With Contributing Author: Suhasini Rayadurgam

Performing Item Import — How do you decide which option is the best for your requirements?

If you are using Product Hub or not, there are multiple ways to import items into Oracle E-business Suite.

For Inventory customers (not using Product Data Hub), Master Items form, Import Items Program (INCOIN), and EGO_ITEM_PUB      PL/SQL API are the available options.

For Product Data Hub customers, Users could create multiple items from the User interface.  If you plan to use the Interface tables, Import Catalog Items adds a lot more functionality to import items in bulk along with item related entities like Suppliers, Supplier sites, Associations, Item categories, User defined attributes etc. all in one run. Thirdly, Web ADI allows user defined import templates to import data from Excel. Users could use both Export / Import to create and update items and user-defined attributes across organizations. This is one of the most favorite options for users due to its simplicity and user. Fourthly, Import workbench provides advanced capabilities to perform comparison using match rules to decide when an item can be imported or not.  Lastly, Product workbench provides user with a native java interface for creating and updating items and Structures. 

With all these various options, comes the difficult decision to make — When to use which method? What are the pros and cons of each method?

 

Forms             

API                 

Excel / WebADI

Interface tables

Volume 

Few items

Best suited  for medium loads /integration with external systems  

Bulk upload, User defined formats / attributes

Bulk upload, Any/ all attributes, Multiple entities in one run.

Technical background   

Not required

Required, Initial wrapper design and Interface required.

Not required

Required, Minimal

Cleanup

Not required

Manual cleanup required

Manual cleanup required

Automatic cleanup on success.

However, for any bulk load methods, users may have to ensure some common maintenance measures so that the program performance is optimal. These tasks include gathering statistics at regular intervals on base tables, clearing and truncating interface tables regularly to avoid fragmentation. 

To understand more about the list of tables involved and get more information on maintenance steps, please review Doc Id 1208945.1 – Optimizing Item Import Performance in Oracle Product Hub/Inventory. 

For information on INCOIN / Import Items, you can review Doc Id 1457314.1 – How to use the Item Open Interface (INCOIN)

Here are a couple of other good notes on how to get started with using Import Catalog Items program in Product Hub

Doc Id 2128641.1 – How To Load Inventory Items And Attributes Using EGO_ITM_USR_ATTR_INTRFC Interface Table? [Video] &

Doc Id 1504980.1 – Importing Data into Oracle Product Hub