Region Interface

Usage of Region Interface
An Oracle White Paper

June 2005
Abstract............................................................................................. 3
Overview of Regions and Zones..................................................... 3
Setting Up ..................................................................................... 6
Order Processing.......................................................................... 6
Technical Details.............................................................................. 7
WSH_REGIONS_INTERFACE....................................................... 8
WSH_REGIONS_TL_INTERFACE................................................. 8
Region Interface with examples.................................................... 10
A) First Use of Region interface ................................................ 11
Example: 1 .............................................................................. 11
Example: 2 .............................................................................. 18
B) Second use of Region Interface............................................ 28
Caution: .......................................................................................... 29
Summary......................................................................................... 29
Usage of Region interface Page 2

ABSTRACT
Region Interface is a powerful interface, which can be used to import the
regions available to the Oracle Shipping Regions base tables. In this
document we will try to examine the overview of the Regions, the
technical information related to Region Interface and the Usage of Region
interface to import the Region related information to be made use by the
Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling Suite. The region Information
imported can be used to define the intransit times for movement of goods
to these regions.
OVERVIEW OF REGIONS AND ZONES
If you have the Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling Suite installed,
use regions and zones to group by geographical areas and save the effort
of setting up point-to-point transit times.
You can:
• Group geographical areas into regions and set transit times from
your warehouses to the regions. For example: Create a region for
San Francisco Bay U.S.A. and specify that it consist of the cities San
Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley.
• Set up a transit time of two days from your New York U.S.A.
warehouse to the San Francisco Bay U.S.A. region.
• Group regions into zones and set transit times from your
warehouses to the zones to encompass a larger geographic area.
The Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling Suite use this origin-
destination information to plan and schedule shipment departure dates,
arrival dates, and sourcing.
Region and zone terms are:

• Region: A geographical area, for example, a group of cities, states,
provinces, or a country. Region information is hierarchical (postal
codes belong to cities which belong to provinces which belong to

countries), standard (defined by political and geographical boards),
and is usually available through third-party vendors and standards
agencies.
• You can model regions at different levels of scale. A region can

consist of countries, provinces/states, cities, or postal codes.
• Sub-region: A child of a region. For example, the sub-regions of the

region Canada can be its provinces; the sub region of the region
London can be its postal codes.
• Zone: A collection of regions, for example, a western zone. Zone

information is unique to your business.
• Regional transit times: In-transit times specified between ship-from

locations and locations, zones, and regions based on shipping
methods. You can specify cost and load to track specifics of each
shipping method.
When the Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling Suite plans

shipments, it assumes that the transit time from your facility to all locations
within the zone is the same.
For example:
• You ship from Tokyo, Japan to customers in Manila, Philippines
and Taipei, Taiwan.
• You place Manila and Taipei in zone A.
• You specify the regional transit time between your Tokyo facility
and zone A as two days.
• Oracle Applications plans shipments from Tokyo to Manila for two
days and shipments from Tokyo to Taipei for two days also.
The advantages of planning shipments in terms of regions and zones are:

• You enter and maintain in-transit and sourcing rules information
between zones rather than between every ship-from/ship-to
address combination.
• With less in-transit information, Oracle Shipping Execution finds the

information that you need faster.
• The in-transit information automatically applies to new customers.

• For shipping quotes, you can more easily match your inter-zone
shipment requirements to service provider shipping lanes.

Setting Up
If you ship to multiple locations that are near to each other and you want
to plan shipments by regions and zones:
• Determine the regions and sub-regions that support your the Oracle
Advanced Planning and Scheduling Suite shipment planning, create
them, and map address locations to them.
• Determine the zones that support your the Oracle Advanced

Planning and Scheduling Suite shipment planning, create them, and
assign regions to them.
• Specify the in-transit times between zones (regional transit time)

and preferred ship method between zones.
• Use two concurrent processes to map and load bulk geographical

information. Use the forms for individual data entry and data
correction.
Order Processing
When calculating available-to-promise, the Oracle Advanced Planning and

Scheduling Suite uses regional transit times.
When scheduling shipments using zones and regions, the Oracle

Advanced Planning and Scheduling Suite:
• Consults the sales order line ship-from location, ship-to country,
ship-to postal code, ship method, and customer request date.
• Determines the ship-from and ship-to zones.
• Determines the regional transit time between the zones. If you

specify a shipping method, it determines that transit time. If you do
not specify a shipping method in the sales order line, it determines
the transit time of the default shipping method.
• Calculates the scheduled ship date from the available to promise

date and the regional transit time.
If you have specified an in-transit time and shipping method for the
specific ship-to location, the Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling
Suite uses that information instead of the regional information.

