Collecting data can take a significant amount of time compared to the time for the overall planning cycle. Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning (ASCP) provides a collection method that allows the collections duration to be reduced in cases where information about some - but not all - planning-related business entities on the planning server needs to be updated.

There are three collection methods:
■ The Complete Refresh method clears all transaction data for all business entities from the planning server (for the source instance being collected), then copies over information about the user-selected entities. This method can be time consuming.
■ The Targeted Refresh method clears transaction data for only the user-selected business entities from the planning server, and then copies the entity information over from the transaction instance. Information about nonselected entities remains intact on the planning server. All planning business entities are supported by Targeted Refresh collections.
■ The Net Change Refresh method copies only incremental changes to business entities to the planning server (and is thus faster), but is supported mainly for demand and supply business entities only.

When To Use Each Collection Method
You should use Complete Refresh the first time you perform collections from a source instance to the planning server. You may also wish to use complete refresh collections after a significant proportion of the setup data in your transaction system has been altered, and you would like to make a fresh copy of all source instance business entities (items, bills of material, sourcing rules, resources, and so on) on the planning server. You typically collect all business entities in a Complete Refresh Collection.

You should use Net Change Refresh if you would like to update the supply and demand picture on the planning server as quickly as possible, and the incremental changes to supply and demand in the source instance since the last collection have not been extensive relative to the existing (already collected) body of supply and demand information. In this case, Net Change Refresh is the fastest way to achieve the desired update of the planning server operational data store, because it copies over from the source instance only the incremental changes in supply and demand since the last collection.

You should use Targeted Refresh if you would like to update the planning server information for some (but not all) business entities, and some of these entities fall outside the category of supply and demand entities supported by Net Change Refresh. For example, to update the planning server with a newly rebuilt manufacturing calendar, you would run Targeted Refresh collections for just the
calendar business entity. Data on the planning server about all other business entities would remain unaffected by this collection.

You would also use Targeted Refresh (in lieu of Net Change Refresh) to bring over the latest picture of supply and demand to the planning server in cases when the incremental changes to supply and demand on the source instance since the last collection are very extensive. In this case, the update mechanism employed by Targeted Refresh collections (wholesale deletion followed by rebuilding of data on the planning server) is faster than the mechanism employed by Net Change Refresh collections (incremental insertions into existing data on the planning server).

If you want the mode of data collection to be determined by the system, select Continuous Collections.