GeeKs Blogging @ dotCOM » EAI

EAI Siebel Adapter BS – Upsert Multiple Child Records

nanpats — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 03:45:53 +0000

EAI Siebel Adapter finds its usage in almost all integration scenarios and business process automation. However, at times we hit upon limitations on its usage as Business Requirements become complex.

There is a bug which you must have encountered while using EAI Siebel Adapter BS. I will explain the issue with an example and a solution to resolve the issue…

Let’s say you need to upsert an entity e.g., Assets in Siebel using EAI Siebel Adapter BS. The data structure is a parent -child hierarchy which consists of Assets (primary IC) and Account (child IC).

Let’s assume that Account is resolved by the Id field (Id field being part of the 1st user key and is available in the message). There is a possibility wherein a given account would be repeated in your message instance with different attributes. Consider the following structure:

1-ABCABC Industries
1-XYZXYZ Industries
1-ABCY

In the above example, Account with Id “1-ABC” is repeated twice in the message. If the application tries to upsert this dataset using EAI Siebel Adapter, both the Accounts will be added as Child on Asset. However the data contained in the last instance of Account would be lost. This information lost might be critical for business operations.

Resolution:

In this case, you would be required to consolidate all the similar Account records into a single component before running an Upsert. The resulting message after consolidation would look something similar below:

1-ABCABC IndustriesY
1-XYZXYZ Industries

Hope you enjoyed the example above. Here, I’ll discuss some more of the limitations of EAI Siebel Adapter, and how we resolved them from practical experiences in life.

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Siebel – Fetch Active view properties – II

Nitin Jain — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:03:27 +0000

We discussed about fetching the values from the active view in my post yesterday.

However, I also felt that it was a very crude way of doing it. We can only get the information we need, by writing a small script for it. Moreover, the information was very limited.

I also came across an alternative method to get the details from the Active View. Try searching for the Business Service, “FINS Data Transfer Utilities” in your Siebel Tools. It has a method, “GetActiveViewProp”, which can help us achieve our objectives. Moreover, it supports our point of view of Scriptless Solutions!

Usage:
The BS, “FINS Data Transfer Utilities” does not take in any Input Arguments for the method, “GetActiveViewProp”. We can, thus, directly call this BS in Scripts or Workflows as the requirement may be.

There are a number of outputs, however, that return the corresponding data for the logged in user.
BusinessObject
This would return the Business Object of the view active at the time of invoking this Business Service.

IsAdminMode
This would determine if the current view works in Admin Mode. Admin Mode gives you extra priviledges on a particular view.
The Admin Mode is defined by the “Admin Mode Flag” on the property corresponding to the View in the Siebel Tools Object Explorer.

Screen
The name of the screen that the current view is a part of.

ThreadApplet
Name of the Thread Applet in the current focus.

View
The name of the active view.

ViewModeCode
This is returned in the form of a Code (a number). This defines the View Mode of the current view in focus.

I feel this post is getting too long. I’ll post a follow-up post with a practical example.

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Siebel – FINS Teller UI Navigation

Nitin Jain — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:55:04 +0000

Siebel is POWERFUL! Now, need I even say that? And, in all its beauty and glory is the vanilla functionality. I keep coming across something new and novel everyday, and wondering, what percentage of 1% of Siebel do I now understand?!!

Here is another such Business Service that I came across the other day, “FINS Teller UI Navigation”. It has the following methods (my uncalled personal analysis is mentioned herewith):

1) CallBusSvc
This takes in only one Method Argument, “Method Argument”.
After trying to work out as to what this one could possibly mean, I promptly noticed the comments by the kind developer, “A general purpose business service wrapper to be called from Command objects”. After this, I guess we can give it a pass!

2) GotoView
A very powerful method as I see it. It automatically forces a particular view on the User. I see it very useful from security point of view, in redirecting the user to a specific view, in case he dares enter the forbidden territory. Mind you, Siebel’s in-built Access Control mechanism and other security armour makes this seem almost trivial. This could also be a big help when designing help, to automatically navigate the user to a specific Siebel View.

It takes in the following two Input Arguments:
BusObj, and,
ViewName (mandatory)

3) RefreshCurrentApplet
This is a very powerful method provided, and I guess, the most important one. It takes in the following Input Arguments:
Refresh All!!

It will refresh the current context of the Applet. We have already covered this method in detail previously. Click here.

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Siebel – Refresh Applet retaining existing context

Nitin Jain — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:34:09 +0000

RefreshRecord() does not work in all cases, does it?

This is a very common requirement I have seen in almost all Siebel EAI implementations. We have data flowing IN and OUT of the Siebel CRM system. It is updated in the Database alright, but, how do we update the user on the UI. I am assuming a quick data interchange in Real-time using a VBC or a Web Service or something similar. Whenever we update the Database using a Workflow or a script here, the UI will not refresh automatically, and though the process would end successfully (I hope it does), the user would never come to know about the successful updation until he manually does a Query + Go on the Applet, or uses the famed Alt+Enter Hotkey.

