Introducing Oracle Siebel CRM
This article is written in order to give an idea of a rather specific software package that is used in many large enterprises around the world, but remains little-known to a wide range of IT specialists, even in comparison with similar products, such as, for example, SAP.
There is quite a bit of available literature on it, or it is so vague and confusing that it can be hard for a person “from the street” to understand what it is all about. Here we will try to clarify this issue.
I will call this whole complex simply Siebel, officially it is called Oracle Siebel CRM . The Siebel name is the surname of the company's founder (Thomas Siebel). In 2006, the company was sold to Oracle Corporation.
Siebel is primarily a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This system can be installed in a variety of out-of-the-box configurations, such as the Siebel Call Center, Siebel Finance, Siebel Loyalty (with the engine for the system of customer loyalty programs), Siebel Hospitality (for the hospitality industry) and many others. Nevertheless, consumers of Siebel products (usually large enough companies that work with at least tens of thousands of customers), as a rule, require “sharpening” the system for the needs of not only the industry, but also a particular enterprise. Therefore, the creators of the system tried to provide maximum flexibility for customization and development.
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From the point of view of the user (employee of the customer company) Siebel, as it is declared, is almost a zero-footprint application, that is, no special client is required for the work. Work with Siebel is carried out simply in the Internet Explorer window. In fact, when you first access the server, the appropriate ActiveX components are installed that provide actions with controls.
Unfortunately, at the moment other browsers (except IE) are not supported. As it is easy to understand, it binds users to Windows (as for Siebel servers, they can work both under Windows and under Linux, as well as Solaris, HP-UX, etc.).
The graphical user interface looks like this:
Of course, modules are available to support multiple languages, including Russian.
Siebel's main GUI object is the so-called applet. This is a part of the screen that displays a table (list-applet) or data from one record in a form (form-applet). An applet usually contains menus and controls in the form of buttons on the screen. With their help, the user adds or deletes records, makes queries (query) and other actions, for example, launching any business process. As already mentioned, Siebel is a huge opportunity for customization, limited only by the imagination of the customer / developer. In the picture we can see one leaf applet and one form applet.
Here we can not go into the subtleties of working with the GUI, we better describe how all this is implemented technically.
As it has already become clear, Siebel as a first approximation is a kind of graphical superstructure above the database, working as a web application. The base can be not only Oracle, but also, for example, MS SQL Server or something else. When the system is installed, a huge number of tables are automatically created - the creators tried to include everything that someone might need. However, you can always add custom tables and columns. The bulk of the information about the configuration of Siebel itself (lists of GUI elements, custom scripts, relationships between objects) is also stored in the same database, and there may be many repositories (versions of Siebel configuration) at once. However, the configuration that is actually used by the server at the moment must be compiled into a special file with the .srf extension. Without this file, the server cannot work.
Siebel servers are grouped into logical groupings (Enterprises). The operation of the enterprise is managed by a service called Siebel Gateway Name Server. This server is accessed by a web server (Oracle, IIS ..), equipped with special "extensions" (SWSE - Siebel Web Server Extensions). These are the basic elements of the Siebel environment.
The main developer tool Siebel - a program called Siebel Tools, which performs the compilation.
In simple cases, the development is carried out declaratively, by dragging and dropping the GU GU interface onto the form and filling the corresponding fields with data, like creating a Windows Forms application in Visual Studio. For programming more complex system behavior, either the embedded language is actually used (in fact, it is JScript or VBScript, at the choice of the developer), or a graphical Workflow Designer.
The main debugging tool is the Siebel Dedicated Web Client (in the jargon it is called the “fat client”, as opposed to the “thin client” that users of a running system work with). Despite the name, the “fat client” is a kind of Siebel mini-server, which, like Siebel Tools, runs on a developer's machine. Typically, a developer’s work is a sequence of the following:
Of course, Siebel’s description is rather crude and in no way pretends to be complete - we only talked about the most common things, so far not touching either the Siebel data model, or integration with other systems, or analytics, or even the basic capabilities provided by Siebel to the user.
There is quite a bit of available literature on it, or it is so vague and confusing that it can be hard for a person “from the street” to understand what it is all about. Here we will try to clarify this issue.
