Siebel 8.1.1.x and BIP – JRE Version

November 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

More BIP fun today as I discovered yet another ‘gotcha’ while upgrading to Siebel 8.1.1.5.

I have been getting these errors while trying to upload report definitions:

SBL-EAI-05010: Class name incorrect or does not extend SiebelBusinessService

Okay, all very standard – just a typo in my CLASSPATH parameter for the Java Subsystem, right? Wrong! And here’s why:

Exception:java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: com/siebel/data/SiebelPropertySet (Unsupported major.minor version 50.0)

A quick MOS search reveals a new article:

JRE version 1.6 required for all Siebel versions from Fix Pack 8.1.1.4 onward [ID 1285062.1]

Now, I saw no mention of this in the Siebel Reports Guide. I’ve always used the JRE that comes installed as part of BIP and most other configurators that I know do the same. Not so with 8.1.1.5! As usual, there is very little detail in the article other than ‘install JRE 6′.

Here is what I did to resolve. Now, I’m not sure all of this is required but I’m so fed up of messing around with BIP that I’ve just gone ahead and done the lot. Feel free to experiment:

  1. Download JRE 6
  2. Install on the Siebel Server – I put the JDK in D:\Java\ and the JRE in the same location
  3. Update your Java Subsystem with the path to the JVM. (For example, if you’ve install Java in D:\Java\jdk1.6.0_27)

    4. change param DLL=D:\Java\jdk1.6.0_27\jre\bin\client\jvm.dll for named subsystem XMLPJvmSubsys

  4. (For Windows) Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable (For example: D:\Java\jdk1.6.0_27)
  5. (For *NIX) export JAVA_HOME (For example: export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_27/
  6. For good measure, I added JAVA_HOME\bin to my PATH

Rumour is that Siebel 8.1.1.6 is out and about – here’s hoping that some stability will be introduced into the BIP integration, not yet more problems!

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Troubleshooting Siebel Reports

October 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Very quick post! I noticed recently that the new Siebel Reports Guide (Revision E) has an extensive ‘Troubleshooting’ section. This contains a large number of common errors and issues along with details for investigating and resolving them.

Well worth a look if you, like many others, are having problems with the Siebel and BI Publisher integration in Siebel 8.1.x.x

You can find the relevant chapter here.

It’s great that Oracle are taking developers concerns seriously and are really making an effort now to tighten up the integration with BI Publisher. I had a chat recently with the Product Manager and he outlined really quite extensive and positive plans for the future. I’m certainly hopeful for 8.2.2 and 8.1.1.7 that the underlying issues will be resolved and we can re-focus our efforts on developing really great Siebel implementations.

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BIP and Siebel 8.1.1.5

October 7, 2011 By 11 Comments

I’m still in upgrade mode and have recently been revisiting Actuate to BIP migration in an 8.1.1.5 environment. Much to my annoyance, but not great surprise, 8.1.1.5 has introduced further headaches (in addition to a smattering of improvements) to the whole Siebel and BIP integration process.

First up, 8.1.1.5 introduces some SIF and seed data files for you to import. Prepare yourself for some creative thinking as you try to work out what the Release Note author meant to write and not what he or she wrote – the documentation is appalling. Notably:

  1. The SIF file referenced doesn’t exist. You’ll have to locate a ZIP file, extract it then hunt around for a similarly named file to import into Tools
  2. The ‘commands’ given to import the seed data are completely wrong. You’ll need to refer to MOS for correct instructions on importing the seed data
  3. Application view records have been missed from the seed data files. Reports Guide revision D has instructions for their manual creation while revision E sees the instructions vanish into thin air
  4. When you do get round to assigning the views to responsibilities, be prepared for misspelled view names – hey, it’s only a computer program, who needs accuracy?

