All About Siebel

How to deploy files in a remote server?

2009-01-07T10:38:00.000+05:30

It's easy you say, just share your drives when you connect through rdp --> http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/f47ce263-f72e-469d-bf14-6605b7f4cce51033.mspx?mfr=true. Ok, let's talk about worse case scenario, you can't share drives and you can even share a drive from your remote server.
So you can use a very usefull tool named WordPad --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPad. Surprised ?
It's even easier than sharing you drives, watch it :

Zip all your files into a single file;
Open a wordpad in your local machine;
Copy zip file into wordpad (WordPad would serialize your file);
Copy object that appears inside Wordpad;
Open wordpad in your remote machine and paste your object into it;
Finally copy your recent pasted object into remote server.

Enjoy.

Oracle : Reduce your parsing times

2009-01-07T10:37:00.002+05:30

All the queries that you execute in an Oracle database are parsed and then executed. However, is a nonsense(and a time wastefulness) to parse over and over the same query, even if executed by different users.

So, to avoid this, Oracle uses a 'Shared pool' area where all the cursors are cached after being parsed.

How it works? It's easy:

Your query is hashed;
Oracle searchs shared pool for the matching hash value;
Is it there? If so, execute the cursor;
Otherwise parse your query, hash it and put it in shared pool for future executions;

To take advantage of this feature of Oracle engine, we have to take care for:

Hashing is executed over all your query, so Case is important.

Select * from emp is different from Select * from EMP and therefore you will not take advantage of shared pool in your second execution; So, it's important that your developers team agree in Naming and Case conventions to take greater advantage of Oracle Shared Pool.

Where clauses are hashed too;

Select * from emp where emp_no = 1 is different from Select * from emp where emp_no = 2, use global variables and procedures whenever you can.

If you follow this rules, you will not solve all the performance problems from your application but will give a little step toward the perfection.

Oracle : SQLCODE and SQLERRM in Inserts

2009-01-07T10:37:00.001+05:30

Today I came across an unexpected problem when executing an exception block inside a procedure :

My code was something like this :

insert into dc_errors (error_message,error_date) values (SQLERRM, SYSDATE);

and I allways obtain an annoying PL/SQL: ORA-00984: column not allowed here.

To solve this problem I've changed my code into :

v_exception := substr(SQLERRM, 1, 256);
insert into dc_errors (error_message,error_date) values (v_exception, SYSDATE);

with v_exception as varchar2(256) .

SQL * Plus Tip - 1

2009-01-07T10:36:00.000+05:30

To change the previous query, just type EDIT, this command will redirect you into an editor so you can edit previous SQL command, short name : ED.

Then type / and the new SQL command will be executed

Oracle : Reducing join execution time

2009-01-07T10:34:00.000+05:30

After executing a join over two tables, whith 4 million rows each and indexes in join columns, I realized that 4 minutes it's too much time waiting for results. So I decided to watch for the execution plan :

select columns from tableA join TableB on tableA.id = tableB.id

Execution Plan----------------------------------------------------------
0 SELECT STATEMENT Optimizer=RULE
1 0 FILTER
2 1 SORT (GROUP BY)
3 2 TABLE ACCESS (BY INDEX ROWID) OF 'TABLEA'
4 3 NESTED LOOPS
5 4 TABLE ACCESS (FULL) OF 'TABLEB'
6 4 INDEX (RANGE SCAN) OF 'TABLEA_U1' (UNIQUE)

All seems to be correct, after all I'm using Rule Base Optimizer. In order to reduce execution time I force the execution of an hash join instead of a Nested Loops.
Execution time droped to about 2 minutes and execution plan looks like this :

Execution Plan----------------------------------------------------------
0 SELECT STATEMENT Optimizer=RULE (Cost=624 Card=40000 Bytes=2 800000)
1 0 FILTER
2 1 SORT (GROUP BY) (Cost=624 Card=40000 Bytes=2800000)
3 2 HASH JOIN (Cost=172 Card=40000 Bytes=2800000)
4 3 TABLE ACCESS (FULL) OF 'TABLEA' (Cost=35 Card=2000 Bytes=62000)
5 3 TABLE ACCESS (FULL) OF 'TABLEB' (Cost=136 Card=2000 Bytes=78000)

And all I've to do is change my query to :

select /*+ USE_HASH (tableA tableB ) */ columns from tableA join TableB on tableA.id = tableB.id

Why is this happening? why RBO this choose this plan? The answer is simple, RBO doesn't consider hash joins has a valid execution path, so you have to force it.
This specific join is used when a large amount of data needs to be joined or when a large fraction of the the table needs to be joined, however this is a very memory expensive operation and need to be carefully analised.

PL/SQL Tip - 1

2009-01-07T10:33:00.002+05:30

Query v$parameter view for BD parameters checking.
In this example I'm looking for the selected optimizer mode.

select value from v$parameter where name = 'optimizer_mode';

Enjoy.

PL/SQL : Show locked objects

2009-01-07T10:33:00.001+05:30

Today, after trying unsuccessfully to drop my temporary tables, and subsequent fails due to object locks, I tried to find who's locking my table.
Not an easy task, so I dig a little and found this amazing script that solved my problem. If you have the same problem, read here --> http://www.orafaq.com/scripts/performance/lockall.txt how to list all locked objects.

PL/SQL : How to update using select

2009-01-07T10:32:00.004+05:30

This "problem" came across me when I needed to update an entire temporary table column. One option is to loop all table rows, boring and time consumer task. After some background searchs I've adopted this method:

UPDATE TABLEA SET
(TABLEA.COLUMNA, TABLEA.COLUMNB) =
(SELECT TABLEB.COLUMNA, TABLEB.COLUMNB FROM TABLEB WHERE TABLEB.ID = TABLEA.ID)

I've basically do one inner select and join the two tables in the inner select's WHERE clause.

EIM : Shell execution order

2009-01-07T10:32:00.001+05:30

When running an EIM process with a shell type process section, it will be executed from top to bottom. In this example, first process to run will be Assess followed by Contact.

[Siebel Interface Manager]
PROCESS = P1
USER NAME = "XXXX"
PASSWORD = "XXXX"

[Lancar]
TYPE=SHELL
INCLUDE = "ASSESS"
INCLUDE = "CONTACT"

[CONTACT]
TYPE = DELETEBATCH = 3999
TABLE = EIM_CONTACT
ONLY BASE TABLES = S_PARTY,S_CONTACT
DELETE MATCHES = S_CONTACT, (COLUMN= 'DELETED')

[ASSESS]
TYPE = DELETE
BATCH = 3998
TABLE = EIM_ASSESS
ONLY BASE TABLES = S_ASSESS,S_ASSESS_VAL
DELETE MATCHES = S_ASSESS, (COLUMN = 'DELETED')

PL/SQL : Scripting for table drop

2009-01-07T10:31:00.003+05:30

I came from MS SQLServer and I miss a lot of nice functionalities, like for instance, If exists.
Why am I talking about this? Simple, I want to run a script that "only" drops a few tables that I'don't no if they already exists.

Easy to say, hard to find. So here's a script for doing that, without returning any errors.

set echo off;
set heading off;
spool run.sql;
select 'drop table 'table_name';' from dba_tables where UPPER(table_name) in ('TABLEA', 'TABLEB', 'TABLEC');
spool off;
@run.sql;

Enjoy.

EIM : DUP_RECORD_EXISTS after Update

2009-01-07T10:31:00.001+05:30

This status happens after running an EIM update process with lines that match exactly the lines being updated in base table.

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2009-01-07T10:30:00.000+05:30

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How to relate a contact whit their accounts

2009-01-07T10:29:00.002+05:30

Contact accounts can be found in S_PARTY_PER intersection table. This table relates person_id column (par_row_id from s_contact) with party_id column (par_row_id from s_org_ext). Both person_id and party_id are foreign keys from s_party.

PL/SQL : Check script for object owners

2009-01-07T10:29:00.001+05:30

In real life development environments, you develope a script logged as UserX, and someone in Support Team will install it in production environment logged as UserZ.
So far, nothing unusual happens. But, if we are talking about oracle scripts, there's something that you have to deal with, Schemas, If you didn't reference all you objects with full name, SchemaX.TableA for instance, when UserZ tries to install it, he will not find TableA in is schema.

In simple scripts, with few lines, it's easy to manually check for errors, but try to do it in a scripy with thousand of lines...

So I've developed this procedure to "parse" my code looking for this kind of errors

FUNCTION CHECK_OWNER_IN_SQL(
p_list varchar2,
p_del varchar2
) return boolean
is
l_idx pls_integer;
l_list varchar2(32767) := p_list;
l_value varchar2(32767);
keyword varchar2(10000);
existsObject integer;
result boolean;
begin
result := false;
loop
l_idx := instr(l_list,p_del);
if l_idx > 0 then
keyword := substr(l_list,1,l_idx-1);
select count(*) into existsObject from user_objects where lower(object_name) = lower(keyword);

if existsObject > 0 then
DBMS_OUTPUT.Put_Line( 'Possible error in ' keyword);
result := true;
end if;

l_list := substr(l_list,l_idx+length(p_del));
else
keyword := l_list;
select count(*) into existsObject from user_objects where lower(object_name) = lower(keyword);

if existsObject > 0 then
DBMS_OUTPUT.Put_Line( 'Possible error in ' keyword );
result := true;
end if;
exit;
end if;
end loop;
return result;
end;

--Possible values for p_type are :
-- DATABASE LINK,FUNCTION,INDEX,PACKAGE,PACKAGE BODY,PROCEDURE,SEQUENCE,SYNONYM,TABLE,TRIGGER,TYPE,VIEW

PROCEDURE CHECK_OWNER(
p_owner IN varchar2,
p_type IN varchar2,
p_name IN varchar2,
p_sql IN varchar2 := NULL
)
IS
cursor lines
is
Select text from all_source where lower(owner) = lower(p_owner) and lower(type) = lower(p_type) and lower(name) = lower(p_name) order by line;
sqltext varchar2(32000);
result boolean;
linha integer;
begin
if p_sql is not null then
result := siebel.check_owner_in_sql(p_sql , ' ');
else
linha := 1;
for line in lines loop
sqltext := TRIM(line.text);
IF substr(sqltext,1,2) <> '--' then
if siebel.check_owner_in_sql(sqltext , ' ') then
DBMS_OUTPUT.Put_Line( 'Linha ' linha ': ' sqltext);
end if;
end if;
linha := linha + 1;
end loop;
if linha = 1 then
DBMS_OUTPUT.Put_Line( 'Não foi encontrado o objecto a validar');
end if;
end if;
end;

After create this two procedures, you have only to execute the last one, and watch for possible warnings in your output window.

SQL Navigator : Code Templates

2009-01-07T10:28:00.001+05:30

After trying for a while to use SQL Navigator from Quest --> http://www.quest.com/sql-navigator/ to develope my pl/sql procedures and queries, I've found a new (for me) feature : Code templates. Tired of write allways the same kind of code structures ? Use code templates. How? It's easy. Just take a look at this help page from navigator help. (As a good developer that I am, I never read help files).

You can program Key combinations from "Ctrl+Shift+A" to "Ctrl+Shift+Z" with text up to 255 characters in length.
To program shortcut keys
From the View menu, choose Preferences.
Under the Code Editors preference heading, expand General, and then scroll down to the Templates category.
Where you see the words , click and then view or change shortcut key assignments as required.

Try it, and watch your development times drop a little bit !!!

S_POSTN_CON : Description

2009-01-07T10:27:00.000+05:30

This table associates a contact with positions that can acess it. This relation is suported by column con_id (par_row_id from s_contact) and postn_id (row_id from s_postn).
This is a many-to-many relationship : A contact can have more than one position associated, and a position can be related with multiple contacts.
Keep in mind that con_id is foreign key from s_party.

