Colonies

A colony is a set of database shards required to provide the complete flexible order management deployment functionality offered by IBM® Sterling Order Management System Software and is determined by a configurable set of attributes.

Every colony consists of the following shards:

Configuration shard - Contains Configuration data and is shared across colonies.
Transaction shard - Contains Transaction data and is dedicated to a colony.
Master shard - Contains Master data and can be dedicated to a colony.
Metadata shard - Contains database lookup information that directs transactions to the correct colony. This shard is shared across colonies and across versions.
Statistics shard - Contains statistics for the application, such as statistics for APIs and agents, and is shared across shards and versions.

Note: Colonies cannot share Transaction and Master shard. Each colony must have its own Transaction and Master shard.

Each colony has a Colony ID, such as Colony_E1E2. This colony name can be up to 40 characters in length. A unique, two-character Colony Prefix further defines the colony. The recommendation is to use numbers from 10 – 99 (except 19 and 20). If you need to use additional characters, you can use uppercase letters. You can use characters between A0 and ZZ, where the first character must be an uppercase letter and the second character can be either an uppercase letter or a number. A DEFAULT Colony ID (Colony Prefix 20) is provided with every installation of Sterling Order Management System Software.

In a flexible deployment, colonies also form a discrete unit that must be upgraded independently. The enterprises and associated stores that belong to this colony must be migrated at the same time.

Enterprises in separate colonies can share inventory organizations, catalog organizations, and customer organizations.

Each of the above shards contains groups of tables that are used in Sterling Order Management System Software.