Is it possible to use Timestamp as an numeric pointer is well?

[sri_pamarthi]

Hi Team,

I've one of the flow which was designed earlier, when i was not in the part of team, Now for some reason, the data is not matching in reports as required by users. for that reason i started analyzing the flow and  i got know that time stamp is used numeric pointer delta mechanism during the development of Generic data source.

So, I've one doubt how would be the safety lower limit works, when we provided numeric pointer delta mechanism based on Timestamp Field.

For reference screen shots are attached below

[sander_vanwilligen · Accepted solution]

Hi,

A Time Stamp field in combination with Numeric Pointer seems to me an illogical design choice. I also wonder how it works with the Safety Interval Lower Limit.

The Safety Interval Limits' unit of measurement depends on the type of delta relevant field:

• Date field: number of days;
• Time Stamp: number of seconds;
• Numeric Pointer: number of records.

I advice you to change the type of delta relevant field to Time Stamp (Local or UTC).

Best regards,

Sander

[sri_pamarthi · Accepted solution]

Hi Willigen,

Thanks a lot for your reply, which helps in current analysis.

Is there any chance can we take the 'Timestamp' Field in related to the user posting time based on the delta mechanism of Numeric pointer ?

[sander_vanwilligen · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I don't have a clue, you probably have to debug to get an idea how it is handled by the extractor.

Anyway, please change the type of delta relevant field to Time Stamp (Local or UTC) as advised earlier. Afterwards, do a new delta initialization. This is the best approach in my opinion.

Best regards,

Sander

[sri_pamarthi · Accepted solution]

Hi Willigen,

I guess, in the above scenario, time stamp delta mechanism may suits after discussing with the users & according to their postings.

The time stamp field which is using in the delta mechanism is the user posting time along with the date.

So, in this kind of scenarios if I use Time stamp delta mechanism, what is the best way to choose safety interval & may I know how exactly timestamp delta mechanism works.. in this kind of scenarios.

Please assist me on this issue.

Thanks & Regards.

P Sriram.

[sander_vanwilligen · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I suggest to refer to a Business Content example: 0FI_GL_10. Here you can observe the following:

In this example only the lower limit is used. It means that the lower time stamp of the extraction will be based on the highest time stamp of the previous extraction minus the safety margin (i.e. 3,600 sec. = 60 mins).

Please try it out in your case. Feel free to increase the safety margin if you experience problems with missing documents (but I expect that 60 mins will do under normal circumstances).

Be aware that the DSO has to be designed for overwriting documents since some of them will be extracted and loaded twice. Also the transformation of key figures has to be set to overwrite.

Best regards,

Sander

[KulDeepJain]

Hi Pamarthi,

You can choose timestamp field as numeric delta pointer while creation of Datasource. It will not throw error, but It will give error when using lower safety intervals in some cases.

Let's make some scenario to understand this:

Current time stamp is '20150921075855' (assumption)

1. If lower safety interval is 100 secs
   • So delta pointer will set on '20150921075855' - 100 = '20150921075755' @ RSA7, Next delta will work fine.
2. If lower safety interval is 60 secs
   • So delta pointer will set on '20150921075855' - 60 = '20150921075795' @ RSA7, it will throw error because it is wrong timestamp value and can not be set as delta pointer

So choosing timestamp field as numeric pointer based delta along with safety interval will not be correct choice.

Thanks,

KD Jain