Joins : Please talk ANSI SQL with me.

2009-01-07T10:26:00.002+05:30

People, who had to port a Microsoft SQL Server or Access database over to Oracle, know what I'm talking about. This article --> http://certcities.com/editorial/columns/story.asp?EditorialsID=106 show us a good example of ANSI SQL joins and also show us a few good reasons why we should use ANSI join syntax instead of classic and specific join syntax :

You don't need to specify the join condition in a natural join;
You can do more with ANSI SQL join syntax than with classic Oracle syntax;
There is no performance penalty;
In the long run you will see more of it, and less of the older syntax;
It's portable;
It's easier to understand what is happening .

Bottom line is :

So join me in creating portable SQL joins that are easy to read, do more than you can with Oracle syntax, and don't slow you down.

WHy MINUS does NOT EXISTs in our queries?

2009-01-07T10:26:00.001+05:30

Read this great (and old) article --> http://www.oraclemagician.com/mag/magic8.pdf about MINUS vs NOT EXISTS operators.

There really isn’t just one right way to design queries. In some cases, you really are better off using Not Exists. In many cases, however, you should use the set operator MINUS. Once you understand the principles, you can easily choose the best method for your particular case.

Get last file version

2009-01-07T10:25:00.001+05:30

Imagine this situation:

You have two package P1 and P2 in the same stage, and both P1 (who is to be installed first) and P2 have an attached file F1;
In P1 the F1 file is in version 1, but in P2 is in version 3;

When I try to execute P1 and I try to get F1 file, Harvest return me F1 in version 3, when it has supposed to return version 1 of the file.

So take care when promoting 2 or more packages, to the same stage, with different version of the same file. Harvest only get the last version of it, regardless what version you included in your package.

Debugging in http://localhost:8082

2009-01-07T10:24:00.000+05:30

Today I've made my first siebel project compilation, all my environment is brand new and well configured.
I've enabled 'Auto-start web client' feature and hit the road. IExplorer browses http://localhost:8082/ and inherent error. Why in God's name is this happening?

The answer is simple, (If my friend Alexandre didn't help me, it wouldn't be so simple), my Firewall is enabled.

After I disabled that, my debug can go on!!

Error 452: Match column X not found in Y

2009-01-07T10:23:00.000+05:30

Today I had to create a new column in EIM_CONTACT table, to build a new attribute mapping for deletion purposes. All went fine until I test my EIM task.

Error 452: Match column X_COLUMN not found in S_CONTACT.

I run trough all my steps to find what's wrong in it. All seems to be in perfect shape. My next step was to loose some time reading bookshelf and Siebel support SR's. Nothing came across that helped me to solve my problem.

Last step in problem resolution algorithm, ask for help. Allways work!!

My colleague João had the solution, Siebel caches EIM mappings in \siebsrvr\BIN\diccache.dat, all we have to do is delete this file and Siebel will build a new one for you (with your new mappings).

Finally, I successfully ran my EIM process.

A distant past - Part 1 Siebel

2008-09-12T14:24:00.000+05:30

When did the whole thing start?

Well, one of the answers is found in the vast archive of the Wayback Machine ---> http://www.archive.org. If you search for www.siebel.com you are taken back to the mid-90ies and a somewhat unpretentious website from 1996. Just in case the archive gets lost some day, I have preserved a screenshot of the 1996 siebel.com website myself.

A distant past - Part 2 or "It's still there"

2008-09-12T14:23:00.000+05:30

Tom on TV

the Siebel Sample Database comes together with a sample file system, which reveals most of its parts when you navigate to the Administration - Document screen and the Literature view. The content there is intended to support the sample data such as products and their images but there are also some kind of random pebbles to be found by the more leisurous among you. Just some samples (SIA or SBA refers to the Siebel Industry Applications or Siebel Business Applications - formerly known as HORizontal - variety of Siebel CRM):

.mov files from a documentary about diabetes (SIA)
a graphic file showing 10 deutsche mark (SIA and SBA)
an 84 page prospectus for a fictitious company named Sycamore Networks (SIA)

and of course - because this is what this post is all about:

a TV ad featuring Tom Siebel (maybe 1998), to be found in the SBA sample database

So it is up to you to find the most interesting file and maybe post it here as a comment.

In case you do not have an installation of Siebel CRM 8.0 with the sample database at hand

Automating the Application Deployment Manager (ADM) packaging process

2008-09-12T14:22:00.000+05:30

"Open the box, open the box!"

Introduced in version 7.7 of Siebel CRM, ADM (Application Deployment Manager) has been significantly enhanced in version 8.0. The purpose of ADM is to assist developers and administrators to deploy changes made to the Siebel Repository, the physical UI files, Actuate report files and – last but not least – the administrative data of a Siebel CRM application from one enterprise (e.g. development) to another (e.g. test).

Version 8.0 of Siebel CRM also introduces the Siebel Management Server and Siebel Management Agent. These java based modules are used for the packaging and deployment of the a/m changes.

This post covers the techniques to automate the ADM packaging process. It mainly focuses on command line utilites which can be invoked as part of a shell script.

1. Initialize the package / create folder structure using admpkgr

The command line utility for ADM packaging is admpkgr. It resides in the /mgmtsrvr directory of the Siebel Management Server installation.

For automation purposes, shell scripts can be used similar to the following:

call admpkgr init d:\ousea\mgmtsrvr\adm\packages\xyz_package_01

2. Export database types (administrative data) using srvrmgr

Bookshelf Reference: Application Deployment Manager Guide version 8.0: Creating ADM Deployment Units from Database Types Directly from Command-Line --> http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B40099_02/books/AppDeployMgr/AppDeployMgr_CreatePkg7.html#wp1009283

To automate the export of administrative data objects such as LOVs, Data Maps, Responsibilites and many more (ADM natively supports more than 60 data types in version 8.0), the ADM Batch Processor server component (new in version 8.0) can be used.

Using the ‘start task’ command from a srvrmgr prompt works as expected for the ADM Batch Processor, however some issues have been reported with passing the parameters. Here are two versions to do it. The first one is passing the parameters using the ‘with’ clause. The second is setting the parameters and then restarts the component.

We are using an input file here, so the basic command would be as follows (note the /i switch):

\bin\srvrmgr /g /e /u /p /s /i ""

Sample input file for version 1:

start task for comp admbatchproc with admpath=\mgmtsrvr\adm\packages\xyz_package_01\database,admdatatype='EAI Data Map',admfilter='[Name] LIKE "XYZ*"',admeaimethod=synchronize,admprefix=XYZ_EAIDMAP

Sample input file for version 2 (which is safe especially for the admfilter parameter):

shutdown comp admbatchproc
sleep 60
change param admpath=d:\ousea\mgmtsrvr\adm\packages\xyz_package_01\database for comp admbatchproc
change param admdatatype='EAI Data Map' for comp admbatchproc
change param admfilter='[Name] LIKE "XYZ*"' for comp admbatchproc
change param admeaimethod=synchronize for comp admbatchproc
change param admprefix=XYZ_EAIDMAP for comp admbatchproc
startup comp admbatchproc
sleep 20

Here is an explanation of the parameters for admbatchproc:

admpath = Location for resultant export files
admdatatype = Name of Data Type (as in Application Deployment Manager screen)
admfilter = Filter to be applied on the data type. For example, '[List Of Values Parent(UDA).Value]="NM"'
admeaimethod = One of three methods: upsert, synchronize, or custom
admprefix = Prefix for the name of exported XML file

3. Export repository changes using consoleapp.exe

Bookshelf Reference: Application Deployment Manager Guide Version 8.0: “Using Consoleapp.exe to Create Repository Deployment Units” --> http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B40099_02/books/AppDeployMgr/AppDeployMgr_CreatePkg22.html#wp1012566

The command line utility consoleapp.exe (in the Siebel Tools bin directory) can be generically used to invoke business service methods within a Siebel application from the command line (headless, i.e. without rendering a GUI). The ADM framework provides a bunch of business services which are used mainly for reloading the various caches or – in this case – for exporting repository changes.

In a shell script example, one would use consoleapp.exe to call the “Siebel Tools Export Support for ADM” business service as follows to export the “XYZ New Order for Account” Workflow:

\bin\consoleapp "\bin\enu\tools.cfg" ENU SADMIN "Siebel Tools Export Support for ADM" "Export:Repository=Siebel Repository,Object_1=XYZ New Order for Account,Type_1=Workflow Process,ExportFile=\mgmtsrvr\adm\packages\xyz_package_01\repository\XYZ_WF_1.sif,DescriptorFile=\mgmtsrvr\adm\packages\xyz_package_01\repository\XYZ_WF_1_des.xml,ExportCount=1,LogFile=d:\temp\adm.log"

If this is your first exposure to consoleapp.exe, it might feel a little weird. Here is the syntax:

consoleapp.exe "" “:"

An alternative way to use consoleapp.exe according to bookshelf is to use an xml input file. I have not yet had the privilege to test this in real life, however. The syntax is as follows:

consoleapp.exe /f inputfile.xml

Caveat ---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveat: Make sure that the descriptor file name is exactly spelled like the export file name, having .xml (instead of .sif) as the file type and des as the suffix. Example: ExportFile=XYZ_WF_1.sif, DescriptorFile=XYZ_WF_1_des.xml.

4. Export file types using OS utilities

Files, such as web template files (.swt), must also be copied into the respective package directories. Since there is no dedicated utility provided by Oracle, the shell script would refer to classic file copy utilities. The following is an example for Windows xcopy:

#copy all web template files changed since June, 1st 2007 to the webtempl directory
xcopy \WEBTEMPL\*.swt \mgmtsrvr\adm\packages\xyz_package_01\file\AppServer\webtempl /D:06-01-2007

5. Delete empty subdirectories using OS utilities

It is best practice to delete empty subdirectories to increase processing time and decrease the amount of warnings during packaging and deployment. This would be accomplished using classic OS utilities. The following is a windows example:

rd \mgmtsrvr\adm\packages\xyz_package_01\File\AppServer\reports\enu

6. Generate the package descriptor file using admpkgr

Now it’s time for admpkgr again. As in step 1, it can be used in a shell script with the ‘generate’ option as follows:

call admpkgr generate \mgmtsrvr\adm\packages\xyz_package_01

7. Validate the package using admpkgr

Here is a windows example how to call admpkgr from a shell script and direct the output to a log file:

call admpkgr validate \mgmtsrvr\adm\packages\xyz_package_01 >> "d:\temp\admpkgr_out.txt"

Summary

The ADM packaging process is multifold, and various command line tools come into play when you want to automate it, namely admpkgr, srvrmgr, consoleapp.exe and OS file system manipulation tools.

Business Process Solution Library Siebel

2008-09-12T14:20:00.001+05:30

Here I go again

If you have been involved in Siebel CRM projects over the past years, you might have come across some business analyst who mentioned the Siebel Business Process Solution Library (BPSL), which has been released as part of the strong business process strategy together with Siebel CRM version 7.5 in 2002.

Teaching the approach to analyze your business processes and align them with the out of the box functionality BEFORE you start customizing the hell out of your CRM app during the Business Analyst courses ---> http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.getlppage?page_id=213&path=SCRM&columnNumber=3*, Siebel instructors all over the world were challenged to position the library NOT as a complete encyclopedia of all business processes that you can do in Siebel applications. To be honest, this would be a ridiculously small library given the vast functionality of Siebel CRM.