I will call this whole complex simply Siebel, officially it is called Oracle Siebel CRM . The Siebel name is the surname of the company's founder (Thomas Siebel). In 2006, the company was sold to Oracle Corporation.
Siebel is primarily a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This system can be installed in a variety of out-of-the-box configurations, such as the Siebel Call Center, Siebel Finance, Siebel Loyalty (with the engine for the system of customer loyalty programs), Siebel Hospitality (for the hospitality industry) and many others. Nevertheless, consumers of Siebel products (usually large enough companies that work with at least tens of thousands of customers), as a rule, require “sharpening” the system for the needs of not only the industry, but also a particular enterprise. Therefore, the creators of the system tried to provide maximum flexibility for customization and development.
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From the point of view of the user (employee of the customer company) Siebel, as it is declared, is almost a zero-footprint application, that is, no special client is required for the work. Work with Siebel is carried out simply in the Internet Explorer window. In fact, when you first access the server, the appropriate ActiveX components are installed that provide actions with controls.
Unfortunately, at the moment other browsers (except IE) are not supported. As it is easy to understand, it binds users to Windows (as for Siebel servers, they can work both under Windows and under Linux, as well as Solaris, HP-UX, etc.).
The graphical user interface looks like this:
Of course, modules are available to support multiple languages, including Russian.
Siebel's main GUI object is the so-called applet. This is a part of the screen that displays a table (list-applet) or data from one record in a form (form-applet). An applet usually contains menus and controls in the form of buttons on the screen. With their help, the user adds or deletes records, makes queries (query) and other actions, for example, launching any business process. As already mentioned, Siebel is a huge opportunity for customization, limited only by the imagination of the customer / developer. In the picture we can see one leaf applet and one form applet.
Here we can not go into the subtleties of working with the GUI, we better describe how all this is implemented technically.
As it has already become clear, Siebel as a first approximation is a kind of graphical superstructure above the database, working as a web application. The base can be not only Oracle, but also, for example, MS SQL Server or something else. When the system is installed, a huge number of tables are automatically created - the creators tried to include everything that someone might need. However, you can always add custom tables and columns. The bulk of the information about the configuration of Siebel itself (lists of GUI elements, custom scripts, relationships between objects) is also stored in the same database, and there may be many repositories (versions of Siebel configuration) at once. However, the configuration that is actually used by the server at the moment must be compiled into a special file with the .srf extension. Without this file, the server cannot work.
Siebel servers are grouped into logical groupings (Enterprises). The operation of the enterprise is managed by a service called Siebel Gateway Name Server. This server is accessed by a web server (Oracle, IIS ..), equipped with special "extensions" (SWSE - Siebel Web Server Extensions). These are the basic elements of the Siebel environment.
The main developer tool Siebel - a program called Siebel Tools, which performs the compilation.
In simple cases, the development is carried out declaratively, by dragging and dropping the GU GU interface onto the form and filling the corresponding fields with data, like creating a Windows Forms application in Visual Studio. For programming more complex system behavior, either the embedded language is actually used (in fact, it is JScript or VBScript, at the choice of the developer), or a graphical Workflow Designer.
The main debugging tool is the Siebel Dedicated Web Client (in the jargon it is called the “fat client”, as opposed to the “thin client” that users of a running system work with). Despite the name, the “fat client” is a kind of Siebel mini-server, which, like Siebel Tools, runs on a developer's machine. Typically, a developer’s work is a sequence of the following:
- Siebel Tools runs, which connects to the development environment database, selects the desired Siebel repository.
- The editable object or set of objects (project) is copied to the local developer database, and on the server database it is protected from changes by other developers (check-out)
- The developer’s machine is used to work with these objects, after which they are compiled into a local SRF file.
- Runs the dedicated web client connected to this SRF file.
- If testing in the "thick client" is successful, the modified objects are recorded in the server database, after which the protection against changes is removed (check-in)
- At some point, the repository is compiled into the SRF server, after which the changes are available to users
Of course, Siebel’s description is rather crude and in no way pretends to be complete - we only talked about the most common things, so far not touching either the Siebel data model, or integration with other systems, or analytics, or even the basic capabilities provided by Siebel to the user.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/123477/
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