12
Aug
2009
Siebel – Symbolic Strings
by Nitin JainConsider this a brief introductory tutorial on Symbolic Strings in Siebel. Symbolic Strings are from amongst the most commonly used entities in Siebel, especially in Siebel Multi lingual deployments.
They can greatly reduce the job of initializing, deploying, tracking, modifying all the plethora of error/warning messages that you may generally come across in a typical Siebel CRM application.
The Symbolic Strings centralize all the English and non-english language messages at one place in Siebel, where you to manage. You always have the option of doing this independently at all the individual places in Applets, Business Components and the like, but, it is really not recommended.
Symbolic Strings are defined and managed from within Siebel Tools. This Siebel feature was introduced for the first time with Siebel 7.7 (there was a big bunch of innovations that came with this Siebel version for the first time), and has persisted since. So, it could be one serious consideration if you are looking to upgrade from an older Siebel version.
But be careful. Some of the data is not converted to Symbolic Strings automatically during upgrade. This includes, Seed Data, Error Messages, LOVs, lots of non translable attributes, etc. These continue to use the Local based string values.
Migrating to Symbolic Strings in case of upgrade, using the Siebel Conversion and Consolidation process, though could be useful in many ways, is a different topic in itself.
Some of the typical scenarios where Symbolic Strings may be applicable are:
1) Displaying the same string at a number of places in Applets
Assume you have multiple Applets based on the same BC (Sales, Manager, Admin, External) exposing some of the common fields. Why to declare them repeatedly each time (though Siebel still allows you to do that!)? You can just go in to create a Symbolic String. Refer this Symbolic String in the value. Use of the String Override function should be reduced as much as possible!
2) Displaying the same string differently in multiple languages in the application
Either define the different caption for different languages by using the locale option corresponding to the control, else, better still, go in for Symbolic Strings!
Some of the typical advantages of using Siebel Symbolic Strings in your application are:
1) Avoiding redundancy and duplicacy, of course!
2) A centralized place for declaring and updating these user messages.
3) In the process, reducing maintenance, and enhancing value.
4) Reduced development time cycle (the obvious buzzword, TAT!!), and costs.
Do note that some of the other kinds of strings, like LOVs, PDQs, etc. are not covered as a part of the Symbolic Strings functionality. These are defined and used differently in Siebel system.
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