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Siebel – Run Case Insensitive queries

Nitin Jain — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:41:15 +0000

This is a nice tip I ran across. All the Siebel Developers use Siebel Tools and Siebel Web Client extensively. And, each one of us run over a hundred queries daily. However, when querying for some data, for eg. a Business Service Name in Tools, Siebel generally demands we enter the correct case. To streamline the process and improve productivity, I continuously keep making minor modifications in my environment settings.

Method 1:
Open your corresponding CFG file in Edit mode (for Tools or for the Client). Navigate to the corresponding section for the Datasource, Sample, Local, Server or some other custom section. Search for the following parameter and update the value from FALSE to TRUE.

CaseInsensitive = TRUE

This parameter is available in both the Siebel Tools and the Siebel Client CFGs, both on the Local and on the Server.

Method 2:
This method will work on the Server.

In the Siebel Web Client, login with Server Admin priviledges. Navigate to the following path:
Sitemap -> Administration – Server Configuration -> Profile Configuration (tab)

Query for the ‘Profile’ with the name, “Server Datasource”.
From the bottom-most applet, search for the parameter with Alias, “DSCaseInsensitiveFlg”. The parameter would have the ‘Name’, “Database Case Insensitive Flag”. Set the value to TRUE.

And you are ready to go.

Warning:
There is a field level setting that makes the query on that particular field Case Sensitive or Insensitive. It appears as a property with the name “Use Default Sensitivity” corresponding to every Business Component field.

Siebel Help says it would work with only the Id fields, and only those Id fields which are exposed corresponding to the Business Fields. We cannot set this for eg. for the field, ‘Id’, corresponding to ROW_ID in the Database Column. However, in practice, this property seems to work for all the Varchar type fields.

Ensure the flag in this field is ticked, such that this value is always, TRUE.

Be fast, be more productive, Outperform!!

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Siebel – EnableServiceArgTracing – Logging Messages

Nitin Jain — Tue, 26 May 2009 06:51:54 +0000

Hi,

We have already discussed at quite a length the logging methods, the most prominent of these being the usage of vanilla Siebel EAI Queues. You can read about the entire series through the following links:
A meeting with Siebel EAI
Siebel – EAI Queue
Siebel – EAI Queue – Usage
Siebel – EAI Queue – a Critique’

I recently came across another vanilla method (EnableServiceArgTracing) to log the messages. Using this, the various Siebel logs can be created, and the Input and the Output messages to some of the Business Services can be written in XML format to a file. These XML files would appear as Siebel Dump files with a “.dmp” extension. These can be read off any standard text reading tool like Notepad, Editplus, Notepad++, etc. This process works with EAI Siebel Adapter and EAI Dispatcher business services.

Usage
Read about the detailed Local logging in Siebel here.
Set the Siebel SIEBEL_LOG_EVENTS environment variable value to:
3 – Input property set as Output in case of Error will be received
4 – Both Input and Output property set would be received

Be ready to receive huge Log files in your Siebel Log directory, and exceptionally slow Siebel performance after enabling this. Logs are now being created for every step, so this is all the more logical.

Set the Server parameter, “EnableServiceArgTracing” to “TRUE”.
In case of dedicated, local, or sample based testing, edit the following sections in the .cfg and set the following:

[EAISubsys]
EnableServiceArgTracing = TRUE

Restart Siebel and you are ready to go.

Now, whenever a process is run, it would create logs. Also, in the same directory you would see .dmp, or the Siebel Dump files being created. These are XML files which would have the Input and Output property sets contained. You can open and view these in any text editor.

The names of the files created are in the format:
_input_args_.dmp OR,
_output_args_.dmp

The main advantage of this method is that it does not require any changes, or switches in the main process to get the debugigng information. So, it is as clean as can be. Also, we can do this easily on any environment, TEST or any other.

The main disadvantage I see with this approach is that it logs Inputs and Outputs of only the EAI Siebel Adapter and the EAI Dispatcher Business Services. More usually, the integration is done using many other services, wherein a proper logging and error handling architecture becomes mandatory. So, I cannot do away with the other fancy stuff I generally incorporate into my architecture for that reason I guess!

I wish Siebel provided an easy way except studying Logs, to know which all Business Services or Workflows were invoked, and what all inputs and outputs were provided, whenever a complex process was invoked. It would make my life so much easier..

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Siebel – Enable Detailed Logging – Local

Nitin Jain — Mon, 25 May 2009 12:30:36 +0000

Very often we come across scenarios wherein the process is not really clear through the interface exposed to us. We generally need to go into detailed logs at various levels to understand the internal process, and as to which all parameters are flowing at each step in the flow. The server level settings are different. I will cover here, as to how we can enable or disable detailed logging of Siebel processes in our Dedicated, Local or Sample environments. We can use it to understand complex Siebel processes in detail, for eg. eConfigurator and ePricer related flows.

This is something very trivial, and I guess most of you would already be implementing this in your personal set-ups. However, just for the purpose of making and retaining notes here, I will add this post.

