Understand entity context

The future samples for an entity are generated only if all of the following conditions are satisfied:

• Context field ent_id contains a non-null value

• The item_id, item_category_id, process_id, and oper_id context fields contain null values

• There are no future samples already generated for this entity and characteristic

The future samples are generated for a characteristic at each interval time defined per the sample plan frequency. However, a characteristic is ignored if it has already been used for a certain time period by some other frequency linked to a sample plan.

If an entity identified in the context is an entity class, or has descendant entities, then a separate sample request is generated for each descendant entity whose Can Collect QM Data setting is selected. Sample requests are generated for each entity at regular time intervals defined in the frequency definition.

The future samples generated in the context of an entity may be deleted in the future. This is done if a job is started on this entity has a QM specification applicable to its context that has a higher specificity than the current QM specification.