RPM is a pricing and promotions execution system. Functionality includes the definition, maintenance, and review of price changes, clearances and promotions. Capabilities range from simple item price changes at a single location to complex promotions across zones.
RPM contains three primary pricing execution dialogs for creating and maintaining regular price changes, clearances, and promotions. Although each of the three pricing activities is unique, the system displays these dialogs using a common look and feel. Each of these dialogs uses the conflict checking engine which leverages the RPM future retail table.
The future retail table provides a forward-looking view of all pending approved pricing events affecting an item at a given location. RPM pricing events are defined against the zone structure. The zone structure represents groups of locations organized to support a retailers pricing strategy. RPM allows the user to break out of the zone structure and create location level events as needed.
RPM supports the definition and application of price guides to these pricing events. Price guides allow the retailer to smooth retails and provide ends in logic to derive a final consumer price. The system also supports area differential pricing strategies for regular retail price changes. This functionality allows a retailer to define pricing relationships that ease pricing maintenance across the organization.
Agenda:
Supported Environments
Exception Handling
Data Source Configuration in Container
Logging Levels
Simplified RPM
Internationalization
Translation
Supported Environments:
- RDBMS operating system
- RDBMS version
- Middle tier server operating system
- Middle tier
- Compiler
Exception Handling
The two primary types of exceptions within the RPM system are the following:
- System exceptions For example, server connection and/or database issues are system exceptions. System exceptions, such as when the server is lost, can bring the system to a halt.
- Business exceptions This exception indicates that a business rule has been violated. Most exceptions that arise in the system are business exceptions, a user tries to approve a price change that causes a negative retail.
Data Source Configuration in Container
Data source settings for the RPM application in AS10g are kept inside of the ear file deployment. The RPM application installer configures all necessary settings for the data source. To change the data source settings for the RPM application after it has been deployed, the following steps must be completed:
- Log into the Enterprise Manager Web interface.
- 2. Navigate to the OC4J instance running the RPM application.
- 3. Click the Administration tab.
- 4. Under Services, click JDBC Resources.
- 5. Under Connection Pools, click RPM Connection Pool.
- 6. Make necessary changes to the JDBC URL, username, and password,
- 7. Click Apply.
- 8. If the schema owner is changed, also make this change in the rpm.properties file in the deployment. Log into the UNIX server and change directories to
<ORACLEHOME>/j2ee/<rpm_oc4j_instance>/applications/<rpm_app_name>/c onf and modify the rpm.properties file with the new schema_owner value. This value must be in all capital letters. Save the file.
- Restart the OC4J instance running RPM.
Logging Levels
The level setting established in log4j.xml instructs the system to log that level of error and errors above that level. The logging levels are the following:
- Fatal
- Error
- Warning
- Info
- Debug
The level is established in the log4j.xml file.
For example:
<!– ======================= –>
<!– Setup the loggers –>
<!– ======================= –>
<logger name=”com.retek”>
<level value=”ERROR”/>
</logger>
Simplified RPM
For clients who want a less complex version of RPM and the lower costs of ownership associated with it, a simplified version of RPM is available.
The simplified version of RPM is limited only by the security settings in RSM (which isestablished at the time of installation).
Simplified RPM is configured through RSM seed scripts. Running the simplified versionof the RSM seed scripts populates the named_permission and named_permission_dsctables with only the tasks that are available for Simplified RPM. Only those tasks are then available within RSM when assigning task permissions to roles. The configuration of the security settings is determined by install scripts that are available with the RSM installation:
- RSM_RPM_SE_named_permission.SQL
This script defines the named permissions and actions associated with them for RSM.
This script should be run when simplified RPM is installed.
- RSM_RPM_named_permission.SQL
This script defines the named permissions and actions associated with them for RSM.
This script should be run in addition to the RSM_RPM_SE_named_permission.SQL script when a client is using enterprise RPM.
- RSM_RPM_SE_named_permission_dsc.SQL
This set of scripts defines the named permission descriptions and the language settings for the named permissions. These scripts should be run when simplified RPM is installed. There is one script for each supported language. They are named RSM_RPM_SE_named_permission_dsc_*.SQL, where * is the language code with an optional country code.
- RSM_RPM_named_permission_dsc.SQL
This set of scripts defines the named permission descriptions and the language settings for the named permissions. These scripts should be run in addition to the RSM_RPM_SE_named_permission_dsc.SQL scripts when enterprise RPM is installed. There is one script for each supported language. Each one is named RSM_RPM_named_permission_dsc_*.SQL, where * is the language code with an optional country code.
Internationalization
Internationalization is the process of preparing software for release into international markets by ensuring it can efficiently handle multiple languages. This section describes the configuration settings and features within RPM that ensure that the base application can handle multiple languages.
Translation
Translation is the process of interpreting and adapting text from one language into another. Although the code itself is not translated, components of the application that are translated may include the following:
- Graphical user interface (GUI)
- Error messages
The following components are not usually translated:
- Documentation (online help, release notes, installation guide, user guide, operations guide)
- Batch programs and messages
- Log files
- Configuration tools
- Reports
- Demonstration data
- Training materials
Supported Languages
RPM supports the following languages in all GA releases:
- Chinese (Traditional)—*_zh_TW.properties
- Chinese (Simplified)—*_zh.properties
- English—(this is the default language)
- French—*_fr.properties
- German—*_de.properties
- Italian—*_it.properties
- Japanese—*_ja.properties
- Korean—*_ko.properties
- Portuguese (Brazilian)—*_pt.properties
- Russian—*_ru.properties
- Spanish—*_es.properties