The connector supports Create, Retrieve, Update, and Delete verbs for a Siebel application-specific business object whose semantics are encapsulated in its business object definition. There is no connector logic that processes a Siebel application-specific business object according to hard-coded instructions in the connector. For example, the connector does not expect a particular business object to consist of a certain type and number of entities. What the connector expects is that any object may consist of one or more entities.
Siebel business components can be associated in two ways. They can be linked in one-to-one relationships through single-valued links, or they can have Multi-Value Link (MVL) fields representing one-to-many relationships. An example of a Multi-Value field is the Street Address field of the Account business component. Business components can be associated in many-to-one relationships by means of Pick Lists. business component methods provide support for searching a Pick List business component for a specific value and placing that value in a field. Finally, business components can be associated in many-to-many relationships through intersection tables.
In order to support the Siebel concept of a business object context encapsulating numerous business components, a top-level business object should be corresponded to the appropriate Siebel business object. The top-level business object application-specific information should contain the name of the corresponding Siebel business object. Each top-level attribute should then correspond to a Siebel business component.
Within a business object definition that corresponds to a business component, each attribute specifies either a simple field, or a Multi-Value Group (MVG) field. The attribute data in simple attributes should have simple data types. Attributes that correspond to MVG fields should be treated as child (container) business objects.
This business object structure is part of the meta-data that allows the connector to handle all business objects in the same manner. The connector can support additional Siebel objects if a business object definition is specified for the object.
When developing a Siebel business object, always place the key attribute at the top of the object. This ensures that the connector has the key value before processing the rest of the object. Placing the key attribute elsewhere in the object may lead to processing errors.The key attribute for an object is its ID in Siebel.