In contrary, the BPSL describes - that is at least mho - common best practice approaches to business processes which are (of course) supported in Siebel out of the box.

However, the BPSL has had a rich (including integration with Corel iGrafx and IBM Rational Requisite) but also difficult past and finally has emerged again on metalink3, Oracle's support portal for Siebel CRM customers. So if you have access to metalink3, you also have access to the link below.

Link to BPSL on metalink3 ---> https://metalink3.oracle.com/od/faces/secure/km/DocumentDisplay.jspx?id=554746.1&h=Y (credentials needed)

*Note: The current Business Analyst training does not teach the BPSL.

Close to the Standard Siebel

2008-09-12T14:18:00.001+05:30

"Once bitten, twice shy"

If you have the opportunity to observe some of the Siebel CRM projects (or any other standard enterprise software project) across the globe, however small or large they may be, there is a familiar pattern:

Phase of enthusiasm
Learning phase, along with the assurance to "stay close to the standard"
Pilot phase during which most of the requirements become clear (and complex)
Land of oblivion (where the first thing to be forgotten is the promise of 2.)
Regression to coding (believing that writing custom code can solve all problems faster and easier than standard functionality)

These are some typical phases (hope you also note the satirical aspect) that a typical project goes through.

However, we are talking about standard software, which means frankly that the customizing developers at the customer site find themselves in a race against time and hundreds of developers in the Oracle offices who are determined to create another splendid version (Siebel 8.1 is just around the corner these days).

So when a project has matured and all requirements are solved, the upgrade project typically comes next. And it is during the first attempts to upgrade the more or less customized application to the newest version when the whole thing seems to blow up (# 5. of the above list being reason #1 for the blow-up in most cases).

So we can add to our list

6. a phase of frustration
7. the vow to stay closer to the standard after the upgrade, which is immediately followed by
8. the requirement to upgrade the application (which is complex)
9. The land of oblivion... - we had that before ;-)

To cite a customer: "What does 'close to the standard' mean? How can we solve our very complex requirements if we are not allowed to add custom code? How can we customize the applications and remain upgradeable?"

The answer to the first question: "Thoroughly observe and clearly understand the standard functionality and metadata and when you implement solutions, let your developers behave the same way the developers at Oracle do."

Let's elaborate on this using the Siebel CRM Repository as an example.

Since Siebel 7 was brought on the market in 2001, we can observe that any new module (e.g. Siebel Loyalty in 7.7, Customer Order Management in 7.8), however complex its functionality may be, can be dissected into the following:

1. The basic objects

Metadata objects like applets, business components and tables which allow users and EAI processes to create, read, update or delete data needed for the new module. The Siebel Essentials ---> http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/show_desc.redirect?dc=D46318GC10 or Core Consultant Course ---> http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/show_desc.redirect?dc=D49247GC10 teaches how to create and modify these objects and how they refer to each other.

The following is a chart familiar to those who benefited from these courses

Summing up, we can say that adding or modifying objects of these 10 basic types is "close to standard" because this is exactly the way how the standard application is created.

OK, we now have nice views and applets and they allow us to read and manipulate data. But how does the additional functionality come in here? The answer is:

2. Business Services

These are metadata objects which (since Siebel 2000) serve as globally accessible capsules of functionality (i.e. code). So whenever an Oracle developer is asked to implement some functionality that is not available in the current application, he or she will write code and place it in the repository as a business service.

This is in fact the answer to the second question: You are indeed allowed to write custom code, but you should have it written as a business service" and - being a loyal Oracle University instructor - I would add "And your developers can learn how to do this in the Siebel Scripting Workshop."

A quick look at the current standard Siebel CRM repository (SIA 8.0) reveals a rich library of more than 1000 highly reusable and well-documented (along with many not-at-least-documented - keep your fingers off those) business services.

List of business services in Siebel Tools

OK, so we now have the data access and reusable services, but what if I need to call these services one after the other and combine them with my custom code. This leads us to the 3rd ingredient of standard Siebel CRM applications:

3. Workflows

Siebel Workflow allows developers to combine classic Siebel operations like creating or updating records with standard or custom business services along with decision logic and exception handling. Siebel Workflow is highly scalable and tests have proven a very high performance (outdoing scripted code by factors).

The tool of choice of Oracle developers to orchestrate reusable services into, yes, yet another service (that's what a workflow really is: just another service which you can call from literally anywhere) is Siebel Workflow.

Open the list of standard workflows in Siebel Tools and see for yourself. The current version (SIA 8.0) comes replete with more than 1000 standard workflow processes for literally any kind of functionality such as pricing, integrating with SAP, marketing or customer-facing processes such as quote-to-cash or forgotten passwords.

Example for a standard workflow

Summary (= Answer to the third question and I will make this short):

Focus your customizing investment on the 10 basic objects, business services and workflow and your project is close to the standard and therefore easily upgradeable.

Oracle Master Data Management - Siebel

2008-09-12T14:17:00.001+05:30

a closer look

These days I am reading a white paper ---> http://www.oracle.com/dm/08q3field/mdm_detailed_technical.pdf on Oracle Master Data Management (MDM). A customer is interested in training on MDM and I wanted to find out what role the Siebel Customer Data Integration (CDI) and Universal Customer Master (UCM) solution and Oracle BI EE (formerly known as Siebel Analytics) play in the Oracle MDM offering.

You can download the technical white paper on the Oracle Master Data Management website ---> http://www.oracle.com/master-data-management/index.html.

The paper is in fact helpful to help us define the problem areas of existing IT infrastructures, the half-baked solutions that lack the power to combine operational and analytical data into a single view of the customer. It also defines the ideal information architecture and gives a nice overview of the Oracle products (yes, including Siebel CDI, UCM and Oracle BI EE) available to build or buy an MDM solution.

The N² problem

It starts with the N² (n square) problem that occurs when data synchronization between transactional applications is accomplished with code. IT managers all over the globe experience this on a daily basis.

Enterprise Application Integration

Of course there is a more elegant solution established over the last decade which is usually described as an information bus or hub-and-spoke topology, supported by Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technology.

Service Oriented Architecture

EAI has recently evolved into serice oriented architecture (SOA) where interfaces can be called from an application's service layer independently of the programming language or software platform. SOA is more than just synchronizing data, it also supports business process orchestration across separate systems.

Data Quality

So when your IT infrastructure has evolved to SOA, you will find that the old saying "garbage in, garbage out" is more true than ever before, because data quality is crucial to successful business process integration. So the paper concludes that an MDM solution that really deserves this name must also embed data quality solutions.

Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence and Reporting

Most companies today have established data warehouses and ETL processing that pulls data from the transactional systems into the DW. And most of them have invested in Business Intelligence tools to analyze the billions of records that they store in the DW in order to drive business decisions.

So far so good.

But the following should make us think twice:

Company A rolls out the new CRM system.
A few years later, the analytical CRM project is started
Shortly after the first pilots, the data quality project is launched.

So the BI system suffers from the poor data quality of the transactional systems. Garbage in, garbage out again.

An ideal information architecture

The paper boldly announces the ideal information architecture which brings the MDM system into play as a central instance which enables metadata and data cleansing and forms the base source system for ETL.

Building an MDM solution using Oracle Products

Today, after uncounted strategic acquisitions, Oracle is able to support the ideal architecture with its software stack. So let's look at the architecture from a software perspective.

Oracle 11g with RAC for the Database
OWB for ETL and Profiling
ODI for ETL and Data Migration
Master entity data models
ESB for integration
BPEL PM for orchestration
Portal for the user interface
IdM for managing users
WS Manager for managing services
BI EE for analytics
JDeveloper for creating or extending the MDM management application.

Oracle utilizes these technologies to build its MDM Data Hubs. Customers who want to build their own MDM solution should use these components as well.

Summary

MDM can be seen as an approach to solve the common IT problems like ever increasing data volume, poor data quality and lack of business insight.

Oracle offers a variety of products to build a solution and also offers pre-built MDM applications like Oracle Customer Hub and Oracle Product Hub.

Siebel CRM is represented by the Siebel CDI and UCM applications and by Oracle BI EE (formerly known as Siebel Analytics).

So to get full grips to an MDM solution, there is a lot to learn and a lot to gain.

have fun

Siebel Server System Alert Notification

2008-09-12T14:15:00.000+05:30

E-mail for you...

Triggered by an inquisitive mind, I have recently tried out the System Alert Notification Feature ---> http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E05553_01/books/SystAdm/SystAdm_ConfigServer22.html#wp1014907 of the Siebel Server. This feature has been introduced in Siebel 7.7 and allows server components to notify administrators via e-mail when error conditions occur.

The following describes the setup procedure for a simple test scenario.
The scenario assumes that you have an SMTP server up and running as well as a Siebel Enterprise Server installation.

1. Configure the System Alert Profile

You can use the preconfigured System Alert profile with the alias "AdminEmailAlert".
Navigate to Site Map > Administration - Server Configuration > Enterprises > System Alerts.
In the Alert Parameters list, set the parameters according to your environment. You can do it in the GUI or if you prefer the srvrmgr command line here is a template for an input file:

change param AdminEmailAddress=user@localhost.com,
FromAddress=server@localhost.com,
SMTPServerPort=5025,
SMTPServer=localhost,
Message='This is a message from your Siebel Server: '
for named subsystem adminemailalert

click to enlarge

2. Enable notification for a server component.

Let's try it with the Workflow Process Manager:

Navigate to Site Map > Administration - Server Configuration > Enterprises > Component Definitions.
Query for the Workflow Process Manager component definition.
In the Component Parameters list query for *otification* to find all parameters related to notification.

Set the parameters as follows:

Notification Handler = AdminEmailAlert (the name of the system alert profile you modified in step 1)
Notification Action on Task Ex(it) = 1 (Note: this is an advanced parameter, to set it in the GUI, click the Advanced button)

Here is an input file template for srvrmgr:

change param NotifyHandler=AdminEmailAlert,
NotifyOnTaskExit=1 for compdef wfprocmgr

To verify you can use the following command:

list advanced params %otification% for compdef wfprocmgr

click to enlarge

Be a good boy/girl and shutdown and startup the Workflow Process Manager

3. Test

For testing reasons you can simply start a job with no parameters for the component.
Navigate to Site Map > Administration - Server Management > Jobs and create a new job record for the Workflow Process Manager.
Do not enter any parameters and click Submit Job
Press ALT+ENTER to refresh the list. The job will soon change its status to "Error".
Check the e-mails for your test account. Voilá:

click to enlarge

4. How it works

Any component which has the notification enabled as in step 2 will call the Siebel Administrator Notification Component (alias: AdminNotify) on the Siebel Server it resides on. So it is crucial, that this component is in an online state.

Summary

Notification e-mails can be sent from any Siebel Server component to one or more e-mail accounts (comma separated list). The setup is straightforward. Watch out for the advanced parameter NotifyOnTaskExit which has a default value of 0 (zero, no notification) and has to be set to 1.

Siebel Essentials Blog is funny and interesting

2008-09-12T14:14:00.001+05:30

office humor, eh ;-)

glad that humorous posts fresh up the discussion, I found that my post on staying close to the standard in Siebel CRM projects has been cited on another blog site ---> http://siebelunleashed.com/staying-close-to-standards. It is very good to see that there are now several blogs on Siebel CRM to be found on the internet (please see the blog roll on the left).

Register Business Services in Siebel 8

2008-09-12T14:12:00.001+05:30

gotcha!

Whenever you wish to use an external script such as browser script (which IS external because it runs in the browser) to call a method of a Siebel Business Service, you have to declare this Business Service so that the application accepts the call.

This is a security feature which has been introduced in Siebel 7.5.

