Siebel 8.2.2 – First Impressions

November 4, 2011 By 4 Comments

Well, I’ve downloaded 8.2.2 Public Sector from eDelivery and unzipped all I need. Here’s a quick summary of what I’ve found so far!

ImageCreator – no more!

Unzipping all the JAR files into a single location left me a bit confused. Where’s ImageCreator.exe? No more, from what I can see! There’s a wee batch file called ‘snic.bat’ that does the job instead. Simply open a command prompt, set JAVA_HOME and run snic.bat. Behold, the new face of ImageCreator:

ImageCreator – but not as you know it

First thing to note – it works great in Windows 7 64-bit! WOO HOO! Thank you Oracle! :)

All the familiar options are there, so I opt to create installers for the Siebel Enterprise, Tools, Web Client and SWE. English language picked, it creates the installers. Simple, awesome, it works. Hurrah!

Installation

That done, I have two freshly created Windows 2008 R2 VMs ready to roll – one for the App Server / SWE and one for the database. I’ve taken the liberty of installing Oracle 11g in preparation – I hope you don’t mind! I’ve also set aside a Windows 7 64-bit VM for Siebel Client and Tools installations, with the 11g client already installed.

So, the installations. Are they now supported on Windows Server 2008? Well… Yes! The installation process for Server components now follows the OUI method of the Client and Tools installers for 8.1:

Familiar installer

Cool! Much better than the old 8.1 installers. Working great in 64-bit 2008 R2 too – no complaints about incompatibility!

Configuration

Launching the config shortcuts reveals a make over of the configuration wizards, in keeping with the installer look and feel. Everything works as before but it’s much cleaner and much more compatible.

Clean and compatible configuration

Initial Gateway Configuration failed and I don’t know why. You’ll notice that the file system structure of the installation looks very ‘Oracle’ like and far less ‘Siebel’ like – the configuration log files reside in a ‘cfgtools’ folder though I could find no error to speak of in any of the files. I was unable to uninstall the Gateway too – again, no trace of an error in the log files but the configuration wizard refused to complete successfully. Enterprise configuration ran without a hitch.

It’s at this point I will mention that the ODBC datasource for the Enterprise was created in the 32-bit subsystem. That is, checking in the registry (or through the SysWOW version of odbcad32.exe), you’ll see the ODBC entries in the WOW (Windows in Windows – the 32-bit subsystem supporting 32-bit apps in 64-bit Windows) area. This is a disappointment and certainly suggests no native 64-bit support. Checking the binaries in starting the Siebel Server and Gateway, I can see quite clearly that they are running in the 32-bit subsystem so are most certainly not native 64-bit. :(

GRANTUSR.SQL has received a well deserved make over – a far larger script prompts for more detailed information, performs more checks and is generally easier and safer to use. Excellent stuff.

SWE installation still does not support IIS 7.5 natively and requires the IIS 6 metabase compatibility to be enabled.

The rest of the configuration of the Database Server, Siebel Server and SWE are much the same as before.

Tools and Web Client

Familiar installation dialogs for Tools and Web Client. The only addition is the ability to sign up for Oracle updates, in line with newer Oracle product installations. Windows 7 is now seen as a supported OS, so no compatibility problems this time around. Nice!

Finally, support for Windows 7

 No problems with regsrvr hanging on the Client installation but the installer has crashed at 100% – ‘Updating registry key … AutoStartOnDisconnect’. I’ve had to kill it. :( Running again ‘As Administator’ seemed to get around this – still not great, thought. I want to be able to install client software without faffing around with UAC.

I’ve had to stop here – the ‘All Inclusive’ keys on the the Oracle License Key page are yet to include 8.2.2 keys, so I can’t go any further.

I’ll post again when I get chance to investigate some of the functional and technical changes present in 8.2.2.

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Siebel 8.2.2 Released via eDelivery

November 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I’ve just noticed that Siebel 8.2.2 Public Sector is now available on eDelivery – under ‘Windows 64-bit’ no less!

Does this mean full 64-bit support for Siebel Servers?! Can we finally say goodbye to 3.2 GiB and PAE? I wonder what other, exciting features we can expect to see!

Am downloading now with update to follow – stay tuned! :)

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Siebel and Windows 7 – UPDATED

June 29, 2011 By 14 Comments

I’ve recently rebuilt my laptop and a number of VMs, all running Siebel 7.8 and 8.1 on Windows 7. Once again, I was faced with the horror of getting ImageCreator, Universal Installer and Siebel running in a Windows 7 environment. I threw in Windows 7 64-bit as well, just to make things interesting.

As a result, I’ve discovered a few shortcuts to getting everything installed and working with minimal fuss – I’d like to share this with you. By the way, the photo in the screenshot below is of our beautiful daughter Emily – I couldn’t resist including it! :)

Don’t forget to check out MOS Article ID 796015.1 and make sure you’re using the version that Oracle has certified on Internet Explorer 8 – Windows 7 comes with IE8 hotwired in and no support for IE7.

ImageCreator

ImageCreator STILL does not work properly in Windows 7, even with the latest Siebel builds (8.1.1.5). To work around this in Windows 7, follow this excellent post from @lex in his Siebel Essentials Blog:

  1. Run: Windows_ImageCreator.exe -is:javaconsole -console
  2. Follow the prompts to build your installers

Install Siebel

The Siebel installers, surprisingly, STILL don’t support Windows 7. Who would have thought.

