Building Link as a Join??

The very first expression that any Siebelized person would have after reading the title of this post would be, "hey, what is that?? Join and Link are two different objects in Siebel. Join used for building 1-1 and M-1 relationship and link is being used for building 1-M and M-M relationship. So how come you can build a link via join??".......

I knowwww and I am there with you what you just thought and completely agree to this fact too :) but keep in mind you get functionalities working in Siebel by SQLs running in the background on the database and as far as you know how to play with the configuration to achieve desired results (provided it will not result in performance issue) you can do wonders.

Alrightyyyy then, lets see what I got for you today to let you know an interesting fact in Siebel Configuration that can be used to achieve some different kind of requirement. The requirement we got to implement was:

"Create the Account Screen, which has got various sub-tabs like Opportunities, Quote, Assets, Service Requests, Invoices. So this is a kind of Parent-child relationship which is available in Siebel vanilla, nothing new.



But we were asked to provide an ability to query on the Accounts header form applet with a) Opportunity Id b) Quote Id c) Asset Number d) Service Request# e) Invoice#. That means if I have an Asset Number with me and query it on Account form applet in some field, then system should return the corresponding Account record to which this Asset Number is associated with. Similarly for Invoice# and so on. You might be thinking why this ever be a requirement and for what purpose, can't we navigate to Assets screen for query the Asset Number and drilldown from there to Account Screen and similar for other entities? You are right, you can do that as well but in our requirement user want to have the ability to query in a single place. "

I think the requirement is clear now. The very first solution come to the mind can be achieved by following the below steps:

a. Create MVLs (which in-turn use some "Link") on Account business component.
b. "Use Primary Join" property of these MVLs should be "False".
c. Create MVFs for based on each MVL and expose on Account form applet.
d. Let the user query on any of the MVF and system will return the corresponding Account record.

This is very straightforward solution, but HUGE performance impact. When the view will get loaded, system will run (1 + (Number of MVFs)) queries for each account you will traverse on the UI. Lets try another good option here and create "Join" on the business component instead of "Link".

Here is below what I tried:

a) On Account business component, create following joins (as per the need)

i. Field Name: S_INVOICE
Source Field : ROW Id (Row_id of S_ORG_EXT)
Destination Column : ACCNT_ID (Foreign Key to S_ORG_EXT on S_INVOICE)
Alias : INVOICE

ii. Table Name: S_ASSET
Source Field : ROW Id (Row_Id of S_ORG_EXT)
Destination Column : OWNER_ACCNT_ID (Foreign Key to S_ORG_EXT on S_ASSET)
Alias : ASSET

iii. Table Name: S_OPTY
Source Field : ROW Id (Row_Id of S_ORG_EXT)
Destination Column : PR_DEPT_OU_ID (Foreign Key to S_ORG_EXT on S_OPTY)
Alias : OPTY

b) Now create corresponding join fields:

i. Field Name : Invoice Number
Join : INVOICE
Column : INVC_NUM

ii. Field Name : Asset Number
Join : ASSET
Column : ASSET_NUM

iii. Field Name : Opty Id
Join : OPTY
Column : OPTY_ID

c) Expose the fields on the UI and query for any Invoice#, Asset#, OptyId on the Account form applet and system will bring the Account record for you.

Let's see how it is working on the UI. I queried for Invoice# = "410194-13385102"




and now let's navigate to "All Invoices" view to see if system has returned the right Account or not. And yessss, this is the right account, I can see the Invoice#.




You can try it at your end and the best part is, if you see the SQL spool generated by the system, you will find that only single query is returning the data, not likely the case with MVFs, and there is no performance issue at all.

Purging Vs Deleting Workflow Process Instances

This is one of the important information you might be interested in, if you frequently debug a Workflow Process at run-time by increasing the Monitoring Level under "Administration - Business Process -> Workflow Deployment" view.

