Should I use the Shared Network location (SNL), what is it for?

Environment:

Oracle B2C Service, All supported versions

Resolution:

The SNL (Shared Network Location) was designed to reduce bandwidth utilization of the Oracle B2C Service application during Maintenance Pack application or site update. This deployment option locally mirrors the update components on the Oracle B2C Service servers.

When the SNL is set to a network share within your organization, the first client who detects an available update will download the application files in a zip format to the SNL location. Those files are then copied and extracted to the application files location. The application zip files are retained in the SNL and accessed by the remaining clients upon subsequent logins. Using the SNL reduce the number of clients downloading the application zip files from the Oracle B2C Service servers. This reduces bandwidth utilization during update or update process.

The SNL can be defined for an entire site, for specific profiles, or both. If both are defined, the profile location setting will override the site location.

For details on setting the SNL, please refer to the Deployment Guide for your version of Oracle B2C Service.

When setting the SNL please consider the following:

The SNL is designed to reduce bandwidth during updating of the Oracle B2C Service application.

Setting the SNL to a location on a workstation such as C:\SNL is not advised. Each workstation will download the zip files and thus increase bandwidth.

The SNL should be a network location available to each agent's console. For each agent who the SNL is defined for, they must have Read/Write access to the SNL location.