Data Director’s main functionality is to move data between two or more databases as efficiently as possible. It accomplishes this by aggregating data into as few packages as possible, thus minimizing the amount of data transmitted over the network. These packages are processed in a multicast like way enabling Data Director to handle a very high count of end points.
Data Director (DD) is run as a service and listens for incoming requests or packages. The client component (like the TransAutomClient) is used from LS Retail in order to interact with Data Director Service and tell it what to do. There are two types of interactions: request to read data from the database, and request to write data to the database. DD also has an IIS Web Service application that is used with LS Central 16 and later as it does not support DLL. The requests are then sent via Web Service that then generates standard DD Job Data request for the DD Service.
If the DD receives a read instruction, it will start by connecting to the source database. It then proceeds to read data from the database and stores it in a package. The package can contain data from more than one database table.
Once the requested data has been read, the DD has two possibilities: the first is to write the data in the package directly into another database or to forward the package to one or more DDs. Once the package has been received by the receiving DD, it can proceed to write the contents of the package into one or more destination databases, all according to instructions contained in the package. This provides an easy and convenient way to transfer data between different databases, since the DD converts the data along the way, making sure the destination database understands it.
The feature of being able to forward one package to more than one DD is very useful in the retail environment, since you often have to distribute price changes or updates to some product items to all or some of your stores. This is done automatically by the DD once it has been configured, enabling the user to focus on running the stores.
The DD and client components do not need to be installed on the same computer. The client component can connect to a DD running on other host computers. This makes it easy to create a network of Data Directors that can be controlled from one central location.
DD uses TCP ports for communication. Default ports are (these can be changed in Configuration Tool):
| 16850/16860 | Ports used for communication between DD Hosts. These ports need to be open in Firewall for DD to be able to accept incoming requests. Job Monitor also uses those ports to get Monitoring data. |
| 16800-16811 | Ports used by internal DD processes, they only need to be open in Firewall if you intend to use Configuration Tool to connect to live debugging stream from the processes. |
| 80/443 | Used by DD Web Service process. This can be changed in IIS Manager. |