Finally, those who used Doc ID 823360.1 to implement functionality to generate reports through Workflow may find it no longer works after upgrading to 8.1.1.5. It would appear that some bodge has been introduced that breaks the ‘Bookmark’ argument to the XMLP Driver Service BS. Spooling the SQL shows Siebel creating a temporary PDQ, executing it then deleting it, in order to retrieve the data for the report request. I can’t quite believe this but I have the SQL spool to prove it. You’ll need to replace all of your Bookmark arguments with hefty PDQ friendly expressions.

You may get the impression that I’m not very happy with this latest release and you’d be right. The Siebel and BIP integration has been so hastily thrown together that it’s us, as developers and customers, who have to wade through lines of debug output and SQL and come up with workarounds to these irritations.

Let us know of your experiences with 8.1.1.5 or BIP integration in general.

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Oracle Siebel CRM 8 – Book Review

August 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

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.

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Siebel Reporting – Part 3 – Actuate to BIP Report Migration

May 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

With a running BIP Publisher server and tested integration, we can start looking at migrating Actuate reports to the BIP Publisher format.

Some key facts to recall from previous posts:

  1. Actuate uses COM to talk to Siebel. This means Report objects in Tools, .ROL files and ssiebel.bas
  2. BIP uses Web Services. This mean Integration Objects, SOAP messages and XML
  3. Actuate uses it’s own .ROD file format to store report definitions, designed in the Actuate eReport Designer application
  4. BIP uses a simple .RTF file format to represent reports designed in Microsoft Word, using the BI Publisher Desktop plug in

You are probably thinking at this point – Report Migration Tool. It’s true that Oracle have made available a migration tool through My Oracle Support (Patch ID 8968224). The tool will attempt to create IOs from your Report objects and .RTF files from your .ROD / .BAS files. In practice, I’ve found it to be buggy and the results less than satisfactory. The remainder of this post assumes you’ll want to re-do your reports manually but please feel free to give the tool a try and see if it works for you.

The steps for report migration involve migrating the data structure from Report objects to Integration Objects then migrating the report design from Actuate (ROD) to BIP (RTF). Let’s start with the data feed. Roughly, this translates to the following steps:

  1. Locate the Report object and note the underlying BC and fields
  2. In the corresponding View Report object, note the underlying BO. I realise that there can be more than one view associated with one report, and we’ll cover that scenario below.
  3. Create an Integration Object, using the Tools wizard, mapping from the BO, BC and fields of the Report object.
  4. If you want to use a Primary MVF, select the top level object in the wizard. If you want a repeating group across an MVL, select the child object in the wizard
  5. Check in and deploy to the server via Tools (Deploy to Runtime Database)
  6. Navigate to Site Map > Administration – BIP Reports > Sample Data File Generation and generate sample XML for your IOs

It’s essentially that simple: BIP will use this IO to pull data out of the object layer using EAI via a Web Service call.

Migrating the report design itself is a less straight forward process but still not overly complex. Here are the steps that I would suggest:

  1. Open your Actuate report design in eReport Designer. Not only can you view the report layout, you can drill down into the Data Stream to pick out any modifications in the fetch or layout code
  2. Open Word, go to Add Ins and check that the Oracle BI Publisher toolbar is visible
  3. Select the Data > Load XML Data menu to load the sample XML file that you generated previously
  4. Replicate your layout and design in the Word document
  5. Use the Insert > Field menu to add your field label placeholders into the report document
  6. Use the Repeating Group and Table Wizard menu items to create repeating groups for parent, child and grandchild relationships
  7. Use the BIP Publisher User Guide, installed in the Start Menu, to translate your Actuate code to BIP code
  8. Use Preview to see how the report looks and tweak appropriately
  9. When you are happy, use the Tools > Translate Template > Extract Text menu item to generate the .XLF file that Siebel requires
  10. Upload to Siebel via Report Template Registration, assign to a view via View Association and you’re done!

Clearly, I’ve vastly over simplified the steps to migrate any custom code and layout in your Actuate Reports. However, BIP has a powerful language construct that can be embedded in your documents to provide any custom functionality that you might have. Check the BIP user guide for more information.

Please feel free to post if there are specific steps that are troubling you or any particular functionality that you are trying to migrate across that is causing you grief.

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