Because otherwise any script kiddie could inject javascript code into the Siebel Web Client ---> http://siebelunleashed.com/internet-explorer-address-bar-and-siebel-browser-script/, call any Business Service and wreak havoc.

Most of you are familiar with the odd entries in the applications .cfg file

ClientBusinessServiceN = Name of the Business Service
(where N is a sequential number)

However, during some upgrades to Siebel 8, things went bump in the night ---> http://www.pitt.edu/%7Edash/bump.html.

That is, their browser scripts didn't work anymore, and adding the line to the .cfg file didn't help either.

Here is the solution, and it is in fact related to the year-long effort to get away from text files to configure server components. So since Siebel 8 you have to declare the Business Services which you would like to call from external scripts as an Application User Property.

Migration ---> http://siebel.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/siebelupgrades-l/new-tasks-for-siebel-80-upgrades-1420925 is rather easy, because they have the same syntax as in the .cfg file.

As you can see in the screenshot below, also PDQDisabledViewN made it into the Application User Props.

Siebel Query Language - an Example

2008-09-12T14:10:00.002+05:30

Romeo and Julian...

About the Siebel Query Language

First of all, it abbreviates to SQL which is kind of funny, of course it has nothing to do with SQL.
Just like you can get more out of a spreadsheet application like Excel when you are familiar with its internal functions and syntax, you can get much more out of Siebel CRM if you are familiar with the Siebel Query Language.

Where is it used?

The answer to this question is very interesting, it is used almost everywhere when you define expressions. It is available in both Siebel Tools and the Siebel Web Client and since version 8.0 both the developement environment and the Web Client (that one since 7.0) sport an expression designer.

Expression Designer in the Siebel Web Client
click to enlarge

Expression Designer in Siebel Tools (since 8.0)

Here is a probably complete list of areas where you can use the Siebel Query Language:

Siebel Web Client

Predefined Queries
Conditional Expressions for Personalization Rules
Conditional Expressions for Runtime Events
Data Validation Manager rules
Data Map Editor
[Update] iHelp branching expressions

Siebel Tools

Calculated fields
Pre-default and post-default values for fields
Field Validation property
User properties
Expressions in Siebel Workflow and UI Tasks

Where is the reference?

The Siebel Query Language is documented in the Personalization Administration Guide ---> http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B40099_02/books/PersAdm/PersAdmfunctions.html#wp89966 of the Siebel Bookshelf.

An example:

The following is an example for a predefined query. The task is to filter the list of contacts so that it displays only persons that have their birthday in the current month.

Working with date fields can be tricky and you just can't type something like *June* in a date field. This is where the date functions ---> http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B40099_02/books/PersAdm/PersAdmfunctions8.html#wp61252, also known as julian functions come into play.

Our first choice would be the JulianMonth() function. This function takes a date field as a parameter and returns the julian number of the current month which is for example 80660 for August 2008. So the nerds among you will have quickly calculated ---> http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.php this back and month #1 is of course January of 4713 BC.

If we want to query for persons who have their birthday in the current month, then the JulianMonth() function alone is not helpful because the return value for August 1968 is different from August 2008, so we need a way to extract the month number (1-12) from the date. This can be accomplished by multiplying the julian year number (6721 for 2008) by 12 and subtracting it from the julian month number.

So the equation is: # of current month = JulianMonth(Today()) - JulianYear(Today())*12

This equation will be the base for our query in Siebel CRM. So basically if we want to match the Birth Date field of a Contact with the # of current month, the query goes as follows:

JulianMonth([Birth Date])-JulianYear([Birth Date])*12 = JulianMonth(Today()) - JulianYear(Today())*12

Creating the predefined query:

Usually you can enter even complex queries directly in any control or list column of the applet (in query mode) but there are restrictions in field length and data type. So here is a way that always works.

Navigate to the Contacts List and save the current query (even an empty query would do).

click to enlarge

Navigate to Site Map -> Administration - Application -> Predefined Queries and retrieve your previously saved query.

Replace anything that might be between the two double quotes after 'Contact'.Search = with
JulianMonth([Birth Date])-JulianYear([Birth Date])*12 = JulianMonth(Today()) - JulianYear(Today())*12

So finally it looks like this:

click to enlarge

In the Household Contact view you can enter some birth dates and run your test in the contact List. I have added the Birth Date field to the Contact List Applet to verify.

List of contacts with a birth date in August
click to enlarge

siebel.exe switches - siebel

2008-09-12T14:08:00.001+05:30

...and siebdev.exe too ;-)

siebel.exe, as we all know, is the engine behind the non-zero-footprint flavour of Siebel applications, namely the Mobile Web Client or the Developer Web Client. Some call it fat client, some call it dedicated web client, depending mostly on the year when they first heard about it. Discussions whether the Mobile Web Client is a different installer than the Developer Web Client and whether the Developer Web Client is the same thing as the fat client often reach religious depths.

The installer places a bunch of shortcuts in the windows start menu which usually follow the syntax of

/c

So /c is a mandatory switch because any Siebel applications consists of the very same executable along with a different configuration file from which it reads the rest of its knowledge.

In order to please the more inquisitive among you, find below a complete list of switches that you can use with siebel.exe. If you know of any other switch, please inform us.

Typical switches (used in shortcuts)

/c Path to .cfg file (required), directory path defaults to \bin\enu
/d Datasource (as in .cfg file), defaults to local
/l language (optional, language pack must be installed), defaults to enu
/u Username (optional)
/p Password (optional)
/s Path to spool file (optional, to spool all SQL generated by siebel.exe)

Extra switches

/b Path to Browser executable (optional, for multi-browser testing of customer or partner (SI) applications)
/h Debug Mode (used with Siebel Tools for debugging)
/ctsim (often confused with /ctisim, which does not work ;-) CTI Simulation mode (used for demo)
/editseeddata allows modification of seed data, often referred to in maintenance release guides

And now for siebdev.exe:

siebdev.exe is the engine behind Siebel Tools, which is the only application that does not run in a browser window. However, Siebel Tools is defined in the Siebel Repository and the siebdev.exe works just like the siebel.exe. That is, it reads a .cfg file and an .srf file (the file that newbies usually try to compile to during their first steps with Siebel Tools).

So siebdev.exe accepts most of the switches that siebel.exe does, namely /c, /d, /u, /p and /s.

But there are some additional switches, used in conjunction with the "classic" ones. They have been passed along from consultant mouth to consultant ear for eons before they found their way into the documentation.

/bv runs all validation rules for the entire repository, so take your time
/batchimport automates the import of .sif files
/batchexport automates the export of objects to .sif files
/bc allows to run batch compilation
/tl language (typically used with /bc for multiple language deployments)
/applybatchpatch is used for applying batch patches, or patches in batches.

Have a nice day

Client Side Logging - Siebel

2008-09-12T14:06:00.000+05:30

books at bedtime

If you read technical blogs, you get the impression that these guys don't have a life and if they sleep at all, they sleep with the Siebel Bookshelf under their pillow.

I can confirm it is not that bad. However, rtfm ---> http://www.acronymfinder.com/RTFM.html is always a good thing and it sometimes reveals features that are quite helpful.

This post tries to shed some light on the Client-Side Logging or High-Interactivity Siebel applications. You can read the full documentation in the System Monitoring and Diagnostics Guide ---> http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B40099_02/books/SysDiag/SysDiagClientSideLogging.html#wp1004801.

Client-side logging for high-interactivity applications writes information to a local log file.

It is useful to close the gap in monitoring that existed in earlier Siebel versions, which means you can now

capture browser activity data for troubleshooting, such as when a Siebel Web Client stops responding or fails
Log individual user or global session information for a specific Siebel Server
Debug the source code using JavaScript
Trace the sequences of operations

You can enable Client-Side Logging either by setting the SEBLCL_TRACEMODE environment variable on the client machine or setting parameters for the object manager component on the Siebel server like in the following example:

change param
ClientSideLogging=True,
ClntTraceMode=1,
ClntLogFileSize=50,
ClntLogArchiveCount=5,
ClntLogDirectory=D:\SiebelLogs,
ClntTraceUnicode=true
for compdef SCCObjMgr_enu

Once enabled, log files are created in the given local directory of each client. Let's look at a typical file's content.

click to enlarge

So each entry in the file shows which area it belongs to along with the log level, timestamp and - most notably - a SARM id, which allows you to correlate the client file content with SARM files from the server components.

So it is possible to trace a complete client session from the the click in the browser to the operation in the database connector layer of the object manager.

Siebel List of Values - A Strategic Move - Continued.

2008-05-07T17:39:00.000+05:30

Last time I said that I will be presenting a Solution to make Required Fields dynamic and SRF independent. So I am back with What I promised.

Requirement:

Siebel Service Request module was to be implemented because of a new implementation the business requirements were being changed all the time. One Strange requirement was to make the Required Fields of a business component dynamic. So that they can be changed without a release. Now, we all know one way to make a field required is to set the Required Property of the field to true. But that would mean that if I were to change that a new SRF deployment will be required.

Solution:
LOV's again were the life saver for us. We created an LOV called SRV_REQ_FIELD and in the Display value we provided the names of the fields that we wanted as Required Fields. In the Business Component PreWrite Record we queried for that particular LOV and traversed through the records that were active. If the Field provided in the LOV did not contained a value then an error was raise stating that the value for that particular required field was not supplied. I am giving the Pseudo Code below to what that script might look like

BOLOV = TheApplication().GetBusObject("List Of Values");
BCLOV = BOLOV.GetBusComp("List Of Values");
with (BCLOV)
{
Query for LOV Type as 'SR_REQ_FIELD' and Active Flag = 'Y'
}

IsRecord = BCLOV.FirstRecord();
while( Last record is not reached)
{
this.ActivateField(BCLOV.GetFieldValue("Name"));
if ( this.GetFieldValue(BCLOV.GetFieldValue("Name")) == "" )
Raise Errro Text ("Value not given")
BCLOV.NextRecord();
}

This solution is not recommended if the number of fields that are required is fairly large. But still can be really handy in many situations.

Hope you liked this post! If yes, Do post your comments.

For other posts Related to LOV please go through the category of List of Values

Siebel List of Values - A Strategic Move!

2008-05-07T17:36:00.000+05:30

List of Values (LOV) is assumed to pretty simple entity in siebel and having very limited use, of showing values in dropdown picklist. But lately I found they can be used in more than one ways. They can be a real life saver. One use I have found of them is to avoid hard coding. Yes, you can avoid hard coding of values and use LOV instead which you can then change without SRF Release.

I will list below some real scenarios which I have come across and used List of Values to accomplish task which otherwise would have a real pain while moving stuff different environments.

Workflows - Requirement :
We were creating workflows that were going to integrate Siebel with some other application with the help of MQ Series. Now, to accomplish that we had to enter two paramerters related to MQ Series in the first step of workflows, Queue Manager and Physical Queue Name.
If, we were to hardcode then it would be difficult to move workflow between different envoirnments such as QA and production because they had different Physical Queue Name . There LOV's came to our Rescue. We created two LOV's with the values of the Queue Manager and Queue Name and used LookupValue() method in workflows to acomplish that.

LookupValue method accepts two arguments 'LOV Type' and Language Independent Code ('LIC') and returns the display value of that LOV Type. The syntax is as following

LookupValue("LOV Type","LIC")

Example :

Create an new LOV Type (in this case we are created MQ_PHY_QUEUE_NAME. It should be same in all the environments where you want to deploy the workflow)
Enter the Display Value (actual value that you want to speficy like in this case we specify ESBLDAS for dev env and ESBLQAS for QA Env)
Enter the LIC (can be anything descriptive like in this case we had given 'Physical Queue Name')
In the Input Arguments of workflow choose input argument type as Expression and specify the value as LookupValue("MQ_PHY_QUEUE_NAME","Physical Queue Name")

Now, it is going to pick the value as 'Display Value' of the LOV that you have specified.