Whenever you increased the Monitoring Level to "4-Debug", system starts capturing the WF steps details along with the each Process Property at each step, to give a better picture of what has exactly happened at each step and it is very helpful for debug purpose. You can see all Run-time degugging details in "Administration - Business Process -> Workflow Instance Monitor" view.

"Process Instances" gives you all the Workflow Instances run once the Monitoring Level has been increased. It all tells the currently running WF Step.

"Step Instances" captures the details of each step along with its start and end time.

"Process Properties" captures the value of each process property in each WF step.

Though this information is useful but it is a good practice to decreased the log level back to "0-None", once you are done with debugging and also the most important thing you should do is "Purge" all the Workflow Process Instances. Navigate to "Administration Business Process -> Workflow Instance Monitor -> Process Instances", query for the workflow process and click "Purge".

Now, why I am saying this last step of purging these records as "very important"?

Let me tell me what actually happened when I was debugging one of the workflow issue. I increased the monitoring level to 4 for debugging purpose and that workflow was having around 30 workflow steps and around 50 process properties. Additionally, this workflow runs on the child activities (average number around 50) of the Service Request. So you try calculate the number of process property instances record (in S_WFA_STPRP_LOG), system will create in a single workflow run = 30 x 50 x 50 = 75000. Big number isn't it?? So if I debug this workflow few number of times, the number of records will be really huge. But remember, as far as you are purging the records after debugging finishes, then no issues, but if you don't then these records will pile up and some day your database size will run short out of physical space.
So what actually happened was, I made few changes in the workflow and deployed again. Went to "Administration Business Process -> Workflow Deployment" and queried the workflow process and hit "Activate". In the below "child items" applet, system creates a new version of the workflow process with Deployment Status = Active and the older record becomes gets its status = Inactive. So I thought this record is Inactive, let me delete this old instance. I did that few number of times and never realizes that it will just delete this record from "S_WFA_DPLOY_DEF" table and its corresponding child records in "S_WFA_STPRP_LOG" table will keep sitting there. And there is no way you can "Purge" these records from the UI using "Purge" button because the parent record has been deleted earlier.

So it end up having millions of records in this table without parent record and later we realized the database is running short of physical memory and when I checked for the tables in the database which all having huge number of records, we found "S_WFA_STPRP_LOG" table was leading the race. I did the clean-up of the child records via running some SQLs in the database by finding the orphan records in "S_WFA_STPRP_LOG" and learned the lesson using "Purge" button after completing the debugging.

Hope this will also help you in future.

How to create Inbound Web Service in Siebel?

In the last post, we talked about creating an Outbound Web Service in Siebel where we receives the WSDL file from other system and consume it into Siebel Tools to generate necessary artifacts.

Today I found a very nice tutorial for creating an Inbound Web Service in Siebel. In this post you will find how to publish the WSDL from Siebel and let the outside world do data manipulation inside Siebel.

You can easily find it at the below links:

http://st-curriculum.oracle.com/obe/fmw/soa_apps_integ/10g/10_132_siebel/siebel.htm

http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/fmw/soa_apps_integ/10g/10_132_siebel/siebel.htm


At the end of above tutorial, you will be generating the WSDL file from Siebel thin client which need to provide to other system to test the Inbound Web Service you created. Please refer the following post for testing the WSDL:


Test WSDL

How to create Outbound Web Service in Siebel?

Today, lets talk about how we can invoke an Outbound Web Service from Siebel. In the last post we learned how to test the WSDL using SOAPUI and I will use the same WSDL today (CurrencyConverter.wsdl) as the sample wsdl in this post.

1. Import the WSDL into Siebel Tools.
Create New Object. File Menu -> New Object -> EAI -> Web Service



Select the WSDL file path



Business Service will get created with name "CurrencyConverter" and its method "CoversionRate"



ConversionRate method has got its Input/Output Arguments. The point to be notice here is the Integration Objects i.e. "ConversionRate" and "ConversionRateResponse". These are the external integration objects which defines the Request and Response XML of the Web Service.



