The Siebel Enterprise Integration Manager (EIM) manages the bi-directional exchange of data between the Siebel databases and other corporate databases. This exchange of information is accomplished through intermediary tables called EIM tables. The EIM tables act as a staging area between the Siebel application database and other databases. In order to perform import, export, update or delete of data in Siebel base tables, Siebel Systems recommends the use of EIM. Siebel Systems does not support the use of native SQL for loading data into the base tables.

EIM reads a special configuration file that specifies the EIM process to perform import, merge, delete, or export with the appropriate parameters. The EIM configuration file (the default file is default.ifb) is an ASCII text file of extension type .ifb that resides in the admin subdirectory under the Siebel server directory. Before running an EIM process, the EIM configuration file must be edited to define the processes that EIM will perform.