In next post I will describe how can we use LOV to dynamically specify Required Fields for a Business Component.

For other posts Related to LOV please go through the category of List of Values

Siebel CRM How To - Create a new LOV?

2008-05-07T17:34:00.000+05:30

Whatever I have posted in this blog assumes that you have fair bit of idea working on Siebel CRM. I noticed there is hardly anything in this blog that can help a newbie. So thought of starting a new Category that is 'Siebel CRM How To'. This Category will include step by step How To's to various things in Siebel CRM. Starting this series is a simple 'How To' of creating a new List of Value and adding to the existing List of Value (LOV).

Information about LOV and explaination about the various terms is subject of another post. In this post I am just going to have step by step tutorial of creating a new LOV and adding new values to existing LOV's

Creating a new LOV

You can create an LOV from two places both have a different way of creating LOV in Siebel CRM.

Administration ==> Data ==> List of Values
Administration ==> Data ==> LOV Explorer

Through List of Values to add a new LOV following steps have to be followed. As an Example we will add a new LOV for Martial Status of a person.

Click New and Choose LOV_TYPE in Type Field
Enter MARITAL_LOV in 'Display Value'.
Enter 'Marital Status' in Language-Independent Code Field
Enter 'English-American' if you implementation language is English otherwise it will be according to the language of your implementation. Save the record
Click New again and choose 'MARITAL_LOV' in Type Field
Enter 'Married' in Display Value and Language-Independent Code Field
Enter 'English-American' if you implementation language is English otherwise it will be according to the language of your implementation. Save the record.
Follow steps 5 -7 for all values that you want to associate with this LOV

For example we will follow steps 5 - 7 and just change the value Married to Single so that It can have two values 'Married' and 'Single'

Through LOV Explorer you have to perform the following steps.

Click New and enter 'MARITAL_LOV' in the Type field
Click on the + sign in the left hand side of the LOV Explorer window for the type that you created
Click on the Values folder.
In the Right hand side Applet click on New
Enter 'Married' in the 'Code' and 'Display Value' Field
Enter 'English-American' if you implementation language is English otherwise it will be according to the language of your implementation. Save the record.
Repeat steps 4-6 for the all the values that you want to enter.

That's it. You are done with creating the New LOV with new Values

To enter New Values in the existing Siebel LOV just perform the following steps.

Query for the LOV Type that you want to add New Values.
Copy the record Enter the Display Value and Language Independent Code Field
Change the value in the Order Field to be the unique number and save the record.

Related Posts that you might like to Read:

Siebel CRM - List of Values a Strategic Move!
Siebel CRM - List of Values a Strategic Move- Continued!

Siebel CRM How To - Invoke Workflow through BC User Property

2008-05-07T17:33:00.000+05:30

Till siebel 7.5 the only method know to invoke workflows were

Runtime Events in start step of workflow
Business Service
Business Component Script
Workflow Policies

But from Siebel 7.7 ownwards there is one more method by which we can invoke a workflow. That way is Siebel business Component user property. You can 'Named Methodn' user property in a BC which can invoke a workflow where n is increment to the last named method user property defined on that BC.

Name: Named Method

Value:[Event Name] , "INVOKESVC", , "Workflow Process Manager", "RunProcess", 'ProcessName',[Name of the Workflows] , 'RowId', [Row Id Value]

Example

The below mentioned will invoke a workflow named 'Example Workflow' when a new record is created in Example BC.

Name: Named Method 1

Value: "New Record", "INVOKESVC", "Example", "Workflow Process Manager", "RunProcess", "'ProcessName'", "Example Wrokflow", "'RowId'", "[Id]"

Hope this post helps you. If yes, Please post your comments.

Siebel Tools How To - Have Mutiple Local database Instances?

2008-05-07T17:27:00.000+05:30

This article is a step by step guide to have mutiple local database instances on the same system.
Below mentioned points might be the reason why you would want to do that

You are working on mutilple projects and they all have repository named 'Siebel Repository'. You want to work on both repositories simultaneously.
You share your system and you want the changes made by other developer to be on a different instance rather than yours.
You have a server that can be accessed by mutiple people who work on it simultaneously

So, How do you do that? Here is the answer

Make a copy of your siebel local database (that is file named sse_data.dbf) rename it to be anything such as sse_data_copy.dbf
Make a copy your tools.cfg file (which should be residing in siebel install dir\tools\bin\enu\) and rename it to such as tool_copy.cfg
Open the tools_copy.cfg file scroll down to section [Local]
Find parameter named Connect String and change the value to reflect the name and path of you newly created copy of your dbf file.

for example

Previous Value : C:\PROGRA~1\Siebel\7.8\Tools\local\sse_data.dbf -q -m -x NONE -gp 4096 -c256m -ch256m -ch256m

New Value : C:\PROGRA~1\Siebel\7.8\Tools\local\sse_data_copy.dbf -q -m -x NONE -gp 4096 -c256m -ch256m -ch256m

you can change the other parameters also. To learn more about other parameters please read my post Siebel CRM - Configuration File (cfg) Disected and Explained.

Change the parameter named DockRepositoryName to different name if you don't want to have repository of your newly created instance to be Siebel Repository.
Create a copy of your shortcut which you use to access your siebel tools instance.
Right Click on the newly created instance and choose properties from the context menu
In the Target field of the newly opened window scroll to the point where it mentions the name of the cfg file which should be tools.cfg
Rename just the name of the file to tools_copy.cfg (the name of the copy of the cfg file you made)

for example

Orignal Value : "C:\Program Files\Siebel\7.8\Tools\BIN\siebdev.exe" /c "C:\PROGRA~1\Siebel\7.8\Tools\bin\enu\tools.cfg"

New Value : "C:\Program Files\Siebel\7.8\Tools\BIN\siebdev.exe" /c "C:\PROGRA~1\Siebel\7.8\Tools\bin\enu\tools_copy.cfg"

And you are done. Now you have two Siebel tools instances on the same system.

This solution will not work if :

If you mutiple users work on the system at same time. (For example a terminal server where multiple users can login and work simultenously)
If you want to Check in your changes to a different server

In next article we will discuss about additional changes that can be done to overcome this problem.

I Hope this post was helpful to you. If yes, Please post your comments or suggestion to make this site better.

Siebel How To - Create Inbound and Outbound Webservice?

2008-05-07T17:26:00.000+05:30

I was fortunate enough early in my carrer to get a chance to work on Siebel EAI. It was the first implementation of Web Services in our project. So, had to struggle a lot to understand basics of web service. But I always from my school time had intrest in XML and Web so understanding that part was not that difficult but I really had to work hard to understand web services from Siebel Prespective. I am thankful to God now that there was nobody to guide me at that time which resulted in terrific learning and understanding of a fact

'Siebel is Huge' like a sea and what I have explored till now is not even 10% of whole Siebel.

During my days working on Siebel Web Services I created a Powerpoint Presentation (PPT) which had minimum steps that you need to perform to create Inbound and Outbound Service with Screen Shots. Which I would like to share with you all. It can act as a your guide to check If you are missing any steps in creating Web Service. It is not a comprehensive guide but just a tutorial to give you insight and to point you to the right direction if you are involved in EAI.

Click on the Link Below to download the PPT.

Download Now!!!!

Hope this post helps you. Please post your comments and suggestions.

Siebel How To - enable or disable a button conditionally?

2008-05-07T17:22:00.000+05:30

I was working on my desk one day and newbie to siebel approached me to ask a question(also a avid reader on asked me the same question on mail). He asked me about a simple requirement or rather I should say the requirement that appeared simple to me.

The requirement was :

A button on an Applet should be enabled if a particular user logs into the application otherwise it should remain disabled.The Solution is a simple script that we can write on Applet_PreCanInvoke event to enable or disable a button conditionally.

I am providing the pseudo code for that script below

function WebApplet_PreCanInvokeMethod (MethodName, &CanInvoke)
{
if (MethodName == "UrButtonMethod")
{
if(UserLogin == "AuthorisedUser")
{
CanInvoke="TRUE";
return (CancelOperation);
}
else
{
CanInvoke="FALSE";
return (CancelOperation);
}
}
}

There is just one catch in the above mentioned code. How will you find that user is the authorised user or not. There are several ways of doing it some are easy and some are difficult.

I will tell you the easiest way to do that. You just need to write one line of code to accomplish that which is as following.

if(TheApplication().GetProfileAttr("Me.Login") == "AuthorisedUserLogin")

There is a whole bunch of such kind of profile attributes that are available to us all the time in the whole application, we can use them anywhere we want. But discussion on Profile Attributes is subject of another post. So, come back for more.

If this post was helpful to you, Please post your comments or suggestions to make this site better.

Navigating Siebel - Via Keyboard!

2008-05-07T17:21:00.000+05:30

We generally navigate siebel with the help of mouse. Suppose, one fine day your mouse stops working would that mean that you are stuck and will not be able to work on siebel? I don't think so, to overcome that situation Siebel has provided keyboard shortcuts or acclerators to navigate and perform important functions in siebel so that you are dependent on Mouse to do all your work in siebel.

And I have always been a fan of keyboard as it saves you lot of time while working on system. So, here I am presenting list of keyboard shortcuts provided by siebel to perform various functions.

Record Management

New Record : CTRL + N
Copy Record : CTRL + B
Delete Record : CTRL + D
Save Record : CTRL + S
Undo Record : CTRL + U OR ESC
Select All Records in List : CTRL + A

Record Navigation

Next Record : CTRL + Down Arrow Key
Next Page of Records : CTRL + ALT + . (In List Applets)
Last Page of Records : CTRL + ALT + L (In List Applets)
Previous Record : CTRL + Up Arrow Key
Previous Page of Records : CTRL + ALT + , (In List Applets)
First Page of Records : CTRL + ALT + F (In List Applets)

Query Management

New Query : CTRL + Q
Execute Query : ENTER in a Field OR CTRL + ENTER in a Text Area
Refine Query : CTRL +R

General Navigation

Go to Site Map : CTRL + SHIFT + A
Open Search Center : CTRL + F OR CTRL + SHIFT + F
Run Report : CTRL + SHIFT + R

Layout Management

Define Columns Displayed : CTRL + SHIFT + K
Define Sort Order : CTRL + SHIFT + O

Online Help Shortcut

Open Online Help : CTRL + ALT + H
Help with Record : CTRL + ALT + K
Technical Support : CTRL + ALT + J

Application Management Shortcut

Connect as New User : CTRL + SHIFT + W (Works in Dedicated Client)
Log Out : CTRL + SHIFT + X (Works in Dedicated Client)

Field Navigation

Next Field : Tab
Previous Field : SHIFT + TAB

If you think I have missed something or you know something that others don't feel free to share it here. I will be more than happy to include it with your reference.

Siebel CRM How To - Automate login into Siebel Dedicated Client

2008-05-07T17:19:00.000+05:30

The trick I am going to tell you in this article might seem to you very simple and basic if you have been working on siebel for a long time but for a newbie it can be small time saving trick during his early days of dabbling with Siebel Development. I have come to know in last few days while talking to a friend, assuming that a simple thing is known to everybody is a mistake and there is nothing such as useless simple thing.

My experience has taught me that it is pretty common to ignore simple things but they usually are the one's that can save you a lot of hassel if used in a proper way. During our intital time of Siebel development there is atleast 50 time we open Siebel Dedicated Client and Siebel tools while we are trying to explore Siebel to the best of our ablity. This simple trick can automate your login to the client and tools and save some time of entering username or password.

