Account Data Synchronization (Batch Processing Case Study)

The Challenge

• Duplicate (and often outdated) account information caused various customer complaints and support center calls. Account information was being maintained in two different sources (a mainframe system and a relational oracle database).
• With new account creations taking place via two separate mechanisms - a 'reconciliation' process was needed to synchronize all accounts and eliminate duplicates. At any given time, several thousand records could be problematic - and would need to be synchronized.

The Solution

• A process flowchart detailing the different accounts and their statuses was created. The flowchart outlined all possible paths and gotchas in reconciling the accounts.
• An efficient batch process was designed. This included efficient data structures for loading all existing accounts - and an algorithm for determining which accounts were in need of synchronization.
• Unit tests were written to test each piece of functionality - including loading of each set of data, determining the status of each account - and finally - synchronizing the accounts that needed to be reconciled.
• The end result was a smoothly functioning batch process that ran periodically - and efficiently synchronized all recent accounts that needed to be reconciled.
• Customer support calls reduced as a result of most account inconsistencies being fixed automatically.