Above is the problem. What is the potential solution to it? A number of solutions actually. Some of the most common solutions to this problem that I have seem so far are:

1) RefreshRecord()
This is a vanilla method declared at the Business Component level. You can directly use it in script in certain events as per the requirement, in BC Server Script to achieve the desired objective of refreshing the applet, on a specific event. Siebel says this will work on all Account based BCs (if I recollect clearly). However, by my experience, two major issues:
Not all BCs I want to update fall in this category.
Even the BCs where I expect it to work, the approach doesn’t work.

2) Query and Go
This is basically a very baad and performance hit simulation of the vanilla Query and Go functionality. Try using Alt+R and Enter functionality on a particular screen in Siebel. Issues with this approach are:
The performance is Bad.
It loses the context from the existing record. The focus will be placed on the first record in a list of records.
I have never taken a liking for it somehow! I use it only when absolutely necessary. (my personal opinion)

3) SIS OM PMT Service
By now, all of us know the wonders associated with the goddess, “SIS OM PMT Service”, and its capabilities. It has a vanilla BS Method, “Refresh Business Component”. Try using this. I have seen it work beautifully! Issues with this approach:
Performance is still a pain! Solution: Use Performance BCs in Siebel.
It retains the context of the current view, but, loses the context of the current record, and, places the focus on the first record in the list.
I enjoyed using this after some minor tweaks!

4) FINS Teller UI Navigation
Get to it in Siebel Tools, and notice the method, “RefreshCurrentApplet”. It seems it refreshes the Applet, and not the Business Component context as in (3) above. It could possibly retain the context of the current record. I never tried it, just found it out during some research. Try it at your end, and do advise if I should consider using it in my future implementations!

Feel free to add to the above. Cheers!

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Siebel – EAI Siebel Adapter – Looping Multiple Records

Nitin Jain — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:30:02 +0000

This is a follow-up post on the post, Siebel – Looping Multiple Records – III. We are looking at possibly more conventional methods to loop through multiple records in Siebel, than the SIA BC Utility Service.

We will make use of EAI Siebel Adapter’s QueryPage method to achieve the same. Knowledge of Siebel Workflow processes is essential to understanding this post.
The QueryPage method allows us to input an additional parameter, NumOutputObjects, to define the number of records that we want to output. Why not set this value to ’1′?

Following is an outline of the Dummy Workflow I used to achieve this.

Siebel EAI Adapter - Looping Multiple Records

Following are the Custom Process Properties and their default values at the time of starting the workflow.

Process Property Default Value

Last Record

New Query Y

Number of Output Objects

Order Type

SiebelMessage

Status

XMLHierarchy

The outline of the Individual Steps is as follows.
1) START – The starting step in the workflow

2) Query Records

Business Service Name EAI Siebel Adapter

Business Service Method QueryPage

Input Arguments:

OutputIntObjectName Literal 7.7 Order Entry Integration Object

PageSize Literal 1

Output Arguments:

OutputIntObjectName Output Argument SiebelMessage

Last Record Output Argument LastPage

Number of Output Objects Output Argument NumOutputObjects

New Query Literal N

3) Convert to XML Hier

Business Service Name EAI Integration Object to XML Hierarchy Converter

Business Service Method IntObjHierToXMLHier

Input Arguments:

SiebelMessage Process Property SiebelMessage

Output Arguments:

XMLHierarchy Output Argument XMLHierarchy

4) Extract Values

Business Service Name FINS Industry XML Query Service

Business Service Method Execute

Input Arguments:

Status Literal .//Status

XMLHierarchy Process Property XMLHierarchy

Output Arguments:

Status Output Argument Status

We have covered the FINS Industry XML Business Service in detail here on GeeksBlogging@dotCOM.

5) Process Record Data

Sub Process Dummy Processing Sub Process

Input Arguments:
As per requirement

Output Arguments:
As per requirement

6) Last Record?

Decision Point

Branch Conditions:

Process Property All Must Match(Ignore Case) Last Record FALSE

7) END – The Standard Siebel END Step

The Workflow ends successfully. We have successfully retrieved the data from each of the successive records one by one, and passed on the data for further processing to a Sub-process.

This post wouldn’t be complete without referring the source which gave me my first hints to implementing this. Thanks, Alex.

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Siebel – Looping Multiple Records – III

Nitin Jain — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:30:44 +0000

Looping through multiple records is a requirement we come across multiple times in almost all Siebel Implementations. And, I can’t recall how many times I have seen dirty scripts to achieve the objective.

I call this Part III, as we have already covered this before on GeeksBlogging@dotCOM, in the articles,
Siebel – Looping multiple records – Query and Process
Siebel – SIA BC Utility Service – Loop multiple records

The above two posts also achieve the same same objects, albeit in a different way.
In my list of preferences, I rate the solution, Siebel – SIA BC Utility Service – Loop multiple records the highest. The only problem is that the Business Service, “SIA BC Utility Service” is not all that well documented by Siebel / Oracle. Developers are often sceptical of using a component which does not have sufficient official documentation to support it.