Right Click the shortcut through which you acess the Siebel Client or Siebel Tools and choose Properties from the context menu.
Scroll right to the end of Target Text Field Value enter the following text in the end.

/u sadmin /p sadmin /d sample

These text will automate your login to sample database. If you want to automate your login to Local Database enter the following code.

/u username /p pwd /d Local

replace username with your local username and pwd with your local database password

You can create copies of the shortcut that you use and can configure different shortcuts to login to different databases. Detail about switches being used in the above article and other switches that can be used is a subject of another post.

Hope this post helps you. If yes, Then please post your comments or suggestion to improve this blog.

NextRecord DeleteRecord - Use with caution!!

2008-05-07T17:16:00.000+05:30

Number of times we have written code in which we have to traverse number of records in a loop and n number of times we have missed one important statement that results in our code to stuck in infinite loop. Yes, I am talking about the statement Object.NextRecord()

This statment is generally used at the end of the loop so that after all the processing is complete we move on to the next record in the record set and perform processing on the next record. I am giving a Psuedo code to explain that.

while(not end of recordset)

{

perform operation

recordset.NextRecord()

}

But here I am going to to tell you about a situation where doing a NextRecord(). will result in problems. Yes, I we are deleting the records in the loop then we don't need to use the NextRecord() function.

Reason for that is using DeleteRecord() results in pointer to moved to next record automatically and if we use NextRecord then it will result in skipping of the last record we are trying to delete. Pseudo to explain this

while(not end of RecordSet)

{

do processing

recordset.DeleteRecord();

// recordset.NextRecord(); // no need to use next record as delete will automatically move the pointer to next line

}

Hope this tip is helpful. Happy Scripting :)

Siebel CRM How To – Restrict a Field to only Accept Certain Characters?

2008-05-07T17:15:00.000+05:30

Requirement:

We have a multilingual application and we have Unicode enabled database but still we would like to restrict user from entering certain characters.

We want to prevent user from entering numbers in alpha-numeric fields.

Solution:

Use charCodeAt function given by Siebel but not documented properly by Siebel. Here I am giving a Pseudo code to explain how it can be used.

if (FieldName == "First Name") {
for (var i=0;i less than field length ;i++) {
var ASCII_code = fieldvalue.charCodeAt(i)
if(ASCII_code is not valid code)
Error("Not Valid Code");
}}

charCodeAt() returns the ASCII code of the character that is supplied to it. ASCII code comparison is way faster than the number function that are used to compare strings so we can also use this function where we want to compare two strings by just modifying the above given Pseudo code.

Hope this helps! If yes, Please put your comments below.

Siebel eScript – How to track performance with Timing Scripts

2008-05-07T17:14:00.000+05:30

Timing scripts can come in handy to know exactly how much our code is taking to execute. There can be several reasons for doing this.

We are calling several business services in code and we need to know performance of each one.
We need to know time our script on business component, Applet is taking
We have several approaches to solve the problem and need to know the exact time taken by each.

The code to achieve that is:

var fileVar = Clib.fopen("c:\\Timing.txt", "at");
var timeVar = Clib.ctime(Clib.time());
Clib.fputs(timeVar + ": Starting trace in of code", fileVar);

//code which you want to track time
…………………………………….
…………………………………….

timeVar = Clib.ctime(Clib.time());
Clib.fputs("Ending trace of code: " + timeVar, fileVar);
Clib.fclose(fileVar);

PS: This code will work only if you are trying to run it in dedicated client or your Siebel server is windows server. This code will fail if you are trying to run it from thin client and your Siebel Server is a unix server as it will not able to find the path. You will have to change the path to unix path e.g. /apps/srvr/bin if your server is unix.

Hope this helps!!!!

Siebel eScript – An Overview

2008-05-07T17:13:00.000+05:30

Scripting is one of the most important areas in Siebel Development but irony is that it is never recommended to write script in Siebel. Siebel scripting is done in a language known as eScript. eScript shares it’s syntax with JavaScript. If you have worked in JavaScript then you would find it pretty easy to adapt to eScript.

eScript can be broadly classified into two categories

Server Scripts
Browser Scripts

Server Scripts: as its name suggests is executed on server side. Which means that the user request is sent to server where the scripts is then executed

Browser Script: is actually converted into JavaScript and is executed on client side.

Usually scripting is written on objects in Siebel such as Applets, Business Components etc. But the main use of eScript is done to write Business Services. There are lots of things that you achieve through a business service. Detail discussion on business service is subject to different post but it is similar to somewhat workflows implementing complete business processes with the help of script.

Scripting should be used as a last resort. Everything can be done through script of course but it makes the manageability and up gradation of Application difficult.

But as I said in my earlier post to be a successful Siebel developer Scripting and Configuration should be your strong points. Scripting can be fun but should be avoided as long as possible

Siebel Logs - How Useful are they ?

2008-05-07T17:09:00.000+05:30

If you have worked on Siebel CRM I am sure that you have heard the term LOGS lot of times. They are one of the most important and useful things if you are a Siebel Developer. But still most of us actually know how to use them to our advantage or to reduce our development time. Here in this Article I will try to explain some tips and tricks to get the logs and debug our code. Now we all know that we have two types of Siebel Application Clients.

Dedicated Client
Web Client

Siebel Web Client : We will talk first about the Siebel Web Client. Now to get logs from Siebel Web Client there is no easy way and the only way to get logs is to increase the log level at server for "Object Manager" or particular component that you want to get logs of for example Workflow Process Manager. I will talk detail about the Web Client Logging techniques in my next few posts.

In this article I am going to discuss ways which can help us get logs from dedicated clients and speed up our debugging and development time.

Dedicated Client : There are essentialy two ways to get logs from dedicated client

Spool
Environmental Variable

Spool : it is a very basic and known technique to get the spool of all the SQL Queries that are fired in the database level and we all come across it during our initial Siebel development days. We can enable the spool for Siebel Client as well as Siebel Tools. The steps to enable spool for both the Siebl tools and client there is common process which is as following

Right click the siebel tools or Siebel Client Shortcut
Go to end of String which is in Target Text Field
Enter the Following string at the end: /s "c:\spool.txt"

/s switch here stands for Spool. Various other switches that can be used are as following

/u : username
/p : password
/d : database

With the following string you can automate login to your local or sample database depeding on the value you give in the switch. I am providing you examples of both

/u sadmin /p sadmin /d sample : String to login to Sample database with Sadmin user id
/u user /p pwd /d local : String to login to Local database with "user" user id.

Environmental Variable : This is more powerful and less know method of generating logs for dedicated client. Siebel has provided couple of Environmental Variables which are as following :

SIEBEL_LOG_EVENTS
SIEBEL_LOG_DIR

SIEBEL_LOG_EVENTS : This environmental variable can have two types of values.
Numeric or text. The numeric value is the log level which can be between 1-4. 1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest. The Text value can be ALL which means Log Level of 4.

SIEBEL_LOG_DIR : This value of this variable is path where you want to create the logs. Makes sure that the path you mention is valid otherwise the logs will be created in the temp directory.

Examples of both the environmental variables are as following

SIEBEL_LOG_EVENTS : ALL
SIEBEL_LOG_DIR : C:\siebel_logs

The process to create these enviornmental variables is as following

Right click on the My Computer Icon
Select Properties from context menu
Go to ==> Advanced Tab
Click ==> Environmental Variables
In User Environmental Variables Tab click New
Enter SIEBEL_LOG_EVENTS in Variable Name field
Enter ALL in Variable Value Field
Click New again and Enter the following details
Variable Name : SIEBEL_LOG_DIR ; Variable Value : "your siebel log path"

Remember that Variable Names are case Sensitive. After you have created the variables when you start you dedicated client you will notice that in the path that you have given a file named siebel.log is created for Dedicated Client and file named siebel_dev is created for Siebel Tools.

If you don't provide the SIEBEL_LOG_DIR environmental variable the logs are created by default in Temp Directory.

Hope this posts helps you.
If the answer is yes. Please post your comments and visit again.

Siebel Business Component Outer Join - How Important?

2008-05-07T17:08:00.000+05:30

During my past two years of working on Siebel I have come across lot of situations where just one little miss can wreck havoc with the application. It can result in performance issues and Data issues. I think some of you might have guessed by know what miss I am talking about.

I am talking about Outer Join Flag on Join Section of the Business Component. Joins are the integral part of Siebel configuration. They are indispensable, joins are required because we know the database (it can be oracle, DB2 or Microsoft SQL Server) is a relational database known as RDBMS in short form. Which means the information that resides in it is in the form of related tables and we always need information of one table in another. These tables are related with the help of Foreign Keys (FK). So, when we want to show information of one table in another we use Joins and we use them all the times.

When we are creating Joins in Siebel you can see a field called Outer Join Flag. Please see the screenshot below.

and every time we don't check that flag we are heading for trouble.
Now, what exactly does that flag represent? Before I explain it I assume that you have basic understanding of SQL and simple joins. As I have mentioned earlier that everything that configure or do on UI is converted into SQL and that is where this flag comes into picture.

For example see the simple sql pulling data from another table with the help of simple join

select name b
from siebel.s_opty a, siebel.s_doc_quote b
where b.par_row_id = a.row_id
and a.somefield = b.somefield
and a.row_id = 'Some Id'

Now this SQL is suppose to select name of the quote where the par_row_id column (which store row id of its parent) is equal to the row if of opportunity and in addition to that somefield of opportunity is equal to some field of quote. Now we assume that you had created a join between Opportunity-Quote and forgot to check the outer join flag.You will be amazed to see that there are No Records on UI. The reason being it will try to match the exact values in the field and any record that is a not a match will be discarded. Which means if there are some records that have no value in 'somefield' either in Opportunity or on Quote will be discarded. What if we want those records to shown? We have to check the Outer join flag which will result in a query as given below

select name b
from siebel.s_opty a, siebel.s_doc_quote b
where b.par_row_id = a.row_id
and a.somefield = b.somefield(+)
and a.row_id = 'Some Id'

Which will result in all the Quotes that have 'Some Id' in par_row_id or in simple terms that have Opportunity Id with 'Some Id' as their parent.

My experience has taught me to ask this as the first question whenever I face problem mentioned above and I have seen developers sweat over this kind of problem for hours before they spot it. I will mention some real life situations I have faced which were due this little (or rather huge) miss while doing configuration.

Examples - Real Life Situations:
We have developed a web service that resulted in the insertion of quotes from a Java Application. When we inserted a quote it got inserted successfully and when we tried to update it, it Failed. It took us almost a day to find out that a developer had created a new join in business component and forgot to check that Outer Join flag which resulted in update to failed as it was not able to fetch that record.

I had created a new View in Assets Screen. When user was in My Assets view then he was able to see the records but as soon as he choose All view the records disappeared. The reason same a new join and forgot to check Outer join flag.

Whenever you face this kind of problem go through logs and more often than not you will find this as your root cause. To know more about logs read my Post Siebel - Logs How useful are they?

If this Post was helpful to you please post some comments and come back for more.

Siebel Profile Attributes - an Overview.

2008-05-07T17:07:00.000+05:30

Profile Attributes I stumbled upon them in siebel when I was working on my first assignment involving Siebel EAI. Till that time I had only used and heard of Global Variables which you could use throught out your script.

But as the requirement said only if user clicked a button in View A and then performed some particular action in View B trigger a workflow.

As views involved had different BC's it was not possible to have done through global variables. Then my senior colluege introduced me to a new entity in siebel called 'Profile Attributes'. They are important because they have a unique property. They are available throughout the application. The best term that comes to my mind to describe them is 'Session Variables'. Those who have worked a little bit on development of Web Application will understand exactly what I am saying and for those who hasn't worked on them I will explain.

