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Siebel – Case Insensitivity (CIAI) Wizard

Nitin Jain — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:54:52 +0000

CIAI stands for Case Insensitive and Accent Insensitive in Siebel. This can be called the first post on GeeksBlogging@dotCOM on Siebel 8 New Features.

I had discussed about some traditional methods of controlling Case Sensitivity in Siebel queries. However, in version 8.0, Siebel has introduced a new feature of the CIAI Wizard which goes a step further in controlling this functionality. This has been carried forward in Siebel 8.1 albeit with some minor modifications.

This is about making searches on individual columns in a Siebel Database Case Independent. Following are the simple steps to configure it for a Siebel Technical Developer:
1) Navigate to Siebel Tools and select the correct Siebel Repository. This could be important in case you have multiple active Siebel Repositories in the System.
2) In Siebel Tools, Navigate to ‘Table’ and then ‘Column’ Object Type after expanding Table in the Object Explorer.
3) Select and highlight the columns on which you wish to run the CIAI Wizard (the ones you wish to make Case Insensitive).
4) Right-click and select ‘Case Insensitivity’ from the Pop Up menu. The CIAI Wizard starts at this time.
5) Review the Configuration Settings and the Export Listing Export Directory. Take this step seriously. It could be handy in Debug operations.
6) Complete the wizard using the ‘Next’ and ‘Finish’ buttons. The Wizard will configure the columns in the Siebel Repository to support CIAI Queries.

Siebel now reroutes the queries on the selected columns to the new columns created in Step (2) above.

Important: After this process is complete, you need to apply and activate the tables, and compile into the Siebel SRF for the changes to take effect.

Upgrade: It is important for the upgrade process to complete, in case you are upgrading to Siebel 8.x from previous versions, before running the CIAI Wizard.

Good News: It is possible to revert the changes done by the CIAI Wizard in case you feel you have messed up something.

In principle, the CIAI Wizard does the following changes in the Database:
1) Set the Default Sensitivity Property for the particular columns to “DB Case & Accent” in the Siebel Database.
2) For each eligible Base column, creates a new CIAI Column with the Base column value converted to UPPERCASE.
3) Deletes old indexes, and recreates them with the Case Insensitivity as defined, referring to the new CIAI columns defined in Step (2).
4) Sets flags and performs other configuration operations in the repository to support CIAI queries

Warning:
The changes once made by using the CIAI Wizard may be undone. However, there is a flaw in the documentation. The columns that were created on the Base Table by the CIAI Wizard need to be manually Inactivated before trying to revert the CIAI Changes.

The documentation says that the CIAI Wizard inactivates the column automatically. However, in practice that is not the case! Do add in case you have had any weird experience using the CIAI.

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Siebel – Symbolic Strings – Change default ‘X_’

Nitin Jain — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:20:30 +0000

This is a smaill tip I was working on, which got me interested in Symbolic Strings all of a sudden. We have already discussed previously about the Symbolic Strings
Siebel – Symbolic Strings
Siebel – Symbolic Strings – Usage

In the usage section we outlined how every new record is automatically prefixed with ‘X_’. This could be a typical problem, as in most of the projects we follow a specific naming convention for all the custom objects. This is also a recommended practice by experts for easy identification.

Let’s see if we have a requirement such that all custom objects in Siebel must begin with ‘GEEK_’ in place of ‘X_’, how we may implement this in case of Symbolic Strings.

Navigate to your tools.cfg corresponding to the your Siebel installation where you want to change this.
Navigate to the section titled, ‘[Siebel]‘.
Look for the parameter, “SymStrPrefix”

My guess is, you would find the following as per Siebel vanilla:

[Siebel]
; SymStrPrefix parameter needs to be X_ for Siebel Customers.
SymStrPrefix = X_

Now, change this value from ‘X_’ to ‘GEEK_’. The section should now look like:

[Siebel]
; SymStrPrefix parameter needs to be X_ for Siebel Customers.
SymStrPrefix = GEEK_

Save and close.

Voila! Now, if you try to create a new Symbolic String, it would be preceded with ‘GEEK_’ rather than Siebel OOB, ‘X_’.
Hope it helps somebody, someday!

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Siebel – Symbolic Strings – Usage

Nitin Jain — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:59:24 +0000

Symbolic Strings appear directly in Siebel Tools’ Object Explorer, an independent object. It has a child object of Symbolic String Locale, where you may define the individual translations for all the different languages in use in your project.

In case it is not visible directly, navigate to View -> Options -> Object Explorer tab, and enable the Symbolic Strings object if not already visible.

Now, you are ready to go!
Navigate to Symbolic Strings. You would note that most of the Symbolic Strings would appear with the prefix ‘SBL_’.

Do a NewRecord. Notice that the string ‘X_’ appears by default for the custom string. Don’t try to change it, even if you do, you would not be able to save it!
Edit the value, to something say, “X_DUMMY_STRING”. Fill out all the other relevant columns. It is generally preferred to keep all the custom Symbolic Strings in a separate project to enable easy check-in and check-out. Save the record.

Navigate to the Symbolic String Locale child object, in the Object Explorer. Do a new record, and enter values as per the requirement. Beware that the Language Name takes up the 3 character representation of the language, eg, ENU, SVE, etc.

Now for some under the hood details for the ones interested.
Symbolic Strings data is stored in the table, S_SYM_STR. Local data is stored in the table, S_SYM_STR_INTL. The various objects like the Applet Captions store Foreign Key references to the table S_SYM_STR to refer these Symbolic Strings.