As a solution to the above, I will introduce looping through multiple records using the coventional Siebel methods.
I am sure everybody who has ever worked in Siebel EAI, would have heard about the Siebel Vanilla Service, “EAI Siebel Adapter”. However, not all of us are aware of the true power of this BS. Yes, we will be using EAI Siebel Adapter BS to loop through multiple records in Siebel in the following posts!

EAI Siebel Adapter has many supported methods:
  Delete
  Execute
  Insert
  Query
  QueryPage
  Synchronize
  Update
  Upsert

The details of each of these methods and their usage calls for a separate post in itself. I strongly believe that and Siebel EAI professional should make himself very comfortable with this BS, as you would soon notice how much of Siebel EAI revolves around it.

Keep watching this space for the actual usage info. The above should be enough to get the grey cells going!

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Siebel – Forcing User Logoff

Nitin Jain — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:26:18 +0000

Hi all,

Somebody recently asked me if there is a way that we can force the user to Logoff from the current session, under some specific conditions. My simple research in Siebel Tools and around it brought up the following alternatives.

Vanilla Business Service Methods:
1) BS Name = LS Medical Product Issue Service
Method = Logoff

2) BS Name = Mktg Saw Service
Method = Logoff
Input = ServerId (This is the Analytics Web Server Id from which to Log off)

3) BS Name = FINS IBC Login Adapter
Method = Logout

I saw this as a very poweful Business Service with methods like, GetLoginId, GetLoginProperties, GetLoginState, GetNewMessageId, Login and of course, Logout. I could not find too much documentation around this BS in both the Bookshelf and Metalink. I will research more and try to post my findings here.

4) BS Name = Communications Client
Method = PreferenceLogout

With the numerous methods to this BS, it seems more related to the Call Center application and CTI.

5) BS Name = SAWSessionServiceSoap
Method = Logoff

All the BS and the methods above can be directly used in Workflows or scripts. One immediate utility that I can think of is to forcibly logoff user sessions whenever we notice a user trying to access data or views that he should not be allowed to access.

We noticed in our implementation that the Logout method sends the SWECmd = Logoff to the Siebel Web Engine. This seems to be the recommended solution by Oracle above all the others. We can easily call the following code in Browser Script, when trying to do this through scripting for our purposes:
top.location = “start.swe?SWECmd=Logoff”;

We also noticed the Command, “Logout” in the Tools Object Explorer which can terminate the user session.

Please add to this in case you feel it is inadequate, or missing some details. I will update this post with the findings as we progress around this.

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Siebel – EAI Siebel Adapter Search Spec

Vikas Luthra — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:43:14 +0000

Hi,

I can bet that for anybody who has worked on Siebel EAI, ‘EAI Siebel Adapter’ is not an Alien term. This post is about EAI Siebel Adapter’s Query method.

How to restrict the number of Child records returned in Siebel adapter’s Query.

Scenario – Order and related Order Line Items

The way EAI Siebel Adapter’s Query method works is that, you specify the name of the IO in ‘OutputIntObjectName’ argument and row id of the parent record in ‘PrimaryRowId’ argument. However this way the query method will fetch all the Line Items for that Order.

So here, to restrict the number of Line Items returned (at the child Line Item level) in the EAI Siebel Adapter Query, we can use another input argument of Query method, which is ‘SearchSpec’.

The value for the ‘SearchSpec’ argument is an expression based on any field from the IC’s of the integration Object, with the dot notation. Not all of us would know that we can use it to restrict the number of child records returned.

Sample Expression: [Order Entry - Line Items.Source] = ‘Testing’

This expression means only the line itemitems where the field ‘Source’ of ‘Order Entry – Line Items’ BC has value ‘Testing’, will be retrieved in the output Siebel Message.

Just creating the expression for the ‘SearchSpec’ argument is a trick here.

In our requirement the user can select multiple line items, say out of 14 line items he has selected only 5 and clicks on ‘Sync Selected’ button. Now we have to create an expression based on selected line items and then pass it as a process property to the workflow where we are using the Siebel Adapter. The sample script for creating expression is pasted below:-

(Note: Here the variable SearchSp is an expression string which will be passed as an input to the workflow)

RecExists = this.BusComp().FirstSelected();
      while (RecExists)
        {
         rec[i] = this.BusComp().GetFieldValue(“Id”);
          RecExists = this.BusComp().NextSelected();
            i++;
           }
           SearchSp = “[Order Entry - Line Items.Id]=’” + selrec[0] + “‘”;

           for(x = 1; x < selrec.length; x++)
           {
            SearchSp = SearchSp + ” OR ” + “[Order Entry - Line Items.Id]=’” + selrec[x] + “‘”;

           }

That’s it! We hope this helps somebody someday.

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Siebel – EAI JMS Transport

Vikas Luthra — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:32:12 +0000

Hi All,

After being a mere spectator and a regular visitor of GeeksBlogging@dotCOM for last one month, here is my first post.

