Open UI Client Model

OpenUI has the below logical model

1. CSS Sheets
2. Physical Renderer
3. PresentationModel
4. ProxyObjects

CSS Sheets
Physical files are covered

Physical Renderer
Covers the java script to implement any special appearance required at the clients.Independent of the Siebel Business Layer

PresentationModel
Here the business logic to be considered before displaying the data to the user. The java script acts on the data passed from the Siebel Server.Its independent of Siebel Business Layer

ProxyObjects
These are proxy objects created for every Siebel Objects passed from Siebel server. For example Siebel Applet would be replicated as a proxy applet at this layer and this reference is passed to the Siebel PM


OpenUI totally replaces the ActiveX controls thus giving the web the power to control the data and its appearance at the client side.

Siebel Party Concept: Explained in a Simpler Way

As you are already aware that the Party concept in Siebel was introduced with Siebel version 7.
Basic idea behind the Party concept is to overcome the data redundancy. Prior to Party concept, there exist few tables which used to contain the same data but for different reasons resulting in Duplicate data.

Eg:
Earlier the contact and the user formation was stored in two different tables but with party concept the user also became a contact thus avoiding the redundancy

Basic core of RDBMS is to remove data redundancy. Party concept was also introduced to achieve this core idea. Many of the tables were removed and a table called as S_PARTY was introduced.

S_PARTY termed out to be an umbrella for all the persons/groups/orgnization related entities.S_PARTY is the base table and did not store any data but only the relation by means of PARTY_TYPE_CD column. The extension tables of S_PARTY stored all the data.

Eg of S_PARTY extension tables
S_ORG_EXT
S_CONTACT
S_USER
S_BU

The BCs which were based on the S_PARTY extension tables were referred as Party Business Components.

Organizations Setup for Siebel eDealer applications

Siebel eAutomotive and Siebel eDealer are two Industry applications used by Car/Automobile manufacturers to achieve the below basic requirements:

Manage the inventory or cars
Manage vehicle details
Manage Sales History/Service History
Manage Contacts
Manage Leads
Manage Customer Activities
Manage the Service Requests

Siebel Auto and eDealer are interdependent applications where the eAuto acts as a parent and eDealer as a child which derives its data from eAuto

In eAuto and eDealer, Organization setup is very important to drive the relation between the OEM(Original Equipment Manufacturers) and Dealers.Under eAutomotive,every dealer is an "Organization" which has the Country as a "Parent Organization"

Dealers would have access to only the eDealer application but not to eAutomotive.Only the Auto assigned contacts/vehicles/sales/service would be visible to the dealer to carry out their required tasks

Siebel Doubts: Series 1

Integration without using IOs??

The doubt is whether its really possible implement a solution without using Siebel Integration Objects or External Integration Objects.The answer is YES,its possible to implement but this requires extensive eScripting to map the data by using the EAI Data Transformation Engine,

Can a same table be used for multiple BCs?

Yes, think of an 1:M extension table wherein its possible to store different data from different BCs by just defining "Type" field.This field needs to be defaulted to the required Data Type and also need to be included in the "Search Specification" for that BC

Unchecking Force Active??

Its always better to "Uncheck" the ForceActive field property if its not being referred by the Integration Objects. Even if the Field is inactive at IO level, it would be still considered while fetching the data,this impacts the performance

UserKey not not found error while performing upsert with EAI Siebel Adapter

There are times the runtime "Deployed Integration Objects" would cause huge problem by referring at the runtime IOs instead of the updated "Repository IOs"
If the runtime IO is not deployed after the full repository then there instances where you would receive the "UserKey" problems even if there is proper data being passed as per the repository IO

Difference b/w SRF and Repository??

Many people have no clear understanding of SRF and the Repository. SRF always refers at the compiled form of the object changes ONLY.Please note its just the changes not the entire object so we still need the entire object on which the changes have been made.Hence,repository has to be moved first then on top of it the SRF is placed to reflect the object changes at the Application level.

What is the use of "Deployed IOs"??

Deployed IOs would be helpful wherein there are slight IO changes which needs to be reflected without replacing the SRF. In such instances the "Deploy IOs" would play important role

Why Siebel and Why not a portal???

Am sure you might have thought of this or your friend who is working as a web developer posed this question to you!!!

So,what is the difference in using the Siebel application and a website like www.vodafone.com ???
As you all know,Siebel is a CRM:Customer Relationship Management Application,so when you say Customer Relation,there comes lot of information about the customer which needs to be tracked and linked with his past history,contacts,billing information,customer activities,complaints etc etc etc.....

What are the options to capture all this information ??
         1.build a new website based on Javascripts/html??
         2.use an excel sheet ???? not a bad option as long as there are only 100 records :P
         3.use some readily available software??

lets go with option1 considering that the requirements are for a telecom company
Here everything starts from scratch,literally everything from scratch.....So you need to hire some web developers,business analysts and a program manager.
Lets go one by one
         1.You need to develop a screen to display the Customer information
         2.You need to develop a screen to store the Customer contact information
         3.need to develop a screen for Customer Customer Address information
         4.need to develop a screen for capturing the customer activities
         5.need to develop a screen for capturing the customer complaints
         6.need to develop a screen for capturing the customer billing information
         7.Need to integrate with an external application to get the payment information
         8.Need to integrate with an external application to pass the customer information in realtime with high performance
         9.Need to integrate with another application to provide the list of Customer           complaints

Just imagine building a webportal by meeting all the above requirements(these are just few examples).It would be nightmare for the developers and the users. why for users ??? because achieving a superportal with a superfast access and superfast interfaces is not a simple job.Achieving all these requirements would consume lot of time and manpower but doable.

So whats the best possible solution? -Here comes the readily available CRM packaged applications
There are plenty of softwares available in market competing each other.Few such examples are :

1. Siebel CRM
2. Salesforce CRM
3. ZOHO CRM
4. SAP CRM
5. Sugar CRM
6. MS Dynamics CRM

Siebel is the industry leader but its firefighting with the newcomers like Salesforce and Shugar CRM.Salesforce has been aggressively pursuing the clients to use their innovative revenue model: Pay-As- You use.

Lets not get into the comparison here,lets come back to the topic "Why Siebel and Why not a portal ??
We have seen the requirements which are normally part of any CRM implementation. Looking at the complexity of implementation using a web development methodology, customers starting thinking of Out of the Box application softwares. Here "Out of the box" means its almost ready to use.And Siebel provides the various Industry oriented applications which directly fit into customers requirement thus resulting in reduced implementation time and lesser cost.