TECHNICAL DETAILS
The Regions related information would be stored in the following

Shipping related base tables
• WSH_REGIONS
• WSH_REGIONS_TL
The Table WSH_REGIONS will contain the different codes related

information like the City Code, country code etc along with other
information which describes the features of the Region.
The Language table WSH_REGIONS_TL will contain the language specific
information, which describes each of the displayed values like country
name, State name etc. This table should contain the details related to the
different source languages used in the system.
Apart from the above tables there are 2 more tables, which can be used to
interface the Regions information to the Regions Base Tables. They are
• WSH_REGIONS_INTERFACE
• WSH_REGIONS_TL_INTERFACE
Data Flow for the Region Interface would be as shown in the above
diagram.

The Table structure of the Regions related Interface Table will be as
mentioned below.
WSH_REGIONS_INTERFACE
Column Name Data Type Mandatory

REGION_ID NUMBER Yes
REGION_TYPE NUMBER No
PARENT_REGION_ID NUMBER No
COUNTRY_CODE VARCHAR2 (10) No
COUNTRY_REGION_CODE VARCHAR2 (10) No
STATE_CODE VARCHAR2 (10) No
CITY_CODE VARCHAR2 (10) No
PORT_FLAG VARCHAR2 (1) No
AIRPORT_FLAG VARCHAR2 (1) No
ROAD_TERMINAL_FLAG VARCHAR2 (1) No
RAIL_TERMINAL_FLAG VARCHAR2 (1) No
LONGITUDE NUMBER No
LATITUDE NUMBER No
TIMEZONE VARCHAR2 (3) No
ZONE_LEVEL NUMBER No
CREATED_BY NUMBER Yes
CREATION_DATE DATE Yes
LAST_UPDATED_BY NUMBER Yes
LAST_UPDATE_DATE DATE Yes
LAST_UPDATE_LOGIN NUMBER No
PROCESSED_FLAG VARCHAR2 (1) No
WSH_REGIONS_TL_INTERFACE
Column Name Data Type Mandatory

LANGUAGE VARCHAR2 (4) Yes
SOURCE_LANG VARCHAR2 (4) No
REGION_ID NUMBER Yes
CONTINENT VARCHAR2 (60) No
COUNTRY VARCHAR2 (60) No
COUNTRY_REGION VARCHAR2 (60) No
STATE VARCHAR2 (60) No
CITY VARCHAR2 (60) No
ZONE VARCHAR2 (60) No

POSTAL_CODE_FROM VARCHAR2 (30) No
POSTAL_CODE_TO VARCHAR2 (30) No
ALTERNATE_NAME VARCHAR2 (60) No
COUNTY VARCHAR2 (60) No
CREATED_BY NUMBER Yes
CREATION_DATE DATE Yes
LAST_UPDATED_BY NUMBER Yes
LAST_UPDATE_DATE DATE Yes
LAST_UPDATE_LOGIN NUMBER No

REGION INTERFACE WITH EXAMPLES
Region Interface is a concurrent program, which can be used to import the

Regions into Oracle Shipping related base tables.
Region Interface Concurrent Process

Use this process to load bulk geographical information from the regions
interface table to Oracle Shipping Execution. This enables you to filter the
data that you are loading so that you can repeat the process without
loading all of the geographical information each time. The filters are
country, country code, province/state, city, city code, and postal code.
Submission
Navigate to the Regions Interface form and, after verifying the correctness
of the data, click Load All Regions. If the process does not start, have your
system administrator add it to the All Shipping Interfaces request group.
Parameters
None
The Log file of the Regions Interface concurrent program will give the
following messages on successful completion.
Started the region upload process...

