Okay, time for a rant. This is bugging me.
I spend a lot of time with Workflow: EAI work kind of forces that on you. Any moderately complicated workflow process always ends up needing a stack of workflow process properties. The vanilla processes Siebel provide are good examples of this phenomenon. This is understandable, and equivalent to a scripted function justifiably defining a bunch of local variables. So here’s the thing: when working with processes, why do I always see all the process properties defined to be ‘In/Out’? This is equivalent to a scripted function putting every local variable into the function definition. Crazy talk!
For those who don’t know, the In/Out parameter on a process property defines the purpose of the property. The values are In for input properties, Out for outputs, In/Out (the default) for properties that both accept and return a value, and None for those variables just used internally by the process. Pretty clear cut. Setting this parameter properly makes the workflow easier to understand - particularly helping when calling the workflow as a sub-process. Leaving it as the default In/Out value is lazy config, and I’ve seen too much of it. So there. Someone pass the message on to the developers inside Siebel, please.
P.S. While we’re at it: how about using process property types other than ‘String’ and ‘Hierarchy’ - and that ‘Integration Object’ parameter is pretty useful too…
March 3rd, 2008
Welcome to notesonsiebel.com!
I’ve moved the new URL at the same time as moving the blog off wordpress.org and onto my own Wordpress installation. Apologies for any difficulty you’ve had while the changes have gone through, but hopefully the TNS and NameServer changes have now circulated around the internet and all your bookmarks and RSS readers have silently adapted to the change. If not, then do update to the new URL. In theory all permalinks etc should be maintained, so please let me know if you see any problems.
I’m seriously impressed with Wordpress. It’s no simple bit of software, yet installation took five minutes and the export & import from Wordpress.org was (I think!) seamless. If only all software installed so easily…
February 17th, 2008
Don’t we all love MetaLink, Oracle’s replacement for Siebel SupportWeb? Judging from everyone I’ve spoken to, the answer’s a resounding ‘No’!
To be honest, a lot of the griping is down to the usual sour grapes that accompany any software release that exposes users to change. I can’t help but be amused by all these enterprise software developers wandering around grumbling about having to deal with a new system that’s “obviously” far inferior from the one they’re used to… these would be the same developers who spend the rest of their time grumbling about the “stupid” users of their systems who can’t cope with the “simple” differences between Siebel 6 and 7… A salutary lesson, perhaps 
Forgetting the comparison of the merits of the two systems, I do think it’s a shame that we now have another example of Oracle moving Siebel away from the traditional policy of eating it’s own dogfood. (This is a term for software companies actually using the software they build internally, a practise that is well regarded in the software industry due to it adding internal pressures to improve the product.) Not only do Siebel (the Oracle-subsidiary) no longer use Siebel (the product) as their main CRM system, they also no longer use it for tracking customer service requests. It will be interesting to see whether this change has any impact on the quality and relevance of future Siebel features.
A direct impact the change to MetaLink has had on me is that my stack of SupportWeb deep-links no longer work, including the ones on this blog (thanks Oracle - a redirect would have been nice!). I’ve now been through the site and updated all the links I could find, please let me know if you spot any links that don’t work.
February 15th, 2008
For all Sydneysiders reading: the next Siebel User Group event will take place on the 21st February. We’re back at the AGSM for a panel discussion on The Role That Siebel Plays In Your Enterprise, after which there’ll be the usual opportunity to catch up with past and future colleagues.
It’s a good broad topic with excellent panellists who I expect them to make my moderating role largely redundant. The last two SUGA events have been oversubscribed well in advance, so get on and register now.
February 7th, 2008
A quick titbit to get things rolling again after an extended silly season hiatus…
Whenever you need to access lists of values data in your configuration, note that of the business components defined on the S_LST_OF_VAL table, Picklist Generic is cached while List Of Values is not. The impact of this is that repeated queries to Picklist Generic will be served from the memory of the Object Manager, whereas queries to List Of Values will always hit the database. So for improved performance be sure to use Picklist Generic in your configuration, not List Of Values.
Caching behaviour is controlled by the business component property Cache Data: when this property is set to true then the database is only read once for a given query. You can see in Object Explorer that Picklist Generic has Cache Data set to true, while it’s false for List Of Values. This configuration allows the List Of Values BC to be used for managing LOVs, where it’s critical to always have the current database values, while Picklist Generic can be used where performance is more important.
January 14th, 2008
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