As you know from siebel 7 onwards it has Web Architecture. So, as soon as you login into siebel through your browser a session is started which last till time you log out or you close your browser window or according to the length set through session parameter at server level.

Now discussing in details that how server maintains this session and what goes on behind the scene is out of scope of this article
but what you need to know is that Siebel server recognises every unique user through session id that is given to you when you login to siebel and it remains valid until you session closes due to above mentioned reasons. So, Profile Attributes are variables that can hold any value during the session of the user. There are two methods available to in siebel escript that help you to work with Profile Attributes.

GetProfileAttr
SetProfileAttr

GetProfileAttr method is used to retrieve the value of a particular profile attribute. The syntax is

TheApplication().GetProfileAttr("ProfileAttrName")

SetProfileAttr method is used to set the value of Profile Attribute. If the Profile Attribute that you mention is not already existing it creates a new Profile Attribute. The syntax is

TheApplication().SetProfileAttr("ProfileAttrName",Value)

So, to accomplish the our requirement we Set a profile attribute when clicked the button on view A and then when he went to View B and did the particular action we wanted we retrieved the value of the profile attribute and if all the conditions were met we executed the workflow and everybody developed happily ever after :)

But, there is a twist in the story and it was not a happy ending after all which highlights the fragile nature of Profile Attributes. Now, in a particular situation this solution won't work. If user clicked button on View A and then logged off which meant profile attribute is destroyed hence the functionality failed. So, as you all must have guessed this solution was scrapped :(

So, the moral of the story is use Profile Attributes with caution and only if you are sure that if the session is destroyed you functionality wouldn't fail.

Siebel Search Specification (Search Spec) – What about it?

2008-05-07T17:06:00.000+05:30

This article has been submitted by Nidhi Puri having Siebel experience of 2+ years and right now working as Project Lead.

A Search Spec is nothing but a filter on the returned set of records and if we we look atc it from database point it acts as where clause in the SQL that is formed which restricts the number of records that will be retruned from database.

In Siebel we can apply search spec to

Applet
Business Component
Link
Picklist

1. For an Applet, a search spec filters the records that are displayed on UI. The underlying BC brings back a set of records and before they can be displayed, the applet search spec applies the filter on them and displays only a subset of records.

2. For a Business Component, a search spec filters all records that would be returned from the underlying base table. This would also result in the filtering of records on the applet tied to this BC. However, the search spec in 1 above works only for that particular applet while on a BC, the search spec is inherently applied to all applets that are based on this BC.

3. A search spec on a Link will filter all child records from the destination BC.

For Example
Account/Address link. Search spec looks something like this: [City] = ‘London’, this will bring back all address records for the account where the City = London.

4. A search spec on a Picklist will filter the data that the picklist points to. For static picklist, the data exists on the List of values, so the search spec for a static picklist would look something like this:

[Value] <> 'Corporate'. This would show all values other than "Corporate" when you click on the dropdown. For dynamic picklists, the search spec would something look like this: [Active Flag] = ‘Y’, this would bring back all records from the destination BC (on which the picklist is based on) where the Active Flag = Y

Siebel Tools - Check In - Check Out an Introduction.

2008-05-07T17:04:00.000+05:30

Check In - Check Out are the very common terms that Siebel Developers hear. A rather simple but a very important feature for development. Without this feature their would be an absolute chaos during development. I will try to explain Check In - Check Out (CICO) with the help of simple Analaogy:

Imagine a room full of documents. You are allowed to make a copy of document take it home and work on it. What If everybody was allowed to go in at any time into the room and modify any document they want? The answer is again Absolute Chaos. Imagine working really hard on the document and to see next day that what you have taken home is invalid because somebody took a copy and made some changes to and you have to do the rework.

Based on above analogy we can map 'Room' as 'Siebel Server Repository', Documents as 'Siebel Objects', Home as 'Local Environment'

So, the only way to control this is to have a some sort of mechanism to prevent you from taking that document while somebody else is working on it. Siebel Check In - Check Out process is precisely that chaos saving mechanism.

We all know that siebel is based on Client - Server Architecture and the same architechture is followed in case of siebel tools. You have siebel server repository and you siebel client dbf or local database where you perform you development.

Check In - Check Out in siebel refers to the process of getting a copy of siebel objects in the your local environment, work on it and then update it back to the server after you are done.

There are various terms in siebel that you need to understand the check in - check out process

Check Out : Process of getting a copy from Server Repository to your local database and also locking he object on server so that nobody else can modify it.
Check In : Process of putting the object from local environment back to server and also release the lock so that others can work on it
Get : Process of getting copy from Server Repository to your local database without locking the object.
Full Get : Process to update you local tools repository will the latest objects from Siebel Server Repository. Unlike Get you don't select a particular object to update but all the projects

You can check out a single object or a whole project. If you check out a whole project then all the objects that are part of that project will be locked with your Id and nobody else will be able to work on them. So, It is not a good idea. General practice is just to check out a single object.

Now, I will explain the steps to perform each operation mentioned above

Check - Out :

1. Query for the object that you want to check out.
2. Right Click and Choose Check Out. (You can also press F10 or choose Tools Menu ==> Check Out)
Tip:The option of check out single object will only be available if your tools.cfg as parameter EnableObjectCOCI set to true.
3. Again Click on Check Out in the new window that appears.

Check In :

1. Click Tools (Menu) ==> Check In (You can also press CTRL + F10)
A new window will appear. It will show the objects that have check out by your id
2. Select the Object that you want to check in and click Check In

Get :

1. Query for the object that you want to Get.
2. Right Click and Choose Check Out. (You can also press F10 or choose Tools Menu ==> Check Out)
Tip:The option of check out single object will only be available if your tools.cfg as parameter EnableObjectCOCI set to true.
3. Again Click on Get in the new window that appears.

Full Get :

1. Click Tools (Menu) ==> Check Out
2. Select 'All Projects' Radio button in the new window that appears
3. Click Get.

Hope this post was helpful. If Yes, Please post your comments.

Siebel CRM - Configuration File (cfg) Disected and Explained.

2008-05-07T17:03:00.000+05:30

Today we are going to discuss about one of the most important files for Siebel CRM. Yes, those who have worked on Siebel will know what I am talking about.
Yes, we are going to discuss ".cfg" file which stands for configuration file which largley controls siebel bhavieor. There are basically 3 important cfg files.

1. eapps.cfg
2. tools.cfg
3. cfg file for Siebel Client(Name can depend on the kind of siebel application you are using)
so for this article we will assume uagent.cfg which is used if you are using call center.

To discuss eapps.cfg is out of scope for this article so in this article we will be discussing tools.cfg and uagent.cfg file.

Tools.cfg is used for Siebel Tools and uagent exsits for Siebel Client both dedicated and thin. First of all the location of the file.

Tools.cfg exsits in :siebel installation directory\tools\bin\enu
Here enu means the language that you have choosen. It can be different if you have installed siebel tools in langauage other than english.

uagent.cfg exsits in : siebel installation directory\web client\bin\enu.
For thin client the cfg file exsits on server and the path is
/siebel install dir/siebsrvr/bin/enu if the server is Unix
siebel install dir\siebsrvr/bin/enu if the server is Windows
Now I will describe various sections of CFG file.

In CFG file anything that starts from [] is a section that contains certain Parameters to control siebel. I will list important sections that are important and we need modify them often

1. [Siebel]
2. [DataSources]
3. [Local]
4. [Sample] Only used if you have installed sample database
5. [ServerDataSrc] Very important and modified often.
6. [SWE]

Tip: If you want to comment anything in cfg file use ; a semicolon in front of any line would mean that siebel is going to ignore that line treating it as comment.
I am goint to list only the important parameters in the sections.

1. [Siebel] : This section contains important parameters related to siebel. Which are as following

RepositoryFile :Name of the SRF file to be used
ApplicationName :Name of the Application to be used
ApplicationTitle :Name that is going to appear in Title of your browser window and can be anything
ApplicationSplashText :Name that is going to appear when you start you dedicated client and can be anything
EnableScripting :Often used for debugging purposes. If set to false no script is going to execute when you start you client
LocalDbODBCDataSource :Name of the ODBC data source that is going to be used when you start dedicated client with local database (SSD Local Db default instance by default)
ServerDbODBCDataSource :Name of the ODBC data source that is going to be used when you start dedicated client with server database (SSD default instance by default)
DockRepositoryName :Name of the repository that is going to be used.
WebClientSiteDir : Path to the directory from where the browser scripts and images are going to be picked up
EnablePersonalization : To Enable or Disable personlaization for Siebel Users
EnableRuntimeEvents : To Enable or disable Runtime Events
EnableObjectCOCI : To Enable object check in check out when set to false you are not allowed to check out a single object. Remember Object checkout has to be enabled from tools also before you can do that

2. [DataSources] : This section contians the what you can see from the dropdown of you dedicated client. Default values are
Local = Local
Sample = Sample
ServerDataSrc = Server

You can specify more datasources under this section to specify more section you have to define it in the following way.

MyNewDataSource = NewDataSource
MyNewDataSource is the name of the Section that should be present in the cfg file that is going to contain parameters to be used for this datasource
'NewDataSource' is the value that is going to appear in the dropdown of dedicated siebel tools or client.
3. [Local] : In this section only one parameter is important and that we can change to our advantage
ConnectString = C:\PROGRA~1\Siebel\7.8\Tools\local\sse_data.dbf -q -m -x NONE -gp 4096 -c256m -ch256m

As you can see the value of the connection string is in the form of Path and then switches.

The path is the path to your dbf file and the switches that you can give are as following
-q : means start local database in quite mode.This prevents a SQL Anywhere window from showing up.
-m : truncate transaction log after checkpoint.
-x NONE : Do not load any network drivers.
-gp 4096 : Tells the engine that the database page size is 4,096 bytes.
-c256m : Initial cache size is 256 MB
-ch256m : Maximum cache size can be mb256.

4. [Sample] : This section is pretty similar to Local Section with exception of one parameter

FileSystem : It contains path to you file system where you attachments are stored

5. [ServerDataSrc] : This is one of the most important section and you have to change few parameter before you can actually login to server through Dedicated Client.

ConnectString : Here just like local section indicates the connection string to be used to connect to server
FileSystem : Path to you file system. Similar to local section
GatewayAddress : This will contain the name of your Siebel Gateway Server. This section has to be changed to a valid value
EnterpriseServer : This will contain the name of your Siebel Enterprise Server.This section has to be changed to a valid value

6. [SWE] : This section contains parameters related to the bitmaps and appearance of Siebel Client. But It contains an important parameter which is as following.

ClientBusinessService : This parameter is used if you want a business service to be called from browser scripts. The Business service has to be mentioned here in this section.
The format to mention the business service is

ClientBusinessServicen = "Business Service Name" where n is a incremental number one more than the number mentioned in last ClientBusinessService entry. For example
ClientBusinessService0 = "Message Bar"
ClientBusinessService1 = "Communications Client"

If I want to have one more entry in the file then I will enter
ClientBusinessService2 = "Business Service Name"

This completes the listing and explaination of important parameters of the cfg file used by siebel tools and siebel client.

Hope this post was helpful to you. If yes please post your comments and visit again for more.

Siebel CRM 7.8 - Signals Demystified.

2008-05-07T16:54:00.000+05:30

Anybody who has worked on Siebel 7.8 must have come accross the term 'Signal'. I came across this term just a few months ago. When were wroking for some Performance issues in our Project. It is one of the most useful thing that I have come across in Siebel in past 2 years of experience. It has the ability to change the way we do lot of things.