In this JMS Transport series I’ll be covering following topics:-

What are Transports?
Different Methods available for Transports
Java Business Service
EAI JMS Transport and Server Setup for Inbound Receiver
How to setup local client for using EAI JMS Transport
How to connect to an MQ server using EAI JMS Transport

Before proceeding with EAI JMS Transport following concepts should be understood:-

EAI Transports
Java Business Service (Next Post)

EAI Transports:-

Transports are the means of exchanging data between different applications. w.r.t Siebel we can say that, the transports are used to send\receive data between Siebel application and other external application (say any other legacy application). This exchange of data is achieved using the API’s like EAI JMS Transport, EAI MQSeries Server Transport, provided by Siebel to connect to different communication protocols like MQSeries from IBM, MSMQ from Microsoft, HTTP etc.

Transports support bidirectional exchange of messages. As each Transport adapter is having a business service record in Siebel so these can be invoked using script, workflow process, the similar way any other business service is invoked.

Transports can invoke other workflows as well, for e.g. in case of inbound integration you have to specify what to do with the incoming message, whether to dispatch it to a workflow or some custom business service or Dispatch Rules etc. So for this you can specify the name of the business service/workflow in the Data Handling subsystem (covered in later topics)

Another flexibility provided by these transports is that in future if the technologies are changed (say you upgraded your external application from Java based technology to some other web based technology), the existing workflows\logic can be reused with minimum modifications by just changing the transport adapter. For e.g , if earlier EAI JMS Transport was used, now after up gradation you can switch to EAI HTTP Transport.

Each Transport requires a different set up\configurations, like JMS transports requires JVM installation and different jar files on the Siebel server machine. Similarly MQ transport requires the MQ server installation etc.

Different transports available are:-
EAI MQSeries Server Transport
EAI MSMQ Transport
EAI HTTP Transport
EAI JMS Transport
EAI File Transport

That’s All Folks
Any Comments\feedbacks\discussions are welcome.

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Siebel – FINS Industry XML Query Service

Nitin Jain — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:05:22 +0000

“Extracting values from a tag deep down in the Hierarchy.” How many times have you come across this problem, and how many times have you wished that Siebel has an OOB method to help you extract these values?

Well, here it is. The “FINS Industry XML Query Service” in Siebel does just that. I am covering this here because of lack of documentation on the same by Oracle, and the immense use that this can be put to. This BS can save you a lot of headache of writing custom scripts to parse the entire XML Hierarchy in Siebel eScript, which can be a real pain in the neck.

This blog post will target the detailed usage of the BS, “FINS Industry XML Query Service” in Siebel CRM. This BS can be used directly in a Siebel Workflow, since this is vanilla. No scripting is needed which is as per the recommendations of Siebel Best Practices.

To catch the implementation details of this BS, log into Siebel Tools, query for “FINS Industry XML Query Service” in the Business Services in Object Explorer.

Business Service: FINS Industry XML Query Service
Method: Execute
Input Arguments: XMLHierarchy
Output Arguments:

Please note that this BS takes only the XMLHierarchy type of Hierarchy input. So, in case you have some other hierarchy available in your implementation, you would need to convert it into XMLHierarchy. I can suggest one of the following in this case which mostly save the day:
EAI XML Converter
XML Hierarchy Converter
EAI Integration Object to XML Hierarchy Converter

There is already sufficient documentation for the above.

Now that you have the XML Hierarchy available, you can feed this into the service, “FINS Industry XML Query Service” as an input from a Worfklow Process Property, in the Input Argument, “XMLHierarchy”.

Create a new Input argument. Let’s call it “TestProperty”. Set the Input Type as “Literal”.
In the Value column, you need to pass the location of the tag in the entire hierarchy, from which you wish to extract the value. This location is specified in terms of the XML XPath notation, or the more commonly called Dot Notation. If the tag in question exists only once in the entire length of the XML, we can set the XPath as, “.//” which we used in our example. In case of repeating tags, use the notation, “.///“.
You can further create new Input Arguments as above, to extract multiple values from multiple tags at the same time.

Now that the inputs have been provided, we need to set the output arguments from this BS in the workflow.
Create a new Process Property by the name, “TestProperty”. (I have named this same as the Input Argument just for the ease of use. You can always select a different name).
Create a new “FINS Industry XML Query Service” BS Output Argument, and set the following values:
Property Name: TestProperty
Type: Output Argument
Output Argument: TestProperty (Please note that this value must be same as the name given to the Input Argument above.)

Now, you are ready to go. Simulate this workflow to see the Output arguments being extracted from the input XML Hierarchy in the Watch Window during simulation.

One of the limitations that I have come across for this BS is that it cannot fetch value from a tag in case of repeating instances of ICs in the same XML, typically a case of repeating instances of child objects with the same tag name.

Let’s have cleaner Siebel, better Siebel. Let’s aim for Scriptless Siebel.

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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 7.x – Party Model Changes

brijesh — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:40:24 +0000

After introduction of party model, the table structure (as far as EIM is concerned) have changed tremendously. The largest data model change involves the Party model, which I think is basis of post siebel 7 releases. Accounts, Organizations, Internal Divisions, Contacts, Employees, Positions, and Households are all party entities and are the logical extension table of S_PARTY and they all have the corresponding entry in S_PARTY base table and the data is brought into the business components through an implicit join (PLEASE NOTE THEY ARE NOT EXPLICIT JOINS).

