Data Test - Starter Project

Prerequisites

Java JDK 17

Go to https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase/jdk17-0-13-later-archive-downloads.html and select the installer appropriate to your operating system. Click the Accept License Agreement radio button and download and run the installer.

Python 3.11.* or later.

See installation instructions at: https://www.python.org/downloads/

Check you have python3 installed:

python3 --version

Preferably an IDE such as Pycharm Community Edition

https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/

Dependencies and data

Creating a virtual environment

Ensure your pip (package manager) is up to date:

pip3 install --upgrade pip

To check your pip version run:

pip3 --version

Create the virtual environment in the root of the cloned project:

python3 -m venv .venv

Activating the newly created virtual environment

You always want your virtual environment to be active when working on this project.

source ./.venv/bin/activate

Installing Python requirements

This will install some of the packages you might find useful:

pip3 install -r ./requirements.txt

Running tests to ensure everything is working correctly

pytest ./tests

Generating the data

A data generator is included as part of the project in ./input_data_generator/main_data_generator.py This allows you to generate a configurable number of months of data. Although the technical test specification mentions 6 months of data, it's best to generate less than that initially to help improve the debugging process.

To run the data generator use:

python ./input_data_generator/main_data_generator.py

This should produce customers, products and transaction data under ./input_data/starter

Getting started

The skeleton of a possible solution is provided in ./solution/solution_start.py You do not have to use this code if you want to approach the problem in a different way.