Data Load best practices for Price

The following best practices are recommended when using the Data Load utility to load price data.

Price rules

Product-level pricing
WebSphere Commerce supports items or SKUs without price details if loaded using data load. When creating an item or SKU in Management Center, price details are mandatory. But if you load them using data load, then we can load an item or SKU without price details. The system will automatically pick the item's parent price if it's own price is not available. The pricing logic allows an item using its parent product price. The price rule engine will find the item-level price first, and if it does not find a price, it will then find its corresponding item parent price.

Price lists

Mark price lists for deletion
The markPriceListForDelete attribute is used to mark the price list for deletion when loading your price data. This attribute is set to true by default. To disable markPriceListForDelete, set the attribute to false as shown:

<_config:BusinessObjectMediator className="com.ibm.commerce.price.dataload.mediator.PriceListMediator">
	<_config:property name="markPriceListForDelete" value="false" />
</_config:BusinessObjectMediator>

Use the unique ID to load price lists
The price list can be loaded by specifying:

1. Price list unique ID: The price list is loaded according to the price list unique ID.

2. Price list name and price list unique ID: If both the price list name and price list unique ID are provided in the CSV file, the price list is loaded according to the price list unique ID.

3. Price list name: The price list is loaded according to the price list name.

Use the first option to load your price list data to achieve the best performance.

Offers

Mark offers for deletion
The markOfferForDelete attribute is used to mark offer for deletion when loading the offer data. This attribute is set to true by default. To disable markOfferForDelete, set the attribute to false as shown:

<_config:BusinessObjectMediator className="com.ibm.commerce.price.dataload.mediator.OfferMediator">
	<_config:property name="markOfferForDelete" value="false" />
</_config:BusinessObjectMediator>

Use price list and catalog entry name and unique ID to load offers
The offer list can be loaded by specifying:

• Price list name and catalog entry part number

• Price list name, price list unique ID, and catalog entry part number: If both the price list name and price list unique ID are provided in the input file, the Data Load utility loads according to the price list unique ID.

• Price list name, catalog entry unique ID, and catalog entry part number: If both the catalog entry part number and catalog entry unique ID are provided in the input file record, the Data Load utility loads according to the catalog entry unique ID.

• Price list name, price list unique ID, catalog entry part number, and catalog entry unique ID: The offer list is loaded according to price list unique ID and catalog entry unique ID.

Use the fourth option to achieve the best performance.

Note: If you do not specify the price list name or price list unique ID in the input file, the offer is loaded into the default price list of the catalog entry.

Use one Currency mode
Use one currency price per record in your input file to ease maintenance, and enhance performance when loading large offers in a single file.