If you query for Integration Object (Input): "ConversionRate", it will look like this:
and these are the two Input arguments of the Request XML of the Web Service.



Similarly, the Output IO will have a single output argument:



2. Create the UI. (Applet based on Opportunity BC)



3. Create Workflow to get the response from Web Service.






4. Call the Workflow from button click. To do this just create a BC User Prop on Opportunity BC

Named Method 1 : "Invoke", "INVOKESVC", "Opportunity", "Workflow Process Manager", "RunProcess", "'ProcessName'", "CurrencyConverter"

Where "Invoke" is Method Invoked from button on the opportunity applet.

5. Compile the objects and test.



After button click:




I am assuming that you are connected to internet while doing this test and this is how you can play with the live web service.

How to test a WSDL if it is working or not?

No matter if you are working in Siebel or not, if you are going to implement any Outbound Web Service, the first thing you wanna check if the WSDL file received from the 3rd party is working or not before you actually consume it and start the development.

Same is the case with Siebel Tools, you require to consume it in Siebel tools which will result in creation of Web Service (which is nothing but the business service of Class: CSSWSOutboundDispatcher) and its corresponding Integration Objects.

So, the best way is to have a 3rd party tools to quickly verify the response from the other system. I have came across lot many tools which solve this purpose but my favourite is SOAPUI and I really find it very handy for this purpose.

This post is related to the very first step that you do while creating the outbound web service. I have picked one WSDL freely available on "http://www.webservicex.net/WS/default.aspx"

Now, lets see how to do it step by step:

1. Save the WSDL from the following link:
http://www.webservicex.net/CurrencyConvertor.asmx?WSDL



2. Get the SOAPUI tools, available at the below link:
http://www.soapui.org/

3. Open SOAPUI and go to File Menu -> Preferences and make sure following check boxes should be unchecked.



4. Now open the WSDL, that you have saved in Step 1. File Menu -> New SOAPUI Project OR Press Crtl N





5. You will see "Currency Converter" Web Service and its associated method in the left (Navigator) panel. Double click on "Request 1". It will bring up the SOAP Request / Response page in the right panel. The request XML will look like this:



6. Input the necessary values in FromCurrecny and ToCurrency tags of the request XML and hit the Go Button. For Eg:



7. Here is the response XML I received:



8. This confirms that WSDL is correct and working fine.

We will see in the next post, how to implement an Outboound WebService in Siebel.

Stay Tuned !!

Top 10 Out of the box features in Siebel !

It is a great feeling that one can have if he keep listening some good things from the users for which you are building the product/application. I have observed so many times the reaction of the users during the Siebel demo when they keep saying, "I just love this application :) ".

The best part is that Siebel has got so many OOB features in place which comes with the product bundle and user can just directly start using it without any customization which make the application more easy to use and provide value add from business process perspective.

Here below are top 10 OOB features most voted by our application users:

1. Placing columns in any list applet in any order as per your requirement.

2. Sorting feature on the list applet. Just one click and the data is sorted in ascending and another click for descending.

3. Siebel Landing Page. Users can select Siebel Landing Page and system will directly take the user to the view of his/her choice once logged into the application.

4. Changing Screen/Views tab order as per the need. On the fly user can go to User Preferences and set the order whatever they like.

5. Changing the timezone. This feature is Sales people's favourite. They keep travelling around the states/countries and depending upon the location, they can change the timezone and Siebel will automatically adjust the created date / last updated date of records automatically if want to do About Record.

6. Predefined queries. Managers just love this feature as it helps them to see the data that they want to see regularly. For Eg: Eastern zone manager want to see all opportunities where Region = Eastern and Amount > 10,000. And the best part is predefined query will be visible to you, if you are the owner (Private) or it is Public.

7. Export from List Applet. Again this feature is most likely used by managers as it solves half of the reporting requirements in the application. Query the data as per the need and take the CSV export to play around with it and help taking management decisions accordingly.

