As I mentioned in my previous post, I am lucky enough to have been offered the opportunity to peruse a review copy of Alex Hansal’s new book, ‘Oracle Siebel CRM 8 Installation and Management’. I’ve had a few days to go through it and wanted to share my findings with you.

First up, a number of important observations:

1. This book is NOT a reference guide. Siebel Bookshelf is still the one and only reference library that you will need when configuring, administering and managing Siebel day to day
2. This book is NOT a configuration guide. Do not expect to pick this book up and begin working in Siebel Tools. This is an installation and maintenance guide, not a developers guide
3. This book is NOT a beginners guide to Siebel. In order to get the most out of the contents, you should posses some understanding of Siebel technologies

Bearing in mind the statements above, I’m pleased to say that this book is actually pretty good!

My first observation is that the book is very well written. The language is clear and  concise (especially pleasing as the author is a native German speaker) and it is well illustrated with useful screenshots and diagrams. The contents are laid out logically and each chapter flows well into the next.

In brief, the book covers the basics of getting started with an out of the box Siebel 8 installation. Roughly speaking, it covers the following areas:

1. Overview of the Siebel architecture
2. Installation of the main Siebel components on both Windows and Unix / Linux platforms, including setting up security adapters and SSO
3. Server Administration
4. Siebel Application Deployment Manager (ADM)
5. Monitoring Siebel applications
6. Managing Siebel Remote

There is also a chapter or two around access control and personalization and position and organisation hierarchy, which I did find a little odd. Given the nature of the rest of the content, this seemed to be a deviation into the developers domain. I could be wrong, however, and it’s obviously better to have more than less!

The first chapter will be useful if you’re new to Siebel, otherwise it’s just a recap of what you probably (hopefully!) already know. If you’re moving from 6 to 7 / 8 then it might handy to note the architectural changes in those versions. If so, welcome to the 21st century!

The installation, configuration and administration chapters are excellent and really serve to condense the gargantuan quantities of information available in Bookshelf into a manageable step by step guide. I tested this section on one of my colleagues on my current project and he managed to install a base 8.1 SIA environment just by following the guide. A testament to the content, given he has very little Siebel experience! The process is very well defined and the instructions and screenshots clear and concise. Siebel Remote Administration is also given a lot of attention and the author has done well to introduce features that you will definitely find useful.  Personally, I’ve done more Siebel installations than I can remember and thought I knew it all – there are some great tips and tricks that will appeal to even the most seasoned Siebel architect. Of particular note are the security administration and the Oracle BI Publisher installation sections. These are both complex topics and require much to’ing and fro’ing in Siebel Bookshelf to accomplish. It really is excellent to have these important concepts broken down into easy to follow steps.

The ADM section is welcome but I feel it is lacking in the level of detail that would really make it useful. ADM has been around since Siebel 7 but has yet to appeal to me as a one stop shop for migrating reference and non-repository data between environments. Some real world examples of, say, migrating deltas of hierarchical LOV values from Dev to Test would have made this chapter far more useful; as would an example of setting up custom object types to migrate other types of data. As it is, the chapter is a good overview of ADM and gives you an introduction to what it’s all about.

Monitoring is a great addition and is an area often overlooked by technical references. The core features of the SARM and the Siebel Management Server are covered and this offers a handy introduction to a wealth of performance and debugging information that you can now pull out of your Siebel instance. For me, this was new ground and something I’ll definitely be looking to refer to more often in the future.

Overall, it’s a good book. It’s not a ‘Learn Siebel in 24 hours’ type of book: I would always recommend the Core Consulting course and a couple of years working on a project, if you are really serious about getting into Siebel technology. It’s a companion, rather than a replacement, to Siebel Bookshelf and would sit well on the shelf of any Siebel infrastructure specialist or System Administrator.

You can buy the book direct from Pakt Publishing or from Amazon.