Summary: Total regions processed = 1
Summary: Number of new regions = 1
Summary: Number of regions with errors (not interfaced) = 0
Ended the region upload process.
In this Paper we will try to look at the usage of the “Region Interface”
concurrent program. The Region Interface is used to import the Regions in
to the Regions Base Tables i.e. WSH_REGIONS and WSH_REGIONS_TL.
Required information should be populated to the Regions Interface tables

and running the “Regions Interface” program will interface the data to the
base tables. The information can be made available to the interface tables
in 2 ways
1. Directly upload the data to the Regions Interface tables from any
available external source of Data
2. Run the concurrent program “Location to Region Mapping” Which
will try to list out all the Locations that cannot be mapped to
regions and populate the interface tables

We will try to emphasize on the first method and import the Regions into
the base Tables.
A) First Use of Region interface
The following examples will clearly demonstrate the structure of the

Regions in the Shipping Module.
We will consider 2 different examples

a) To update a new City region under the existing parent region.
b) To create a new City region starting from Scratch.
Example: 1
Consider and example where we want to import a region which is in

Irvine City
Irvine uses Zip Codes 92602-92604, 92606, 92614, 92618-92620, 92623,
92697, 92698, 92709 and 92610
Irvine is in the Sate of California, USA
So this calls for 4 different regions
Region 1 Country – US
Region 2 State - California with Region 1 as parent Record
Region 3 City – Irvine with Region 2 as parent Record.
Region 4 Zip Code - 92602-92604 with Region 3 as parent Record.

Query the Regions Form with Country as US and State as CA.

Analysis:
We already have the Region 2 defined in the system, which is the State of
California using the Region 1 (US as country which is also available) as the
parent Region.
Region Region Level Value Parent Status

type Region
Region-1 0 Country United States None Available
Region-2 1 State California Region-1 Available
Region-3 2 City Irvine Region-2 To be
created
Region-4 3 Postal 92602-92604 Region-3 To be
created
So we need to create Region 3 and Region 4 as mentioned above.
2 records needs to be inserted in the Interface Tables with appropriate

links.
Find out the Region id of Region – 2 i.e. California State in US. This information
will be available in WSH_REGIONS table
Region Type Meaning

0 stands for Country
1 Stands for State
2 Stands for City
3 stands for Postal code range.
Query to be used
SELECT region_id
FROM wsh_regions
WHERE country_code = 'US'
AND State_code ='CA'
AND region_type = 1
This region id will be the parent_region_id for Region 3. (Assume its value
is 408)
Inserting Data for Region-3

Insert record –1 in to WSH_REGIONS_INTERFACE to create Region-3
mentioned above.
Here the region type would be 2 and the parent region id would be 408
INSERT INTO wsh_regions_interface(

region_id,
region_type,
parent_region_id,
country_code,
state_code,
city_code,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES (500001,
2,
408,
'US',
'CA',
'IRVN',
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)
Insert record –1 in to WSH_REGIONS_TL_INTERFACE to create Region-3

mentioned above.
Here the region_id would be same as that of the record inserted in
WSH_REGIONS_INTERFACE.
INSERT INTO wsh_regions_tl_interface(

language,
source_lang,
region_id,
country,
state,
city,
postal_code_from,
postal_code_to,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES ('US',
'US',
500001,
'United States',
'California',
'Irvine',
'',
'',
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)


mentioned above.
Here the region type would be 3 and the parent region id would be
500001

region_id,
region_type,
parent_region_id,
country_code,
state_code,
city_code,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES (500002,
3,
500001,
'US',
'CA',
'IRVN',
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)

mentioned above.

language,
source_lang,
region_id,
country,
state,
city,
postal_code_from,
postal_code_to,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES('US',
'US',
500002,
'United States',
'California',
'Irvine',

'92602',
'92604',
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)
Go to the Regions Interface Screen and query for the records. The Screen
would display the records as shown in the below screenshot.
Now you can import the records in to the Regions Table by running
“Region Interface” concurrent program or by clicking the “Load All
Regions” button in the screen shown.
Submit “Region Interface” concurrent program. This can be done using the
following Navigation. ShippingÆ InterfacesÆRunÆ”Region Interface”
Go back to the Regions and Zones screen and Query for all those regions
with country as ‘US’ and State as ‘CA’
The 2 new regions created will be available in the query output.

Similarly all the pin codes in Irvine can be registered as Regions in a single
run of the Program.