The Symbolic Strings need to be compiled into the Siebel SRF. Be careful here as at times, developers have reported that mere compilation of the Symbolic Strings didn’t work in their case, and they had to compile the individual objects, like the applets too, into the Siebel SRF to make it work.

If a value is present in the String Override field of the particular control, it will take precedence over the Symbolic String referred. This is another point to be noted in their usage.

It is a generally recommended practice to always create a new project for the custom Symbolic Strings. For modifications, check-out and check-in the entire custom project, and not the individual objects. Strange behaviours have been reported if this is not followed. One typical problem is that you would only be able to work on the language of your local tools, multi language behaviour will be lost.

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Siebel – Symbolic Strings

Nitin Jain — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:13:06 +0000

Consider 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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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 – Scrolling between records – UP and DOWN

Nitin Jain — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:31:39 +0000

Generally in Siebel Client, we very often have the need to scroll Up and Down among the records. Most of the users would need an easy solution of scrolling UP and DOWN in the records using the normal UP and DOWN arrow keys on the keyboard. Siebel provides an Out of the Box functionality where we use the CTRL + UP or CTRL + DOWN keys to scroll through the records.

I will try to cover here as to how we can customize and modify this OOB functionality such that user can scroll among records using the normal UP and DOWN arrow keys on the keyboard.

The process of scrolling UP and DOWN in the list of records uses the ‘Commands’, “Next Record (SWE)” and “Previous Record (SWE)” in the Tools Object Manager. It is in the corresponding ‘Accelerators’ for the command which tells the system to use CTRL + UP and the CTRL + DOWN keys for this operation. In my case, I inactivated the existing record for ‘Extended’ Browser platform and introduced a New Record in its place. I changed the corresponding values from CTRL + UP to UP, and from CTRL + DOWN to DOWN.

Compiled the changes into the Siebel Client SRF, and I could now scroll between records using only the UP and DOWN arrow keys on the keyboard. No need to use CTRL together with the UP or DOWN key press when scrolling between records.

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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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Siebel – Adding License Keys to Sample

Prachi Sharma — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:46:30 +0000

I am glad to be associated with Geeks Blogging @ dotCOM. This is my first post here.

This is a very generic problem that we all come across. Adding License Keys in Siebel Sample Database. This is at times a little difficult and workarounds have to be used.

There are a number of ways that you can enter License Keys in Siebel:
1) When you are installing Siebel, and try to log in for the first time, it asks for valid License Keys. You can enter multiple license keys at this step.
2) Log into Siebel Web Application. Navigate to Sitemap -> Administration – Application -> License Keys.
3) Log into Siebel Tools. Navigate to Help -> Technical Support -> License Keys

However, you will notice that only the first option works in case of Sample Database. The route through Siebel Client and Siebel tools are greyed out. The first option has the drawbacks in case, the license keys entered are not lifelong, and we may need to enter new license keys after some time. Also, we may need to add additional functionality in Siebel using new license keys.

The solution is to login into Siebel Tools. Once logged in, press ‘Shift’. Keep it presses while navigating to Help -> Technical Support. Now, if you notice the ‘License Keys’ button is active. Press License Keys, a new dialogue box will open. Here, you can add new, delete or edit existing license keys. This will solve the problem.

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Siebel Tools hangs when checking out objects

Nitin Jain — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:44:40 +0000

Hi,

Now this is strange. I had been running into some problems when I was checking out objects in my Siebel Tools. What used to happen was that I would set an object for check-out. It would show it fine for some time. all the extracts being done fine, all the tables being checked out one by one et al. All of a sudden, the operation would hang.

I know that the operation definitely hanged because I initially thought that maybe it is just stuck somewhere due to lack of bandwidth. Or maybe it could be that with too many processes running on my system, there just isn’t enough memory! But no. I tried leaving the check out process as it is, and went out for lunch. I came back after about 45 minutes, and it was still hung!. So, I guess the check out process WAS definitely hanging! However, it was happening intermittently, and not always. The check out did proceed to completion successfully some of the times, and only at times would it hang.

I was convinced when I was told by another member in my team informing me of similar issues with her Tools for the past few days. Now, this was enough fodder for me to start searching!

The first thing I did was to log onto the famous ORACLE Metalink, and search out for this problem. This is when I came across the following article:

ORACLE Metalink – Siebel Tools hanging during check out

For the people who donot have immediate access to the Metalink, it says,
“It was found that Object level checkout does not close the database connection. Every time a object is checked out, the connection is not cleanly closed. This results in the maximum number of connections.”

Surprised?
Let me elaborate..

It says whenever we check out and check in an OBJECT (please note the word ‘object’) in Siebel Tools, one of the database connections is left open. So, if I check out once, check in that object, two DB connections were opened – one for check out, and one for check in. However, only one got closed and one always remained open. This would mean, everytime I check out and check in, there would be one more open connection on the DB server. Since every DB server has a maximum number limit of the connections that it can handle, this limit will be reached and the system would stop responding.

This problem is found to be on Siebel version 7.8.2. The Siebel support claims that it is fixed in Siebel v8. In my case, I have Siebel 7.8.2.11, and I feel that this doesn’t help it.

The only solution recommended is to check out entire projects, and not individual objects. I am not sure if it would work out as a solution for any of us, it doesn’t for me! We have a big team working on it, and it may is possible for us to check out entire projects every time as it blocks the usage of that project for other members in the team. Also, it would take much more time in check outs and check ins, which is definitely not within feasible limits. Seems like a Siebel Product Defect that we have to live with.

If anybody has also faced a similar problem, and come up with some workarounds or solutions, please do add to this thread.

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