Siebel SCA

Siebel Customer World had the announcement on SCA(Siebel Component assembly).. a supposedly SOA platform where the whole Siebel business object layer is accessable via Web Services -- in J2EE and .NET and may be unlimited development platforms/languages..

Kind of cool from what it sounds.. Wait and See...

Siebel Monitoring tools

The following site has a bunch of reviews on Siebel Monitoring tools..

I have seen Foglight in action in a very large Siebel Deployment. While I like foglight , there is this unreliability which it has -- and that bothers me..
But it is better than BMC Patrol which also is very complex to setup...


http://www.recursivetechnology.com/siebel_monitoring_software.php

BPEL and Siebel Workflow

BPEL(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPEL)  is an emerging technology to orchestrate web services. The technology seems to have the power to dominate the "Programming in Big" space in next few years.

 

BPEL seems to be closely related to how Siebel Workflow can be used to orchestrate Siebel business Services. This is more interesting now that we can publish any business service or workflow as a web service...):

 

 

ICAN from See Beyond, BizTalk from Microsoft , BPEL Ehngine from Oracle are some of the implementations of BPEL.

 

 

Siebel load balancing for COM and JDB

This was never available earlier . There is a new tech note about how load balancing can be employed when external apps connect to Siebel via Object interfaces(such as Java Data Bean and Com Data control). The Lb is accomplished via a Connect String...and an lbconfig file in the server side (similar to Siebel native load balancing).

This atleast will solve the problem of hard coding an App server for such connections...

Siebel 7.8

I just installed Siebel 7.8. Not much changes from Siebel 7.7 as far as I can see..I will be writing more as I see it...

Database support is something which interest me ; Siebel now supports Oracle 10g which brings a lot of other good database features. I think the RAC supportalso is improved...Well...

Siebel DataControl Sample Code

Sample Code which uses Siebel data Control to connect to Siebel. Its
available where ever COM objects can be consumed (Java, PHP etc etc).
Change UID and PWD. Check Bookshelf for more documentation on other
properties of DataControl…

[Vbscript]

Dim errCode
Set SiebelApplication = CreateObject("SiebelDataControl.SiebelDataControl.1")
SiebelApplication.Login
"host=""siebel.TCPIP.NONE.NONE://APPSERVER:2321/siebel/eCommunicationsObjMgr_enu""",
"UID","*****"
errCode = SiebelApplication.GetLastErrCode()
If errCode <> 0 Then
ErrText = SiebelApplication.GetLastErrText
Msgbox ErrText
Else
msgbox "Connected"
End If

[Jscript]
var errCode;
SiebelApplication = new ActiveXObject("SiebelDataControl.SiebelDataControl.1");
var ConnStr="host=\"siebel.TCPIP.NONE.NONE://APPSERVER:2321/siebel/eCommunicationsObjMgr_enu\"";
var UID="ROY";
var PWD="*****";
WScript.Echo(ConnStr + UID + PWD);
SiebelApplication.Login(ConnStr, UID,PWD);
errCode = SiebelApplication.GetLastErrCode()
if (errCode != 0)
{
ErrText = SiebelApplication.GetLastErrText();
WScript.Echo(ErrText);
}
else
{
WScript.Echo("Connected");
}

Read Only Views.

This simple feature added in Siebel 7.7 was much expected.

I have worked in many installations where they had to code in escript
or clone buscomps or applets to fake read only Siebel application
behaviour. Obviously in an application sold with pretext to reduce
maintenance, this is really unacceptable.
But many Siebel installations requires that the read only views so as
to give it to external or reporting customers.

Responsibility Buscomp
(S_APP_VIEW_RESP)
has the field READ_ONLY_FLG added to it.

This is exposed also in the Application
Administration/Responsibilities view. Its very easy to make a view
assignment to a particular responsibility to become read only.

Force Active and Link Spec usage

I worked at a Siebel implementation where we had to deal with a
massive problem caused by a stupid configuration. A very famous
consulting company was doing the project. Naturally they brought some
people who are otherwise good but clueless on some specific siebel
functionality.

During the initial prototyping, a developer put all fields in the
Order Entry and Order line items buscomps to Force Active and LinkSpec
= True. This was an effort to avoid a error from eConfigurator links
(where it pulls fields from a buscomp). He never removed these force
Actives.Project went on and at some point it went to system testing. While
tuning , we found out the massive SQLs which were generated .

We now know the problem . But fixing this will be most difficult. Many
other developers tested their functionality and GUI behaviour assuming
the already Force Active fields. In an Order Entry implementation ,
these buscomps are used heavily and there is no escape other than
basically go thru the whole project and testing each functionality one more time.
Needless to say it was never undertaken , we just made a patch by
removing force Active on some fields we are sure that no one is
using. Imagine that ..For the life of that system , those fields will
be a part of the SQL fired many times during the application session.