Indexes are available on the Siebel base tables to improve performance and also to maintain the data integrity. The purpose of adding index is to help the database to search records quickly and efficiently. It’s very essential to make sure that Siebel Indexes are in active and valid state.

Scenario :

When indexes are in unusable state creation/modification (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE)  of records cannot be done either through Siebel UI or Database. For example if S_ORG_EXT_U1 index is in unusable state, then user cannot create/modify any Account records

Has to be performed at regular intervals to check the status of Index and requires continuous manual effort

Solution :

An automated batch job that captures the UNUSABLE and INVALID state indexes and rebuilds them dynamically.

Enables to find the exact time and the root cause pertaining to index failures in database.

Respective team will receive an automated Email notifications with the status of index.

Syntax :

alter index siebel.S_ORG_EXT_U1 rebuild online; (For Oracle database)

Benefits :

• Scheduled to run on demand
• Improves Productivity
• Reduces manual and person dependency
• ZERO Errors. Increases credibility

PS : Pre-requisite for doing the above is to have required privilege to read/rebuild index

Connected to the local database with the user id and password for the local user; while applying with the correct ODBC connection and the process initiates for a minute, and then Siebel tools automatically closes; In another machine, the process initiates and the application hangs forever, tried giving many other options w.r.t different user id's and passwords but did not work. Also tried out with SIEBEL/Local user Password, DBA/Enterprise Server Name and all in vain. The application just hangs without throwing any error message.

Solution:

It was found that during an "Apply" a Siebel DUMMY table is created within the Oracle db then dropped after the Apply completes.

It seems that due to a previous 'Apply' not completing successfully this DUMMY table still existed.

Therefore the error received when attempting to apply the new table.

The exact table name = SIEBEL.D_U_M_M_Y

To resolve this the DUMMY table was dropped using database utilities

NOTE:This Tip appliesto Siebel Tools - Version: 8.0.0.3 SIA [20416] and later [Release: V7 and later] and it is recommended solution by Siebel

Monitor the status of Siebel Server components that are essential to keep the application up and running has to be performed manually which will be person dependent task

 Solution :

 An automated batch job (VBS/Shell/BAT) that monitors the Siebel components that can be scheduled to run as per need.

Email notifications will be sent to the respective team alerting on the component state

Benefits :

Scheduled to run on demand

Improves Productivity. Reduces manual intervention

Increases credibility and adds value to the existing process

Reduces Turn Around Time (TAT) for these tasks

A time zone is a region on Earth that has a uniform, legally mandated standard time.

Almost all time zones on land have legally defined borders which coincide with the borders of the country mandating the time or some subdivision thereof. Of the 40 time zones on land, most are offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by a whole number of hours (UTC−12 to UTC+14), but a few are offset by 30 or 45 minutes from a nearby hourly zone.

In Siebel Application TimeZones can be set at 3 different levels: 

a). Database Server level Time zone
Control Panel  -> Date and Time  -> Time zone

b).  Application Server level Time Zone
Application Administration  -> System Preferences  ->  Default Time zone

c). User level Time zone
Site Map -> User Preferences -> Profile -> Time Zone

NOTE: Order of Precedence taken by Siebel for all Date and Time calculation is c > b > a. 

The cancel query feature allows users to stop the slow or incorrect queries. If the query does not return records within a given number of seconds (the timeout period), a dialog box appears, which allows the user to cancel the query.

The cancel query feature is enabled through the CancelQueryTimeOut parameter in the [SWE] section of the application configuration file (CFG).

Steps to enable the Cancel Query Feature:

1)  Open your application’s configuration file, for example uagent.cfg.

2 ) Change the CancelQueryTimeOut parameter to

CancelQueryTimeOut = timeout    where timeout is any integer of zero or greater.

For example,if CancelQueryTimeOut = 3, the cancel query dialog box appears if records are not returned within 3 seconds.

NOTE:A timeout value of less than zero, for example, -1, disables the feature.

Generate reports in spreadsheet based on business scenarios on a periodical basis and sharing the reports to the respective teams.The task will be repetitive in nature which involves manual interventionSolution :An automated batch job (VBS/Shell/BAT) that can generate the reports in a pre-defined format with required business criteria (dynamically) by connecting to the intended database.Respective team will be notified via mail with the required reportsBenefits :

• Scheduled to run on demand
• Improves Productivity. Reduces manual intervention
• Eradicates Person dependency. Increases credibility and adds value to the existing process
• Reduces Turn Around Time (TAT) for these tasks and adds value addition to the current process 

The Server Request Broker and Server Request Processor are two vital components for managing requests for component execution on the Siebel servers. These pre-defined components provided in Siebel are used to handle the requests on Siebel servers effectively by using optimum strategies of load balancing on both single and multi-server deployments.

Request is a task that is processed by batch mode components in the Siebel server. SRBroker and SRProc are responsible to route requests from its requestor to its target.

Server Request Broker (also known as SRBroker or SRB):

SRBroker is the main part in this request mechanism. It handles and routes the request to its target component based on the routing information in the request. Every SRBroker process will cache information from the Siebel Gateway Name Server and know which component is enabled on which Siebel server. They also cache information from the shared memory and know which component is running on the local Siebel server

Server Request Processor (also known as SRProc or SRP):

SRProc is used to process server requests that are stored in the Siebel database for various reasons, mostly asynchronous server requests. SRProc has connection information to the Siebel database to store and pick up requests from the S_SRM_REQUEST table. SRProc process only communicates with the SRBroker running on the same Siebel server.                                                     

Request Type: There are primarily two different types of server requests:

• Synchronous:The requests are sent to its target component as soon as possible and its requestor will wait for the response.
• Asynchronous:The requests are sent to its target component as soon as possible, but its requestor will not wait for the response. Furthermore, the requestor does not expect any response at all or trigger a callback upon getting a response.
• In the Asynchronous mode, you can specify a request to be scheduled at a later time by using the Scheduled Start Date parameter while submitting the request.

Request Routing Logic

By default, if the target component resides on the same server as the requestor, SRB will always route the request to the instance of the component running on the same server. SRB will never route request to other servers if the target component is running on the local server.

If the target component is not running on the same server, SRB will route the request to the other Siebel servers running the target component. If there are multiple Siebel servers running the target component, SRB will route successive requests to different Siebel servers in a round robin fashion.

Siebel Application Response measurement ( SARM) has following subares -DBC_FETCH
THRESHOLD_PRUNED
DBC_EXECUTE
INFRA_ENTRY
SWE_CMD_SWEUAID
OBJMGR_SESS_LOGIN
SWEPAGE_VIEW_BUILD
OBJMGR_SESS_RELOGIN
SRB_SYNCMSG
SEC_AUTH
DBC_WRITE
SWEPAGE_VIEW_SHOW
OBJMGR_BSVC_INVOKE
SRM_COMPSHELL
SARM_IO
SWE_IVOK_APLTMTHD
WORKFLOW_ENGNE_INVOKE
WORKFLOW_CORDR_EXECUTE
SWEPAGE_APPLET_BUILD
OBJMGR_BC_COPY_REC
OBJMGR_BC_EXECUTE
CSS_CSBS_INVOKE
OBJMGR_BC_WRITE_REC
SWE_IVOK_APPMTHD
OBJMGR_BC_DELETE_REC
CSS_CCBS_INVOKE
SCRIPT_J_EXECUTEALL
SCRIPT_J_EXECUTE_EVENT
SCRIPT_EXECUTE_OBJINT
OBJMGR_BC_UNDO_REC