Example: 2
We will consider the second example where Mumbai in India would be

added as a Region.
The postal Codes in Mumbai are in between 400001 and 400104
We will create to postal code regions in Mumbai one for the range of
400001 – 400004 and other for range of 400005 - 400010
We will query for the Country code as ‘IN’ in the Regions and Zones
Screen
Analysis:
As No record is available, we need to create the Region from the scratch
by creating the country, State and City.
Mumbai belongs to the State of Maharasthra in India
So Region-1 would be Country – India
Region –2 State Maharasthra
Region-3 City Mumbai
Region – 4 and 5 postal code ranges
Region Region Level Value Parent Status

type Region
Region-1 0 Country India None To be
created

Region-2 1 State Maharasthra Region-1 To be
created
Region-3 2 City Mumbai Region-2 To be
created
Region-4 3 Postal 400001 – Region-3 To be
400004 created
Region-5 3 Postal 400005 – Region-3 To be
400010 created

mentioned above.

region_id,
region_type,
parent_region_id,
country_code,
state_code,
city_code,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES (500003,
0,
-1,
'IN',
NULL,
NULL,
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)

mentioned above.

language,
source_lang,
region_id,
country,
state,
city,
postal_code_from,
postal_code_to,

created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES('US',
'US',
500003,
'India',
NULL,
NULL,
'',
'',
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)

mentioned above.
Here the parent region id would be from Region-1

region_id,
region_type,
parent_region_id,
country_code,
state_code,
city_code,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES (500004,
1,
500003,
'IN',
'MH',
NULL,
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)

mentioned above.

language,
source_lang,

region_id,
country,
state,
city,
postal_code_from,
postal_code_to,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES('US',
'US',
500004,
'India',
'Maharashtra',
NULL,
NULL,
NULL,
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)

mentioned above.

region_id,
region_type,
parent_region_id,
country_code,
state_code,
city_code,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES (500005,
2,
500004,
'IN',
'MH',
'MUM',
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)

mentioned above.


language,
source_lang,
region_id,
country,
state,
city,
postal_code_from,
postal_code_to,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES('US',
'US',
500005,
'India',
'Maharashtra',
'Mumbai',
NULL,
NULL,
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)

mentioned above.

region_id,
region_type,
parent_region_id,
country_code,
state_code,
city_code,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES (500006,
3,
500005,
'IN',
'MH',
'MUM',
-1,
sysdate,
-1,

sysdate)

mentioned above.

language,
source_lang,
region_id,
country,
state,
city,
postal_code_from,
postal_code_to,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES('US',
'US',
500006,
'India',
'Maharashtra',
'Mumbai',
'400001',
'400004',
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)

mentioned above.

region_id,
region_type,
parent_region_id,
country_code,
state_code,
city_code,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES (500007,
3,
500005,

'IN',
'MH',
'MUM',
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)

mentioned above.

language,
source_lang,
region_id,
country,
state,
city,
postal_code_from,
postal_code_to,
created_by,
creation_date,
last_updated_by,
last_update_date)
VALUES('US',
'US',
500007,
'India',
'Maharashtra',
'Mumbai',
'400005',
'400010',
-1,
sysdate,
-1,
sysdate)
Query for the data in regions interface:

Click on the “Load All Regions” Button in the “Regions Interface” screen.
Confirm the submission of these records to the Region Interface by
responding to the message box.
This will import the records from the Interface table to the Region Base tables.
The imported records can be verified by checking the Regions and Zones Screen
with the query criteria that matches the records that are interfaced. The
screenshot of the imported regions is attached below.

We have an option to check the Sub-Regions under a given region in the
Regions and zones Form. Clicking on the Sub Regions Button will display
all the child regions having the current region as the Parent Region. This is
applicable for the Regions with all Region Types and only the immediate
child records will be displayed.

B) Second use of Region Interface
You can also use the “Location to Region Mapping” concurrent program
and provide the number of locations to be mapped along with the ‘Insert’
option as ‘Y’
The log file will show a similar message after inserting the data in the
interface tables.
Location to Region Mapping

Processing locations. Following locations could not be mapped to existing
regions.
These have been inserted in the regions interface tables
Total number of interfaced regions 5
---------------------------------------------------------------
Country State City Postal Code
------- ----- ---- ------ ----
Afghanistan Peshewar Kabul 467787
Italy WA Seattle 45023
Italy Rome 45000
Italy Venice 45201
United States Not set. Not set. Not set.
This will insert records in to the Regions Interface tables. Those records,
which are already available and are not required, should be deleted from
this screen after validations.
Any modifications if required should be done from this screen.

