FUJ00176311
FUJ00176311
From: Jenkins Gareth GI
Sent: Thur 24/06/2010 8: 1 AM (UTC)
To: Thomas Penny{ GRO.
Subject: Duplicate Messages in ARQ (updated)
Penny / Alan,
As mentioned before, I’ve now confirmed that the Mails duplicate is OK.
Back to the more general duplicate issue, here are some suggested words (updated in last para):
With Horizon counters, the mechanism by which Data is audited has always worked on the principle that it is
acceptable to audit the same data more than once - in particular if in doubt as to whether or not it has been
previously audited successfully.
The Mechanism used on Horizon to retrieve the data took this into account and only presented one instance of
such duplicate data in the ARQ extracts.
However it has recently been noticed that the HNG-X retrieval mechanism does not remove such duplicates and
a quick scan of the ARQs provided to Post Office Ltd since the change to the new system indicates that abut
35% of the ARQs might contain some duplicate data. A Peak has been raised to remove such duplicate data in
the future. However until the fix is developed, tested and deployed, there is a possibility that data is duplicated.
The reliable way to identify a duplicate transaction is to use the <Num> attribute that is used to generate the
unique sequence numbers. Unfortunately, this attribute is not currently included in the Excel version of ARQ
data that has been passed to Post Office Ltd in the past. This will be included in all future ARQs until the
problem is fixed.
Meanwhile all that can be done on existing ARQs is look for transactions that appear to be duplicates. Note that
we have identified a scenario with Postal Services transactions where multiple, identical mails items are
accepted (ie the Quantity button is set to greater than 1), but Postage Labels are printed for each individual item.
This results in separate transactions being generated for each item, which are identical in the ARQ extracts
(there is another minor difference in the raw data apart from the <Num< attribute, but this different attribute is not
currently included in the ARQ extract).
Regards
Gareth
Gareth Jenkins
Distinguished Engineer
Applications Architect
Royal Mail Group Account
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