8. Drag and Drop attachments. Any call centre guy would love it, just take any file from your local machine and drag n drop the document on any attachment applet. It really saves times and if user want to see the attached file it automatically opens it on its native format.

9. Record Count. Users of the application generally don't have access to the database. Record count feature on any applet would help them finding the number of records they have queried upon.

10. Last but not the least, F9/Ctrl+F9 for sending email/fax. After just one button click, you can communicate with the customers from the application itself where system will automatically pick the contact email address and you use the predefined communication templates as the email body.


I have some more in the list but I think top 10 have been mentioned above. Let me know if you think of any other OOB features that Siebel provides and which you think really liked by your application users.

Connecting Physical world with Digital world !!

[Please note that this post is not related to Siebel]

One of my friend shared one Youtube link and I was so impressed after watching it that I can't stop myself to share with you all here.

I loved the concept this guy has worked upon and amazed by the things he is doing to connect the physical world with the digital world.

I am sure, you will like this, watch it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrtANPtnhyg

Siebel Landing Page !!

Any Siebel application, which you might have worked on OR currently working on, come with its own landing page. This is something where user will land once logs into the application, in other words the Home Page of the application. This is completely OOB and already configured in Siebel Tools. I just did a query in Siebel tools and found there are around 56 applications which comes with their own landing page, big number isn't it? But the best part is Siebel allows you to change this and as per your business requirement you can configure the name of the landing page (Home Page) at the application level and system will automatically launches that page once you logged in.

Do you want to configure it? It is very easy, here below are the steps:

1. Open .cfg file and query for the parameter : "ApplicationName".
2. Take the value of this parameter and query in Siebel Tools -> Object Explorer -> Application.
3. Scroll right to see the value for "Acknowledgement Web View" property.
4. This is the view which get launched once you open the application. Just change it as per your need, compile the SRF and see the difference.

But the above change holds good if all the users of your application require to have the same landing page, what if out of all 10 users says, "I don't like the Home Page screen to start with, and since my work always starts with My Service Request view, why should I always do two extra clicks to first reach to Service Request screen and then to My Service Request view. I want to get rid of these two extra clicks". Hmmm, sometimes users provide a genuine reason before asking you to build something and then you find tough time to say No to the user. Well, not to worry, Siebel has the solution for this as well.

No matter if every user want to have his different landing page of his own choice, OOB solution is available for it.

1. Just navigate to "Siebel Client Application -> Tools Menu -> User Preferences -> Behaviour view".

2. Select the View, as per the your need. And the best part is, it displays the user-friendly name in the format : <_screenname> - <_viewname> which makes it very easy for the user to select.

3. Click on Save and you are done. Just re-launch the application again.

Please note here this need to happen for each user separately from the UI only and all these preferences get stored in the .spf file that gets created, in Client/Bin folder on the Siebel Server, separately for each user. And the naming convention for the .spf file is : <_loginname>&<_applicationname>.spf.

.

Latest Siebel Interview Question in Market !!

Some of my friends are in the mood of switching their job these days and in of the discussion I was having with one of my friend asked me this question which he faced in technical round recently. And the question was :

"Can we create a join in a business component without the join specification?"

I think most of you heard this question for the very first time, same is the case with me, provided you are not preparing for any Siebel interview these days :)

If you start running your horses towards technical feasibility regarding this question, you might think of variuos options :

a) When you create a join in Siebel Tools, it is not mandatory to provide the Join Specification, so that means you can create a join without join specification.

b) But what kind of data you will see on the UI? Well, one might say it will do the Cartesian Product of the two tables and you will see one record multiple times on the UI.

c) Since Siebel will consider the row_id of the table in the where clause (in spool query) if you don't specify any join specification (like if you don't mention the destination field or source field while creating Link, Siebel treat it as ROW_ID), and you will not see even a single record if outer join flag is unchecked.