The Regions can be interfaced to the Regions table by using the “Region
Interface” concurrent program or the “Load All Regions” option as already
explained above.
CAUTION:
The First time usage of "Regions Interface" will take much time
(irrespective of the number of records in the interface table). Users need
not have to worry about the time taken for the first run. From subsequent
runs of the interface the time taken will be optimum.
SUMMARY
Region Interface turns out to be a powerful tool for the usage of Transportation
and Advanced Planning and Scheduling Suite. With the Region Interface we will
be in a position to import Regions in to the system. The different customer
location can be mapped to these Regions, which can be used in determining the
transporting time to these regions. The "Location to Region Mapping" should
provide a provision to map specific customer address so that required Regions
can be imported and mapped selectively. This is a required feature for selective
creation of Regions.

White Paper Title : Usage of Region Interface
June, 2005
Author: Chandan Samuel
Contributing Authors: None
Oracle Corporation
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Worldwide Inquiries:
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Fax: +1.650.506.7200
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Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation. Various

product and service names referenced herein may be trademarks
of Oracle Corporation. All other product and service names
mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Copyright © 2001 Oracle Corporation

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Usage of Region Interface

An Oracle White Paper

Usage of Region interface Page 2

OVERVIEW OF REGIONS AND ZONES

Region and zone terms are:

Usage of Region interface Page 3

• You can model regions at different levels of scale. A region can

• Sub-region: A child of a region. For example, the sub-regions of the

• Zone: A collection of regions, for example, a western zone. Zone

• Regional transit times: In-transit times specified between ship-from

When the Oracle Advanced Planning and Scheduling Suite plans

• You place Manila and Taipei in zone A.

The advantages of planning shipments in terms of regions and zones are:

• With less in-transit information, Oracle Shipping Execution finds the

• The in-transit information automatically applies to new customers.

Usage of Region interface Page 4

• Determine the zones that support your the Oracle Advanced

• Specify the in-transit times between zones (regional transit time)

• Use two concurrent processes to map and load bulk geographical

When calculating available-to-promise, the Oracle Advanced Planning and

When scheduling shipments using zones and regions, the Oracle

• Determines the ship-from and ship-to zones.

• Determines the regional transit time between the zones. If you

• Calculates the scheduled ship date from the available to promise

Usage of Region interface Page 6

The Regions related information would be stored in the following

The Table WSH_REGIONS will contain the different codes related

Usage of Region interface Page 7

Column Name Data Type Mandatory

Column Name Data Type Mandatory

Usage of Region interface Page 8

Usage of Region interface Page 9

Region Interface is a concurrent program, which can be used to import the

Region Interface Concurrent Process

Started the region upload process...

Required information should be populated to the Regions Interface tables

Usage of Region interface Page 10

A) First Use of Region interface

The following examples will clearly demonstrate the structure of the

We will consider 2 different examples

Consider and example where we want to import a region which is in

Usage of Region interface Page 11

Usage of Region interface Page 12

Region Region Level Value Parent Status

So we need to create Region 3 and Region 4 as mentioned above.

2 records needs to be inserted in the Interface Tables with appropriate

Region Type Meaning

Inserting Data for Region-3

Usage of Region interface Page 13

INSERT INTO wsh_regions_interface(

Insert record –1 in to WSH_REGIONS_TL_INTERFACE to create Region-3

INSERT INTO wsh_regions_tl_interface(

Usage of Region interface Page 14

Insert record –2 in to WSH_REGIONS_INTERFACE to create Region-4

INSERT INTO wsh_regions_interface(

Insert record –2 in to WSH_REGIONS_TL_INTERFACE to create Region-4

INSERT INTO wsh_regions_tl_interface(

Usage of Region interface Page 15

The 2 new regions created will be available in the query output.

Usage of Region interface Page 16

Usage of Region interface Page 17

We will consider the second example where Mumbai in India would be

Region Region Level Value Parent Status

Usage of Region interface Page 18