We would be modifying some Operating System Environment variables here.
I have my desktop running on Windows XP. In this case, right click on the ‘My Computer’ icon, and select ‘Properties’.
Navigate to the Tab labelled ‘Advanced’.
Press the button ‘Environment Variables..’
In the section for ‘User Variables”, look for the variable named, “SIEBEL_LOG_DIR”. If not already present, create one. In my case, I gave it the value, “D:\\SiebelLogs”. All Siebel Logs will now be created in this custom directory rather than the vanilla Siebel directory under Siebel Install directory.
Similarly, create another User Variable with the name, “SIEBEL_LOG_EVENTS”. The value of this variable can vary between 0-5, with 0 indicating the lowest level of detail, and 5 indicating the maximum level of details. A log level of 5 creates extensive logs very large in size owing to the high level of details.
Save and close.

Now, every new session of Siebel Tools or Siebel Web Client will start creating logs in the directory pointed to by SIEBEL_LOG_DIR according to the Log level set in SIEBEL_LOG_EVENTS. This can help in detailed understanding and debugging of most processes, before we execute them on the server.

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Siebel – Number of rows displayed in List Applet

Prachi Sharma — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:16:53 +0000

Siebel Web Client by default shows only the first 7 rows. I guess all of us would have observed that. Today, I will share a Siebel tip as to how we can control increasing or descreasing this default number.

There are two kinds of settings in Siebel to control this:
1) Control the number of default rows being shown. And,
2) The maximum number of rows being shown in one go on the screen. This is when we press the Show More button on the Applet.

Controlling the default number of rows
There is a parameter called “NumberOfListRows” in the “SWE” section of the .cfg file. If you change this value, to say 10, you would see 10 rows by default in the List Applets by default. This is when this setting is not being overridden by some other property in Siebel.

If you want to set the default value of the number of rows to be displayed in only one Applet, you can set the property, “HTML Number of Rows” for that particular applet. This appears as a column in Siebel Tools along with the name of the Applet. Press multiple number of times to reach this particular property in Siebel Tools.

The value will default to 10 in case this property is not set at the indivisual Applet and the CFG file level.

Controlling the Maximum Number of Rows
In the SWE section of the CFG file, you can set the parameter, “NumberOfMaxListRows”. This will control the number of rows to be displayed on the List Applet once the Show More button is pressed and the applet expands.

This value defaults to 20 if not set in the CFG.

These tips are true for 7.x versions of Siebel. I remember one of my friends telling me that there is another option in Siebel 8.0. If somebody knows about that, please add to this post.

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Siebel – Unable to check out objects

Prachi Sharma — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:34:29 +0000

I will discuss the following most prominent ways to enable or disable object level check-outs in Siebel here:
1) EnableObjectCOCI parameter
2) Allow Object Locking

I will explain these terms here.

Siebel brings about lot of new features in every new release. One of the very useful improvements in Siebel 7.8 was “object level check-out” in Siebel Tools. For those who started working directly on Siebel 7.8 and above, uptill Siebel 7.7.x, Siebel had the concept of Projects. A project in Siebel was a logical grouping of various objects – Workflows, Business Services, BCs, Applets, etc. We had custom projects for EAI, Configuration, Pricing, B2B, etc. And, we could only check out or check in projects! This was really time consuming.

I remember waiting for days in some cases, for someone to check in the project, because I wanted to work on some other object that she was not working on, but was in the same Siebel project. With object level locking, an individual can work on individual objects (an Applet, BC, or Business Service, etc.), and some other member can simulaneously check-out some other object whether or not in the same project. This greatly increases productivity, speed, and quality.

However, I had a lot of friends coming upto me, that even though they had Siebel 7.8 or above installed, at times their object level check-out was not enabled for some objects. Either it was not enabled at all, or for some particular objects.

There are two parameters in Siebel which control the Object level check out in Siebel

1) EnableObjectCOCI parameter
This parameter is present in the ‘[Siebel]‘ section (generally present on top) of the tools.cfg file. Your tools.cfg file would be located in the folder, “/Tools/BIN/ENU”.
This parameter must be set to TRUE to enable the object level check out.

1) Allow Object Locking
This is a new column in Siebel Tools against Projects in Siebel Tools. For most projects, this flag is ticked TRUE by default. But, I have noticed that for Upgrade related projects, it is set to FALSE. In case you created custom project in Siebel Tools, this flag must be set to TRUE.

Though this has helped increase speed, it has still not solved the problem. I still have to wait for long period sometimes for my friends to check-in the commonly used objects like ‘Quote Item’ BC and the like. I am wondering about one thing now. What is the real use of having projects now? If I can check out objects, why do we still have projects? I can’t think of any place where we cannot do with objects, and projects are still required. After all, projects are only a logical grouping of some objects. Right?

Though checking out objects is trivial at times, and taken for granted, I have also had a few of my friends discussing about checking out Workflows in Siebel. I have also heard people claim that is one thing still not possible without checking out the entire project. I will try to cover this problem in future posts.

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