Some of the major data model changes are also related to this new model. Employees and Contacts have been combined into the same table (S_CONTACT) and similarly, internal and external Organizations have been combined into one table (S_ORG_EXT), in pre 7 releases of siebel employees and internal organizations are stored in S_EMPLOYEE and S_ORG_INT respectively means there tables have gotten obsolete.

The S_PARTY table is the primary table and is the single entity to store all party types – organization units (both external and internal), positions, access groups, user lists, households, contacts, and employees.

So in nutshell following are the new tables or we can say modified functionality tables in siebel:
• S_USER (For siebel Users)
• S_CONTACT (contacts, employees)
• S_ORG_EXT organizations (internal, external)
• S_POSTN (positions)
• S_ORG_GROUP (Households)
• S_PARTY_GROUP (Access Groups: To implement data security one of the major changes)
• S_USERLIST (user lists)
• S_BU (Internal Organizations)

Non-person party entities will have directly or indirectly ralation with employees and contacts.

Data Migration Changes:

All relation based tables have changed in post 7 releases the following tables have gotten obsolete:

Old Table (pre 7 release) New Table (post 7 release)

S_ORG_REL S_PARTY_REL
(hold relationships between account and party entities)

S_CONTACT_REL S_PARTY_REL
(hold relationships between contact and party entities)

S_PER_ORG_UNIT S_PARTY_PER
(hold relationships between account and party contact etc. or more generic it stores the ralationship between party and person)

S_ORG_INT S_ORG_EXT
(For both internal and external organization.)

S_EMP_POSTN S_PARTY_PER

S_EMPLOYEE S_CONTACT

S_POSTN_RPT_REL S_PARTY_PER

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Siebel – SIA BC Utility Service – Loop multiple records

Ankit Bhardwaj — Wed, 13 May 2009 05:27:00 +0000

This is a vanilla business service which provides an extensive functionality that can be used at the BC level for performing the tasks like querying and invoking a BC method. It is very useful as it provides many powerful features that can not be done through Siebel operation. One of the methods it supports is, “BCNextRecord”.

This method is used to query the records in the BC. Unlike Siebel Operation, this method provides the feature of searching the records sequentially in the queried records. It has the following arguments:

i) Business Component Name :- This argument requires the Business component name on which the query has to be made.
ii) Forward Only :- This argument specifies the mode of execution.
iii) From First :- This argument specifies that the query needs to be run from first record in the BC.
iv) Row Id :- This is an output argument that gives the row id of the record.
v) Search Specification :- This argument takes the search specification on the basis of which the query is executed.
vi) Total :- This argument is an Input/Output and gives the total records found in the query.
vii) Total Field :- This argument receives the fields of the BC in which the query is to be executed.

But there is a main disadvantage of using this BS is that if it does not find any record in the stated query, it raises an error.

Illustration of this BS by an example

To make the working clear of this Business Service, the following workflow is made that query a BC using this

SIA BC Utility Service Demo WF

In the above figure, there is a workflow “Vanilla BS Workflow” which is used to elaborate the use of this BS. In this example, the workflow is made to query on the “Order Entry – Orders” BC. The BS must be provided with certain input arguments and on the basis of which the query is executed on the mentioned BC and flow is further taken on the basis of the query results. The processing of this workflow can be given step by step as follows:

1. Query Records :- This step uses the “SIA BC Utility Service” which is called for executing a query on the BC. This service, in this WF, is used to query on the “Order Entry – Orders” BC. The arguments provided to the BS are:

Input Arguments:-

i.) Business Component Name :- This argument takes the literal value for the BC on which the query needs to be run. The value provided in this WF is “Order Entry – Orders”.
ii.) From First :- This argument is mapped with the process property and it executes the query from the first record in the BC. Here, it is mapped with the WF process property “ExecuteQuery” which has the default string set as ‘Y’. This WF process property is to be set as to control the functioning of the BS
iii.) Search Specification :- This argument takes the search specification by which the query will be run. In this WF, the search specification is given as “[Status] <> ‘Completed’ AND [Price List] IS NOT NULL AND [Agreement Name] IS NOT NULL”.

Output Arguments:-
i.) Row Id :- This output argument is mapped with the “Siebel Operation Object Id” WF process property that will store the Row Id of the record found in the Query.
ii.) Total :- This output argument is mapped with the “RecFound” WF process property that will store the total number of records found in the query.
iii.) ExecuteQuery:- This output argument has the literal value set to ‘N’ which was ‘Y’ in the input.

2. IsRecord? :- This is a decision point which checks the value of “Siebel Operation Object Id” and routes the flow accordingly. This decision point actually checks if the record found in the query. If the record exists, then it moves to the “Set Line Item Status” step otherwise the flow will end.

3. Process Records :- We are using a Siebel vanilla Subprocess step to process the data from different fields from each of the records one by one. It could be anything as per the business requirements, eg. sending outbound XMLs through B2B.

Input Arguments:-

i.) Header Id (example) :- This argument takes the value from the “Siebel Operation Object Id” and on the basis of this, the status will be set on the corresponding line item according to the code in the BS.