  1. First up, enable the Administrator account in Windows 7 by clicking Start, type CMD and right click CMD.EXE and ‘Run As Administrator’
  2. Run the following command: net user administrator /active:yes
  3. Restart your machine
  4. Login as user ‘Administrator’
  5. Run the installation via setup.bat as this user and you’ll get none and the grief that you had before. You’ll have to ‘ignore’ the checks on OS version that OUI tells you about
  6. This should work for both Tools and Web Client

Running Siebel Tools

Bless my barnacles, Siebel Tools almost kind of works out of the box with Windows 7! ODBC specific stuff below applies, though.

Tools will run just fine as long as you:

  1. Right click the Tools Shortcut and ‘Run As Administrator’ first time you use it. This lets it write some junk to the registry. After that, you’re good

Running Siebel Web Client

The Web Client – would you Adam and Eve it – doesn’t really support Windows 7. At least, you’ll have trouble with IE8 and I’d suggest putting off installing IE9 for now (and ever):

  1. Edit the Web Client .cfg file for the application you’re working with and edit as follows:

    EnableFQDN = FALSE

  2. In Internet Settings, add ‘http://localhost’ as an ‘Intranet’ site. Make sure the security settings for this zone let you do pretty much whatever with Active X controls – this lets the HIFO get in there. Refer to Article ID 1066053.1 on My Oracle Support
  3. If you’re using 64-bit Windows, add the following to your Web Client shortcut (or in the Debug properties in Tools). This ensures that the 32-bit version of IE is in use:

    /d Local /b “C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe”

  4. Finally, if you need to amend ODBC settings on 64-bit Windows, don’t forget to use the 32-bit ODBC administrator. The 32-bit Siebel executable will look here, not what you see in the 64-bit ODBC settings:

    C:\Windows\SysWoW64\odbcad32.exe

That’s it! Try it, post and let’s discuss.

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Oracle extend support for Siebel 8.1

June 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Looking on My Oracle Support the other day, I noticed that Oracle are quoting August 2013 as the date that Premier Support ends for Siebel 8.1.x, in a document dated August 2010. As this is 5 years since the General Availability (GA) date, this is in keeping with standard policy:

However, a quick search reveals an updated document (dated May 2011) that tells a different story:

This is great news for organisations who are happy on the stable 8.1 platform and for those looking to run a 6.x or 7.x upgrade this year. However, what does it say about the future of Siebel 8.2 and beyond? Could this signal the end of Siebel as we know it?

Only time will tell!

 

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Siebel and WordPress – Workflow and Web Service

June 4, 2011 By 1 Comment

Okay, now we’ve got our proxy BS, Integration Objects and Web Service definitions all in Siebel, we can build a Workflow Process to invoke (consume) the Web Service and do something useful with the integration interface.

We’ll start with a pretty simple requirement – let’s look for the first post from the WordPress site and create a Siebel Action (Activity) record with the information.

  1. First up, create a new Data Map (Site Map > Integration – Administration > Data Map Editor)
  2. The Integration Objects that we’re going from and to are ‘Post’ and ‘Action_IO’ respectively
  3. The Integration Components are ‘Post’ and ‘Action’
  4. Map the [title] field from WordPress to the ‘Description’ field in Action and map the [content] field to ‘Comments’
  5. Map the [id] field to ‘Activity UID’ to give us a user key to play with
  6. Validate your new Data Map

Now let’s create a new Workflow Process.

  1. Create a new Workflow Process in the project that we created last time.
  2. You’ll need to define some new process properties:
    3. PropertyTypeDefaultComment
    WP Post IdString1Use this to store a literal for testing purposes
    WP Post MessageHierarchyThe Hierarchy we’ll use to grab data from WordPress
    WP Action MessageHierarchyThe Hierarchy we’ll use to store the new Action definition
  3. Create a new Workflow Process with the following steps:
    4. NameTypeBusiness ServiceMethodComment
    StartStart
    Get WP PostBusiness ServiceWordPressWebServicePortTypegetPostProxy BS that invokes the Web Service
    Purge Data MapBusiness ServiceEAI Data Transformation EnginePurgeRefreshes the Data Map cache for testing
    Data MapBusiness ServiceEAI Data Transformation EngineExecuteMap the WP data to the Action IO
    Insert ActivityBusiness ServiceEAI Siebel AdapterInsertCreates the new Action BC record
    EndEnd
  4. The first business service should be configured to run the proxy business service and the getPost method. Input should be the WP Post Id and the output will be the WP Post Message. Note that the output argument from the proxy BS is ‘getPostResponse:getPostReturn’
  5. Next, invoke the Purge method of the EAI Data Transformation Engine BS. This is good practice for testing but should be removed in a Production environment
  6. Now call the Execute method of the EAI Data Transformation Engine BS. Pass in the WP Post Message hierarchy, the name of the Data Map created earlier and output the WP Action Message property. This will give us our ‘Action’ IC with all the Integration Component Fields in place
  7. Finally, call the ‘Insert’ method of the EAI Siebel Adapter BS. This will take as input the hierarchy created by the mapper and use it to create a new Activity record

That’s it!

Run through the simulator and you’ll see that the process calls the Web Service that you created to grab an XML message from your WordPress site into a hierarchy. The Data Mapper then uses the IO definitions created by the EAI wizard to map the data across to the vanilla Action IO. Finally, the process uses the mapped message to create a new Activity record in Siebel!

Give it a go and post if you have any questions!

 

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