Administer > Manage WebSphere Commerce features > Promotions > Configure the promotion engine
Performance considerations for the best deal feature
The best deal feature provides a way to ensure the customers get the best deal possible when their order qualifies for multiple promotions in the same promotion group with the same priority. There is, however, a performance cost for the feature because the promotion engine must evaluate a potentially large number of sequence combinations to determine the best deal.
To manage performance impacts, you can raise or lower the default upper limit for the number of sequence evaluations per order.
Determine an appropriate sequence combination limit for the store
By default, the best deal feature is configured to allow 50 sequence combinations per order. When this limit is reached, the promotion engine stops evaluating additional sequence combinations and selects the best deal from among the sequence combinations that have been evaluated. If the limit is set too low for the store, then certain orders might not get the best possible deal. If the limit is set too high, then the store might experience performance problems. Estimate how many sequence combinations the promotion engine might need to evaluate to apply the best deal feature to a customer’s order on the storefront. You can then set an appropriate sequence combination limit based on the estimate to minimize performance impacts of the feature.
Use the following worksheet to gather the relevant data from the Promotions Manager for the store. Then plug the data into the following formula to estimate the potential number of sequence combinations for the store.
Worksheet to gather best deal promotion data from Promotions Manager
Question for Promotions Manager Answer How many promotion sets will the store typically have active on the storefront at the same time? Definition of a promotion set: two or more promotions within the same promotion group that have been assigned the same priority.
Number of sets: _____
For each set, how many promotions will be in the set? Set 1: _____ (S1)
Set 2: _____ (S2)
Set 3: _____ (S3)
Set 4: _____ (S4)
Set 5: _____ (S5)
…
Set n: _____ (Sn)
To estimate the potential number of sequence combinations for the store, plug the data from the worksheet into the following formula:
(S1)! x (S2)! x (S3)! x (S4)! x (S5)! x … (Sn)! = possible sequence combinations
Example
Consider a store that has two promotion sets:
- Set 1: Two order-level promotions with a priority of 100
- Set 2: Four catalog-entry-level promotions with a priority of 100
The completed worksheet looks like this:
Question for Promotions Manager Answer How many promotion sets will the store typically have active on the storefront at the same time? Definition of a promotion set: two or more promotions within the same promotion group that have been assigned the same priority.
Number of sets: 2
For each set, how many promotions will be in the set? Set 1: 2
Set 2: 4
Use the formula, the estimated potential number of sequence combinations for the store is:
2! x 4! = 2 x 24 = 48 possible sequence combinations
For this example, an appropriate sequence combination limit might be 48.
Related concepts
Best deal support for promotions
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