And, also many other field values from step (1) as per the business requirement.

Output Arguments:-

i.) Message :- This is an output argument that gives the error message that occurs in the BS. It is mapped with the “Error Message” process property of the WF.

4. Error Handling: Subprocess :- This is a subprocess which is called to catch an exception and to log the error in the “Error Logs” BC. The WF steps are connected to this subprocess. This subprocess have the following arguments:-

Input Arguments:-

i.) Error Message:- This argument takes the value from the “Error Message” process property of the WF and on the basis of this, the error will be logged in the custom BC named as “Error Logs” BC.
ii.) WF Name :- This argument takes the literal value of the WF name itself. The value passed in the property is “Vanilla BS Workflow”.

So, in this way, this BS will work. Keep using it!!!!!!

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Siebel – EAI Queue – a Critique’

Nitin Jain — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:38:40 +0000

I had introduced the Siebel EAI Queue and its usage in my last articles. Though Siebel EAI Queue is a very good Siebel feature, there are some serious shortcomings as well. An architect would, thus, need to critically evaluate all the pros and cons before deciding to implement the OOB EAI Queue or a custom solution in a Siebel EAI project.

First let’s look at all the areas where Siebel EAI Queues stand strong.

1) No customisation needed
This is an OOB fucntionality. So, no custom coding is necessary. The vanilla BS can directly be called from the WF to help operate the EAI Queues. Custom code comes with its own sets of problems – dedicated human resources, architecting, implementing, testing, debugging, performance, scalability, expandability, robustness.

2) Reduced Implementation time
Implementation time is zero for Logging module. The only effort is to call the vanilla BS at all the places where we want to log messages.

3) Almost no debugging needed.
It is a Siebel OOB functionality. So, I can be sure there are no code glitches and resulting mishaps. If something doesn’t work as it says in the Bookshelf, either my usage is faulty, or it is a Siebel Product Defect

4) Lesser Team size as no concentrated effort on this module of the project.
Why have dedicated human resources working on the Logging and Error Handling mechanism?

5) Robustness
Extremely robust. It works with the file system. So, I don’t think there is a limit on as to how big a file can be stored here. The BS should ideally not fail unless some Siebel Server component itself is down.

6) Performance
Best performance you can ever get I guess. Mother knows best! If Siebel has designed and developed this, I guess, this is as good as it gets.

Do drop in some comments in case you feel I have not done justice to the positives part, and that there are points that I have missed out on. I will update the post accordingly.

But then, as with everything else on Earth, nothing is perfect. I am looking at a very simple requirement – I need to point out as to which message is an Inbound message, and which one, and Outbound. How do I implement it with the EAI Queue architecture?

Think, think, think…

The best I can think of is to extend the corresponding table for the EAI Queue, and the corresponding Business Components. I can also expose them on the UI for better handling. Question – After extending the Siebel objects, how do I use them. How do I populate this new flag called “Inbound Message” for eg, to TRUE or FALSE? The Logging of messages is being done through the vanilla BS. There is no code exposed. Now, if I have to populate this new column, I may be able to do it by scripting the vanilla BS – “EAI XML Queuing Service” after some work with the BS analysing Inputs and Outputs. Maybe, better still, just use a Siebel Operation step after the vanilla BS to update all the custom columns. But then, double query on the same record of the same BC, it’s a performance issue.

This is only one example when I could need to extend the objects with many different custom columns.

Let’s start playing! I want to link the Inbound and the Outbound messages. In a sense, there was an Outbound response to an Inbound request to Siebel. We should map which Inbound maps to which Outbound. Else, we may just be drowned in a deluge of messages. More custom columns, Siebel Links, MVLs, etc. as a solution to this. Maybe with some effort, it’s feasible.

I want to store many different types of files and many different types of messages – as in Erroneous Messages, Error Messages, Log Messages. More extensions.

Generally, all projects have a retry mechanism for all the erronous messages. I have seen SAP Business Services being integrated directly with Siebel EAI Queues. But, for custom queues, customization is the answer I guess.

With time, lots of useful and non useful data gets cluttered up in the Queue. A custom cleaning-up and archiving mechanism is thus inevitable.

Single most important issue I personally see with the vanilla EAI Queue approach is the fact that it interacts with the Siebel Filesystem and not the Siebel Database! The messages are stored in form of files in the Siebel Filesystem, eventually with the large number of Siebel messages coming in, the valuable hard disk space will be cluttered quickly. The Siebel FS size will increase. If there is a Siebel project I am working on, I would not mind having a slightly bigger database. But, unnecassary increase in the Siebel Filesystem is the last thing in the world that I would recommend. Don’t even get me started on the many of the file handling issues with many different flavours of UNIX in the market. I once ran into an implementation wherein I had to change the complete architecture from File based to DB based because the OS as a limitation could only accept at max 256 open file handles! Ridiculous as it may seem, it entailed many sleepless nights on my part to get everything up and woring within a week without any glitches – just can’t forget those!

All in all, my point of view is that, though you may use this implementation as an immediate quick fix, or a nice to have feature, Siebel EAI Queues feature fares horrendously on the Scalability and Expandability front.

