• Options are typically selected through a Property Based Compatability rule defined in the Configurator model
• Each item has a large number of User Defined Attributes (UDA)
• These leaf items do not drive any other selection on the model
• Frequent changes occur to the Option Class at the bill of material level, leading to a need for frequent Configurator model refreshes and publications.
• The Options are repeated a number of time at different levels of the structure
• Caching of children and User Defined Attributes during runtime consumes a large amount of system resources for the Configurator session

Following is an example of a Bill of Material setup for a model which may benefit from RIS.

• BOM_Model
  • RIS_Eligible_OC (Mutex Option Class)
    • Item_1 (User Defined Attributes - FABRIC = 'Cotton', THREAD_COUNT = '100', FASHION = 'Embossed')
    • Item_2 (UDA - FABRIC = 'Silk',THREAD_COUNT = '800',FASHION= 'Batik')
    • Item_3 (UDA - FABRIC = 'Nylon',THREAD_COUNT = '500',FASHION= 'Printed')
    • [...]
    • 1,000s of options
  • FABRIC (Mutex Option Class)
    • Cotton (UDA - FABRIC = 'Cotton')
    • Silk (UDA - FABRIC = 'Silk')
    • Nylon (UDA - FABRIC = 'Nylon')
    • [...]
    • Fabric X (UDA - 'FABRIC' =...)
  • THREAD_COUNT(Mutex Option Class)
    • 100 (UDA - THREAD_COUNT= '100')
    • 800 (UDA - THREAD_COUNT = '800')
    • [...]
    • Count X (UDA - THREAD_COUNT= ...)
  • FASHION (Mutex Option Class)
    • Embossed (UDA - FASHION = 'Embossed')
    • Batik (UDA - FASHION = 'Batik')
    • Printed (UDA - FASHION = 'Printed')
    • [...]
    • Fashion X (UDA - FASHION = ...)

In this example, the choice of the FABRIC, FASHION, and THREAD_COUNT could be set up so these options would trigger rules to select the correct RIS_Eligible_OC.

Solution

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