May be you are thinking or some other logical result apart from above 3, but to keep it simple and clear I tried doing it and here is the answer for this:

Siebel will add a where clause as :

a) <_buscomp.rowid> = <_table.row_id> (+)

if Outer Join Flag = TRUE

b) <_buscomp.rowid> = <_table.row_id>

if Outer Join Flag = FALSE

So, you will not see even a single record if you Outer Join Flag = FALSE, because no two row_ids are same.

Logical speaking I don't see any reason for creating a Join under a BusComp and not specifying the join specification, but remember interviewers can ask anything to check your technical skills and may be this will help you in future if will face this question. Good Luck !!

.

Issue navigating to Admin Server Management view??

I do like working on dedicated client most of the time, as it helps me getting the SQL spool and the log file, for the dedicated session I am using, very easily in the local drive.

Something strange I observed today when I got the User Id / Password error for the Siebel session while I was trying navigating to "Administration - Server Management" view.

So, here is the sequence of things I observed:

1. I tried navigating to Administration - Server Management View.

2. Recieved an error saying :

3. I clicked on Ok, and found that system is asking for the User Name and Password for connecting to the Gateway.

4. Thought of putting my login name/password, but didn't work.

5. And Siebel client was giving error saying :

An error has occurred creating business component 'Server Component' used by business object 'Server Admin'. Please ask your systems administrator to check your application configuration.(SBL-DAT-00222)

These were the complete set of events happened in my dedicated session and I was not able to navigate to Server Management views. I even tried navigating to the Server Configuration screen but that also didn't work.

Since system was trying accessing the gateway information and it received an error, there is something messed up with the dedicated client cfg file due to which I am not able to qualify for the gateway server information access. To confirm whether CFG is having the correct values or not, just open the CFG and look for : "[GatewayDataSrc]" section. Here below are the parameters for which we need to confirm the values :

[GatewayDataSrc]
ConnectString = <_siebelserver>:<_port>
PrimaryEnterprise = <_enterprise>
DLL = libsscda10.so

Now the question is, from where we need to confirm these values?

To give you the information, "siebns.dat" is the file located at "/siebel/gatewaysrvr/sys" directory which keep all the informatiom regarding the Gateway Server, Siebel Servers, Enterprise Server, Components running on each server with all the parameter details etc.

So, just get this file from the mentioned location and search for the below mentioned strings to check out the value for each parameter:

1. ConnectString :

a) In siebns.dat file search for "GatewayDataSrc/parameters/DSConnectString".

b) Under this section, look for the parameter : "Value" and this is the value for the "ConnectString" parameter in client cfg. (Please note this is the format : <_siebsrvrname>:<_port>)

2. PrimaryEnterprise :

a) In siebns.dat file search for string "GatewayDataSrc/parameters/DSPrimaryEnterprise".

b) Under this section, look for the parameter : "Value" and this is the value for the
"PrimaryEnterprise" parameter in client cfg.

3. DLL :

a) In siebns.dat file search for string "GatewayDataSrc/parameters/DSDLLName".

b) Under this section, look for the parameter : "Value" and this is the value for the "DLL" parameter in client cfg.

After setting all the correct values in the Client's cfg file, just restarted the dedicated session again, it worked fine. Today I know the importance of siebns.dat file, really very useful.

.

Creating Server Request from Dedicated Client !!

I was trying simulating a Business Service from Siebel Client thru "Administration - Business Service -> Simulator" view, and this is very basic thing that we do in our daily Siebel life ;)

But this is what I got, a pop message saying:

No server connect string for Siebel Component SRBroker in Siebel Enterprise <_enterprisename>, Siebel Server <_siebelservername>

hmm, this is something new I ever came across and it seems that my business service was trying to create a Request on Siebel Server (because error specifically mentioned for SR Broker) and due to the incorrect Connect String, system is not able to create a Server Request.

I researched for this issue and found something interesting that is worth sharing with you people here.