If you are willing to play around with Siebel vanilla objects and extend them to suit you requirement no end, this may just be the solution for you. However, please do a deep insight and analysis of your requirements and other available options (basically custom, I guess) to get over this. It is more of an Analysts’ point of view to go with either of the two approaches.

Let me see if I can rope in somebody to explain in detail a nice custom Logging, Error Handling, Retry and clean-up / archiving mechanism.

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Siebel – EAI Queue – Usage

Nitin Jain — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:03:54 +0000

I had introduced the concept of Siebel EAI Queues in my last post. You can read it here.

Today, I would discuss its usage, as to how we can use it in our implementations.

A simple ‘About View’ of the EAI Queue screen shows us that the two applets are based on the following -

Business Component Table

EAI Queue S_EAI_QUEUE

EAI Queue Item S_EAI_QUEUE_ITM

The usage of these Siebel EAI Queues is through the vanilla Business Service, “EAI XML Queuing Service”. The various self explanatory methods on this Business Service are:
AddMessage – Add message to the EAI Queue
DeleteMessage – Delete message from the EAI Queue
GetMessage – Retrieve a message from the EAI Queue
UpdateStatus – Update the status of an existind message on the queue
GetStatus – Get the Status of a particular message on the queue. The messages supported OOB are – Confirmed, Error in Processing, Error in Sending, Initial, Processed, Sent

I will try to demonstrate the usage through a TEST queue.

Navigate to the screen Administration – Integration -> EAI Queue.
Do a NewRecord with the Queue name of your choice. I gave the name, “Nitin Test Queue”.

To use it, I created a simple two step workflow-
Step 1:
Query step using EAI Siebel Adapter. I made a simple query on Order Header. This returned a SiebelMessage.

Step 2:
Use the Business Service, “EAI XML Queuing Service”, method “AddMessage”.
Input Paramters:
QueueName Nitin Test Queue
ReferenceID Dummy-01
SiebelMessage
Status Initial

You will notice that a new record will be created on the EAI Queue screen. I noticed that Siebel uses the Windows temp directory as a temporary storage area. The working is something similar to the way Siebel handles the Attachments. Siebel creates separate attachment files in the Siebel Filesystem and exposes that through an interface. Siebel will autogenerate a Sequence Number everytime a new message is inserted into the EAI Queue.

Voila! No need for any customization. I have a ready made OOB solution which is scalable, robust and can be used for for Logging and Error Handling purposes. The best part is, I got it up and working in say about 5-10 minutes. Any other custom architecture could possibly take 2-3 resources working on it maybe for Weeks, if not months. They could be covering phases like conceptualizing, architecting, prototyping, implementing, testing, embedding in our flows, testing again, etc. However, a custom architecture comes with its own set of pros and cons. This may not just be the best of solutions after all. Stay tuned for my critique on EAI Queues..

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Siebel – EAI Queue

Nitin Jain — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:26:31 +0000

Okay, what are you thinking about? Is it Middlewares in EAI with their queue managers and queues? No, those are not the ones I am talking about. Every EAI professional knows about those.

Siebel provides an Out of the Box Message Logging mechanism for Siebel EAI messages. This is done through a Siebel feature called ‘EAI Queue’ which I would be discussing in detail in this article.

I have tried to provide a basic idea about message interchange in EAI in my last post. You can read it by clicking here.

Let’s consider a typical EAI scenario wherein we are exchanging data between two different systems. Assume the format of message interchange to be XML.
Point to point contacts risk losing the data, or overheads in case the other system is down. Generally, the robust and stable Middlewares are used as a solution to this problem, one of them being the IBM MQ Series. However, sitting at Siebel end, we always need to have a Logging mechanism which will log all the inbound and outbound messages in Siebel. Generally, this always calls for a lot of overhead in every implementation if you go in for a custom approach. Custom tables, BCs, BOs, Applets, Access controls of these logs, Business Services to log and see, testing, defect fixing, etc. need to be created and maintained.

This is a perfect scenario for usage of EAI Queue feature. To view this in action, navigate to the screen Administration – Integration -> EAI Queue. Please note that you may need special licenses to have this feature enabled in your installation.

In this screen, you would see all Siebel queues listed in the top applet. Some of the vanilla queues you can see and test out on Sample DB installation are:

tRFC Outbound to SAP
tRFC Inbound from SAP
HA Upgrade Receiver Log Queue
S2S Outbound Sub-Process Log Queue
and many more..

In the bottom applet, you would see all the messages which have been placed corresponding to the record in the top applet. Every record stored here will have a new record corresponding to it. Following message details are stored:

Sequence #
Reference Id
Status
Queued Timestamp
Comments
Attachment Name
Message File Size

As you can see, this covers most of the functionality that you would ever come across to log messages. This is a complete OOB feature which would eliminate large scale customizations, and thus, would save large scale project time and resources to a great extent. If need be, we can always go in for some customizations to this to suit the corresponding project requirements.

We have discovered and viewed the details of Siebel’s own EAI Queues in this article. In my next post, I will cover the usage of this feature in Siebel as to how it can be incorporated in your Siebel architecture in your implementation.