What I found out during my Reaserch to find out more on singals is the fact that it is absolutely not a new thing in siebel. It has been part of siebel from very start which is way back in Siebel 6. I know you might be confused a little bit. Let me explain.

we all know that siebel is a Event Driven language. We can choose to handle those events or let siebel handle those events.In events we do some coding for the custom methods that we have defined. And we all know that in the end we have to write a statement 'return(CancleOperation)'. Of Late what I knew was that we just have to write this statement otherwise we get and error message 'MethodName is not Supported'.

The reason for this kind of behaviour is 'Signals' that's right!!! Signals are responsible for it. Now I will explain how.

Everything Method Invoked in Siebel is a 'Signal' which is passed on to the C++ code that makes the core siebel. When a vanilla method is invoked such as 'SetFieldValue' , 'GetFieldValue', 'InvokeMethod' Siebel has the code in it is C++ Classes to handle it. But when we invoke the custom method Siebel has absolutely no idea how to handle that code. So, we write the statement 'return(CancleOperation)' so that the custom method never reaches Siebel C++ code.

Now the question is what has changed in Signals in version 7.8? Well, the answer is Prior this version of siebel we coudn't create custom signals and we couldn't modify the existing signals. But now in Siebel 7.8 we can change vanilla singals and also create new signals.

The view that let's us do that is Adminstration ==> Order Management ==> Signals.

You can see in this view a lot of signals related to pricing as they are used extensively for Pricing in siebel. But you can also see signals like 'SetFieldvalue'.

In my next post I will be explaining in detail how we used Copy and Revise Vanilla Signals to rectify the performance issues related to Copy and Revision of Quote.

If this post has been helpful. Please post your comments and visit again for more.

Siebel 7.8 Signals - A Case Study!

2008-05-07T16:52:00.002+05:30

I am back with what I promised.
A case study how we used signals to improve the perfomance by 83%. I will try to tell you facts that I found while working on them and not available in bookshelf and supportweb. If you want to know about singals please read my post Siebel CRM 7.8 - Signals Demysitified

We are working on Siebel 7.8.2.3. It is a Call Center module but major and complex functionality is weaved around Quote Module which includes customizable products. Now these coustmizable products can have upto 10 products and 300 attributes in one Quote Item record. In addition to Quote and Quote Item various custom entities are also copied as Quote Item Child. So, In total there are 11 entites are copied over when you 'Copy' or 'Revise' Quote.

Now it is not possible to copy all these through configuration as by configuration only 'Root Quote Item' or just the First record of Quote Item is copied over, not all the records that are created as a result of customization of product. So, The intial solution was to copy or revise quote through scripting copying the Quote Item and all of its child. But the result was that it took upto 3 minutes to copy or revise the quote which was unacceptable and due to accessive scripting the process was not stable and often broke giving one or the other scripting error.

So, we started exploring the Solution through vaniall singals i.e 'CopyQuote' to copy quote and 'ReviseCopyQuote' to revise quote. When these signals were enabled they resulted in copy and revision of just 'Quote' and 'Quote Item'. After further exploring we found that these signal use a 'Data Map' which can be modified through Application

Data Maps are available
Adminstration ==> Application ==> Data Map Administration.
This view is not available by default especially if you have upgraded your application to Siebel 7.8. You might have to enter a different license key for this view. Data Maps are nothing but declarative mapping of BO, BC and Fields. You specify the Source BC, Fields and Destination BC, Fields. Just creating the mapping is not enough you have to have supporting configuration of the BC's to make it work.

Every BC that you enter should be added to the BO. It should have a Link to it's parent (if any) and that links should be added in the Business Component Section of BO.
Add the custom fields to the datamap.

Now comes the tricky part. Even if you do all this you will not see any improvement in performance and you might face some errors. This is what you have to do in addition to what you have already done.

1. Create 'MapId' Advanced Property for Child Business Component Fields.
2. Create Light version of Child Business Components.

Now, I will explain all the three steps in detail.

MapId : Data Maps support an advanced property called 'MapId' which is really important if you want this to work. 'MapId' is not properly defined in Bookshelf. I will try to explain this property with help of an example.

We assume that Quote Item has a child called Delivery Schedule and we want it to be copied over when we copy quote. A field called 'Quote Item Id' is present in delivery schedule which stores the row id of Quote Item and is used by Link hence establishing the Parent-Child relationship.

When we specify a source field in data map the value of that field is copied to the field specified in the destination field section. Which means when we specify 'Quote Item Id' Field value from source 'Quote Item Id' is copied to the destination field. To simply this further suppose the source 'Quote Item Id' had a value '1-6666' which means destination 'Quote Item Id' would have value '1-6666'. But this is wrong. This behaviour would mean that new delivery schedule record is now child of old 'Quote Item' not new.

Here is where 'MapId' property comes into picture. You have to specify 'MapId' property for all the fields which are suppose to store the row id of parent business component. You have to enter the following information in the MVG that opens when you click on Advanced property field

Property Name :MapId (remember it is case sensitive)
Property Value : Name of parent business component

According to above example the Advanced property would be something like this

Property Name : MapId
Property Value : Quote Item

This should solve one of your problems.

Light Version BC: When we are copying we don't need the validations or stuff like precision or Currency code property.
Making the BC Light mean that create a copy of the original BC and perform the following steps

1. Change the Class of the Bus Comp CSSBCBase.
2. Disable all the user properties of the buscomp.
3. Remove all the Post Defaults and Pre Defaults (Until and unless really required)
4. Remove all the picklists
5. All the values from the validations
6. All the values from the precision fields

I think you Get the idea now So, remove all that you think can be unnecessary. But there are something that are required so you have to use a little common sense before removing all these things.

And you are done!!!!!!!

Using these signals we were able to reduce the copy/revise time to under 10 seconds when it had records in all the 11 custom entities.

Best Practices For Siebel

2008-05-07T16:52:00.001+05:30

Through my experience I have learnt that there are always several ways to accomplish everything. Some of them are the right way to do things and some of them are wrong way. It might take a little more effort to do things in right way but it always pay in the long run. Wrong way might save you some time and effort but price you have and consequences you have to suffer are far greater. This post here would provide you some insight on doing thing right way in siebel.

Whenever there is a requirement to extend a column in a table it is suggested that instead of extending the Base Table we should extend the Extension table corresponding to it.
Whenever you extend the column in a table make sure you also extend the EIM table corresponding to it and also make a record in the Attribute Mapping.
Steps for it:

a) Go to the EIM Interface table object and identify the correct EIM table.

b) Extend the EIM Table.

c) In EIM Table Mapping object > Attribute Mapping Object > create a record for newly added column.

The customized buttons who have the Method Invoked Property as"EventMethod%" ie. prefixed with 'EventMethod' need not to be forcibly enable
by using 'PreCanInvoke" event scripting.
They are always enabled.

Hope this helps. Keep Coming for more

Siebel CRM - Back to Basics (Siebel Architechture).

2008-05-07T16:51:00.000+05:30

In a perfect world this would have been my first article. But this world is not perfect and as the saying goes 'Better late than never' here it is.

I will approach Siebel Architecture in a different way. Then I will take each technical term used in this article that is important and requires further exploration and explain it further in next articles of Back to Basics series.

Ever wondered what happens once you have put the URL of your siebel Application in the browser and hit enter?

This is different approach to Siebel Architecture. The answer to this question will be an explaination of Siebel Architechture. So, Let's start.

==> You have opened your browser window and have enterned the URL and Clicked Go button of your browser window
http://yourseiebelapp/apptype_lang/start.swe
Before going into background I would like to explain or dissect the above given URL.

http : Is the protocol that is being used to transfer the data over web from one computer to another.
yoursiebelapp : is the host name of the Web Server on which your Siebel Component resides. We will go into details of these components later
apptype_lang can be divided into two parts
apptype : Represents the module you are using can be sales, callcenter, mkt etc.
lang : Represents the language of your implementation can be enu, fin etc.
start.swe : It might be used or might not be used but represents a command recoganized by siebel component called 'SWSE' which stands for Siebel WebServer Extensions.

Now we know the meaning of the URL we have just entered we will move behind the scenes.

==> The Request goes to the Webserver (Discussing Webserver is out of scope for this post) where an important component resides called Siebel Webserver Extensions (SWSE).
SWSE :
The responsibility of this component is to identify if the request that has arrived on webserver is a Siebel request or not and also it helps to format the html pages that are server to the Web Clients of siebel. It also supports Load balancing if you have more than one siebel server which generally is the case.
==> If the request received is a siebel request then SWSE contacts Siebel Gateway Name Server to obtain information about Siebel Servers and Siebel Enterprise Server.
Siebel Gateway Name Server (SGNS):
SGNS can be considered as Sieber Server contact information storehouse for all the siebel servers. It serves as the dynamic address registry for Siebel Servers and components. At start up, a Siebel Server within the Siebel Enterprise Server stores its network address in the Gateway Name Servers nonpersistent address registry.
It also has a important file called siebns.dat containg information of Siebel Servers such as
1. Operational parameters
2. Connectivity information
3. Definitions and assignments of component groups and components

Siebel Enterprise Server (SES) :
SES is not a physical server it is just a logical entity in simple terms SES is a logical grouping on serveral siebel servers such as Siebel Server shaing one database can part of SES.

The Siebel Servers in a Siebel Enterprise Server are configured, managed, and monitored as a single logical group which helps the Siebel Administrator to start, stop, monitor, or set server parameters for all Siebel Servers within the Siebel Enterprise Server.

==> Once the SWSE gets information about Siebel Server it forwards the request to the Siebel Server on Round Robin basis due its load balancing feature.

Siebel Server (SS) :
Siebel Server is the system on which Siebel Server Components are installed and it functions as Application server. Each server component performs a defined function.Server components or groups of components determine what applications and services a Siebel Server supports. The Siebel Server runs as a system service under Windows and a process under UNIX. This system service or process monitors and controls the state of all server components on that Siebel Server. Each Siebel Server is one instantiation of the Siebel Server system service or process within the current Siebel Enterprise Server.

==> Once the request is received by siebel server it is passed to a component called Application Object Manager (AOM)

Application Object Manager (AOM) :
One of the most important types of server components is the Application Object Manager (AOM).They process user requests and are application or service-specific. For example A Sales Application will have Sales AOM and Call center application will have a Call Center AOM.This Application Object Manager provides the session environment in which this application runs. When an AOM receives a user request to start an application, it does the following:

==> The business object layer starts an application user session, processes any required business logic, and sends a data request to the data manager.

Data Manager (DM) :
Data Manager is that another component that is a part of AOM. Its primary function is to receive user request create corresponding SQL and Forward it to database Server. It also receives results from Database server and forwards it to Siebel Business Object Layer for additional processing.

==> Siebel Business Object Layer forwards the results to Siebel Web Engine (SWE) another component residing in AOM.

==> SWE helps create UI for the data and forwards the web pages to the SWSE Component which resides on Web Server.

==> Webserver then sends back the results to the users who had intially requested it.

Siebel CRM How To - Automate login into Siebel Dedicated Client

2008-05-07T16:48:00.000+05:30

Right Click the shortcut through which you acess the Siebel Client or Siebel Tools and choose Properties from the context menu.
Scroll right to the end of Target Text Field Value enter the following text in the end.

/u sadmin /p sadmin /d sample

These text will automate your login to sample database. If you want to automate your login to Local Database enter the following code.

/u username /p pwd /d Local

replace username with your local username and pwd with your local database password

Hope this post helps you. If yes, Then please post your comments or suggestion to improve this blog.