You will see this error when :

a) You are trying to create a Server Request, no matter it is Synchronous or Asynchronous, from dedicated client.
AND
b) RequestServerName is not correctly mentioned in the Client's cfg file.

SR Broker is the component which is responsible to interact with the various components running on the Siebel Server to assign the respective tasks. So we need to specify the Server Name (Logical) where SR Broker component is running.

So, here is what you need to do :

1. Find out the Logical name of Siebel Server.

a) Navigate to "Administration - Server Management -> Enterprises". And in the second applet check for the Server Name under which "Server Request Broker" component is running.

b) Copy the Siebel Server name.

2. Update the Server Name in Client cfg file.

a) Open Siebel.cfg file or whichever you are using.

b) Search for section : "[InfraObjMgr]"

c) Change the parameter : "RequestServerName" to the value for Siebel Server Name that we copied in Step 1.b above.

3. Save the Client cfg file and restart the Siebel dedicated client and it should work fine.

Hope it helps.

.

Difference between Today() and TimeStamp() while used in Calculated field !!

Here is something interesting I found today while working on a requirement in which we need to capture the timestamp of the record when a field get updated.

So the exact requirement was :

Capture the timestamp of the record when the Status of the Service Request changes to Approved. The field used for this purpose named as "SR Approved On".

Now this requirement seems very simple and the very first idea come into any Developer's mind is that use the BusComp user property for this i.e. "On Field Update Set" and set the value for "SR Approved On" using Today(). I did the same thing and here is what I tried:

1. Create a BC User Property :

a) Name : On Field Update Set 1

b) Value : "Status", "SR Approved On", "IIF ([Status] = 'Approved', Today(), "")"

Everything looks okayy, but the only thing I wonder is that "SR Approved On" stores the correct date but not the time. "Time" it stores as "12:00:00" for each record.

Hmmmm.... what could be reason?? If you are thinking that underlying column for "SR Approved On" field is only date field, then this is not the case here. I verified the below things:

a) Underlying column for "SR Approved On" is of type "UTC Date Time".

b) Type of "SR Approved On" at the BusComp level is "DTYPE_UTCDATETIME".

So, this fact is totally ruled out that "SR Approved On" can only store Date but not time. That means problem is somewhere else or may be "Today()" is returning only Date not time. But still I didn't convince with this because I am in the impression like we use sysdate in Oracle SQLs it should work that way.

To verify this, I created a Calc Field on Service Request BC:

a) Field Name : Current Time

b) Calculated : True

c) Calculated Value : Today()

Exposed the field on Service Request List Applet and to my surprised I found that it displays the current date but time as "12:00:00 AM" for all the records.

Well, that means we cannot get current timestamp out of "Today()". I need to used something else and let me tell you this was my totally wild guess of using "TimeStamp()" function, which I never used before and it worked pretty well when I changed the Calculated value to "TimeStamp()".

Finally, I got the issue resolved, just changed the User property value to :

a) Name : On Field Update Set 1

b) Value : "Status'', "SR Approved On", "IIF ([Status] = 'Approved', TimeStamp(), "")"

Might be helpful for you, if not used it before !!

.

Running a Workflow Process when "Workflow Process Manager" component shutdown?

Got surprised? I know, this is same reaction I had while brainstorming this with my friend that, "how is it possible?".

Okayy, lets play a question game today here on SiebelMantra and see how many Siebel Gurus visits this post to answer this question:

=========================================================

Is there any way you can run a Workflow Process when "Workflow Process Manager" component is not running on the Siebel Server?

=========================================================

Please provide your comments and I assure you that you will definitely going to learn few hidden truths in Siebel when I will provide my comments after few days with the complete summary for this post. Go ahead, write your views on the question asked.

.

Happy New Year 2010 !!

Wishing you all readers a Very Happy & Prosperous New Year. I wish this year will bring you good health and happiness topped with loads of good fortune.

GG