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A meeting with Siebel EAI

Nitin Jain — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:38:00 +0000

Hi,

Here I am, with my promise of introducing the Siebel EAI Series. My Analytics stats show a lot of people new to Siebel venturing onto GeeksBlogging@dotCOM, and so I thought it might just be a good idea to have a cup of tea with Siebel EAI, just from the introduction point of view, before we get into detailed topics.

I will just twist the acronym EAI aka Enterprise Application Integration to mean Integration of various Enterprise Applications. Siebel CRM Software to realize CRM, the concept, has to exist for our discussion to center around Siebel EAI!

A typical ERP system like the famous SAP, or BaaN, etc. could be another Enterprise Application in the organization architecture. We could then have a Billing System in a typical Telco with many other disparate systems as well – Geneva, Kenan Arbor BP, SMS Gateway, SMTP Server, ERP, SCM or so many others. There could be others where we need to expose the data in my Siebel CRM data on the corporate website.

The primary aims in any IT architecture is to avoid redundancy of data. Assuming for eg. that we decide to use Siebel Database as the central Database, we need to build up mechanisms such that all these systems can now integrate with Siebel to fetch or update data as may be the case. A billing system may need to inform Siebel to add a new Billing Asset to Siebel. The ERP system may need to be called to orchestrate a particular task and enable it to proceed to completion. The company website may be hosted on Oracle AS, and may need to fetch data from Siebel in real-time to enable all updated products, prices, model snapshots, etc. to be availabe to the prospective customers as soon as they are made available. All these would need cross application integration such that the systems can talk to each other, extract or pass on information. This is the domain of Siebel Enterprise Application Integration.

The communication channels that we talked of above could be built in a number of ways. I am listing just a few of them that I can recall straight away below:
- export data files and import them manually or automatically into the new system where data has to be entered.
- transfer data from one system to another directly using the standard HTTP protocol. Generally SOAP protocol is used as a transportation protocol in such cases.
- establish a real time communication link using Web Services
- exchange data by building peer to peer communication links using XML for message interchange.
- exchange data by using a Middleware in between, and exchange data using XMLs.

and maybe many more!

The most important of these in modern times is data interchange through the XML mechanism. The Xtensible Markup Language, which contains data in its tags is the de facto standard. The tags are generally arranged in a Hierarchy format and may be repeated multiple number of times as per the requirement. In our future discussions, we will be focussing heavily on the XML data interchange format. It is recommended that the readers on this blog brush up their basic concepts on XML for easy understanding. There are many good resources available all over the internet which can be googled easily.

From here on, I would be covering many Siebel EAI related topics now and then. Do feel free to put in your comments in case you feel I am going too fast or too slow. Stay tuned for future updates.

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Siebel – EAI Series on GeeksBlogging@dotCOM

Nitin Jain — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:32:08 +0000

Siebel EAI, aka Enterprise Application Integration is generally the most sought after area in Siebel among most of the Siebel Developers that I have come across, whether they are currently working on Siebel or not. Honestly speaking, I am still trying to understand the confusion. As far as I am concerned, “I like EAI because I like interacting with other systems, not just Siebel”. Does that work out enough in my support?!!

I wanted to start this series some time back, just that I could not actually find out where to start off from. A new found friend through this blog has just given me some fodder for thought. So, here it is – I will be starting with the Enterprise Application Integration section for Siebel on this blog. I will cover a short introduction initially, then some advanced topics (they are ‘advanced’ by my standards. Please excuse me if I offended you!!).

Keep watching, Siebel EAI coming soon.

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Process Property	Default Value
Last Record
New Query	Y
Number of Output Objects
Order Type
SiebelMessage
Status
XMLHierarchy

Business Service Name	EAI Siebel Adapter
Business Service Method	QueryPage

OutputIntObjectName	Literal	7.7 Order Entry Integration Object
PageSize	Literal	1

OutputIntObjectName	Output Argument	SiebelMessage
Last Record	Output Argument	LastPage
Number of Output Objects	Output Argument	NumOutputObjects
New Query	Literal	N

Business Service Name	EAI Integration Object to XML Hierarchy Converter
Business Service Method	IntObjHierToXMLHier

Business Service Name	FINS Industry XML Query Service
Business Service Method	Execute

Status	Literal	.//Status
XMLHierarchy	Process Property	XMLHierarchy

Old Table (pre 7 release)	New Table (post 7 release)
S_ORG_REL	S_PARTY_REL (hold relationships between account and party entities)
S_CONTACT_REL	S_PARTY_REL (hold relationships between contact and party entities)
S_PER_ORG_UNIT	S_PARTY_PER (hold relationships between account and party contact etc. or more generic it stores the ralationship between party and person)
S_ORG_INT	S_ORG_EXT (For both internal and external organization.)
S_EMP_POSTN	S_PARTY_PER
S_EMPLOYEE	S_CONTACT
S_POSTN_RPT_REL	S_PARTY_PER

Business Component	Table
EAI Queue	S_EAI_QUEUE
EAI Queue Item	S_EAI_QUEUE_ITM