External Business Component (EBC)

In almost all the implementation of Siebel Application we come across the requirement as – “Bring the data from the external source and display” well for that in Siebel the solution is External Business Component (EBC) and Virtual Business Component (VBC). In this Blog the content is specific to EBC, so let me give the definition of EBC first then the process of creating it –Definition : EBC is a method used when there is a need to display data which is external to siebel. The external schema is imported into siebel tables using a wizard. Once the external schema is imported, to display this data in an applet, the configuration is going to be the sme as creating a BC, an Applet,a View etc.

Steps of Creating:

1. get the DDL file for your external table.

here is how a sample DDL file will look like:CREATE TABLE TPMS.EBC_VEC

(

demo11 VARCHAR2(20),

demo12 VARCHAR2(20),

demo13 NUMBER(10)

)

2. Use siebel object creation wizard to create this table.

File –> New Object –> External Table Schema Import3. The wizard will ask for following inputs:

i. Select Project this table will be part of from the list

ii. Select the database where external table resides – Enter the database, for this example it is Oracle Server Enterprise Edition

iii. Specify full path of the file where table definition resides

iv. Specify a 3 digit batch code for this import – example 001

v. Click on Next and then click on Finish4. This will create your External table. with a name like EX_001_0000001. The names of External tables begin with “EX_” the next 3 characters are batch codes and the rest is just a serial number.* The Type field will be “External” for this table.

* You will also have to map one of the table columns to the Siebel’s Id field. to do this: go to the desired table column and in the “System Field Mapping” column select “Id”

3. Changes to be made in cfg file now follow the below steps create an entry for a new datasource under [DataSources] sectionTPMS = TPMS add a new section [TPMS] to describe the datasource params:[TPMS]

Docked = TRUE

ConnectString = VECDEV

TableOwner = TPMS_INT

DLL = abc.dll

SqlStyle = OracleCBO

DSUserName = userdev

DSPassword = userdev

Now that you have defined the Datasource in cfg file, go back to siebel tools and add the datasource to your external table. Go to your external table, and go to the Data Source and add a new record:

Name = TPMSExternal table is now ready for use in a EBC. Use siebel object wizard to create a BC based on this table. Once the BC is created, change the Data Source property of the BC to “TPMS” .You are now ready to use this BC in a applet/view. In the above process the description is about an external data source called TPMS and we are fetching the  data from TPMS to Siebel. But what if we come across a bit more complex requirement. Suppose the data is in siebel but it should not be modified from the front end or from the back end (unless and until one has right to do so) just like an external data source schema. Or let me put it as can we make EBC on the same database we are working i.e. Siebel Database? The answer and solution is the same Yes we can create an EBC based on the same database but for that we need to create a different DSN and then follow the steps given above.