Content Customization Best Practices

This section provides the best practices for content customization.

Preparation

  1. Take a snapshot of the Dev/QA environment before customization (the system doesn't support uninstalling content packs. If the customization fails, you can restore the back up and redeploy the latest content pack.)
  2. Before each migration, make sure the Dev/QA/Production environment are the same.
  3. If the customization content doesn't finalize, do not deploy it in the production environment.

Content Development

  1. Back up the IDE workspace before development. There will be some dirty data in the IDE during the deletion of an entity from IDE.
  2. Do not modify the OOTB content in the IDE or in the database. Instead, develop a new content pack to include all the customizations.
  3. Define the last modified column in the integration entity during development in the IDE. This column is used to compare the records in the source system with ITBA to identify which records need to be extracted in the different ETL processes.
  4. Define the MD_BUSINESS_KEY in uppercase (BODS is case-sensitive).
  5. To delete an entity from the IDE, follow the below steps:

    1. Delete the relationship arrow.
    2. Save the operation.
    3. Delete the entity.
  6. Recommended: If the MD_BUSINESS_KEY is combined with multiple fields, put the date type field at the end.
  7. Double-check that the field type and the length are correct before generating the content pack.
  8. If the target entity is defined as a Dimension, set the SCD Type:

    1. SCD1 means that the field does not keep the historical data, it only stores the latest value.
    2. SCD2 means every change of this field creates a new record in ITBA.

CAP Development

  1. CAPs should not be used to store customer data. A CAP helps you migrate the KPIs, Pages, and/or Contexts.
  2. If you meet any issue while creating a CAP, check the CAP.log and xs2go.log in the ITBA log Portal using the following URL: linkhttp://{ITBAinstance}:10002/LogPortal.
  3. The table and view used by the CAP are generated by the deployment of cp-core. If you get an error message that there is no relevant table or column, check whether the cp-core has this entity or column.
  4. If you develop a CAP with different iterations, it should aggregate. This means that the last iteration of the CAP should include all the feature of previous ones.
  5. During the migration of the CAP file, follow the below steps:

    1. De-activate the previous CAP in the target environment.
    2. Remove the previous CAP from the target environment.
    3. Import the latest CAP to the target environment.
    4. Activate the latest CAP in the target environment.

Runtime

  1. The ETL scheduler need to be rescheduled after each restart.
  2. If the ETL fails at step 3, check the detailed error message in the fbi.log in $HPBA_Home\agora\glassfish\glassfish\domains\BTOA\logs.
  3. If the ETL fails before step 3, check whether the BOE and BODS servers are up, and whether the end user connects to the correct server.
  4. If the ETL fails after step 3, access the BODS manager console to get the detailed error message.