As the quote goes, "You cannot NOT have a user experience". User experience is one of the most important things in product design. I personally feel that Siebel's User Interface could be a lot better than what it is (but thanks to the new Innovation pack for 2012, with the Open UI I think Siebel is getting there).
Most users do not like drilling down on a record which then takes them to the detail view of a record and then navigating back to the parent record. What they usually ask for is, if they could have the tabs right on the main view of the screen. Something like this -
Some thought this was not possible but actually it is and requires just a web template change for the Aggregate views.
Change the Web Template of the view to either one of the following -
Here is an Interesting tip shared by my Colleague Venus Hindocha about how to kill your Siebel.exe Process by avoiding the hassle of going to task manager and killing it there.
you can use the foll command from Start -> Run or put it in a batch file
taskkill /F /IM siebel.exe
Some theory:
Taskkill: Ends one or more tasks or processes. Processes can be killed by process ID or image name.
/f : Specifies that process(es) be forcefully terminated. This parameter is ignored for remote processes; all remote processes are forcefully terminated.
/IM (ImageName): Specifies the image name of the process to be terminated. Use the wildcard (*) to specify all image names.
In Siebel versions 6.x and 7.x, there are several number fields such as SR Number, Agreement Number, Asset Number, and Invoice Number which have the Pre Default Value = Expr: 'RowIdToRowIdNum ([Id])'. RowIdToRowIdNum is a function used in calculated expressions. This function converts an alphanumeric ROW_ID to a unique, pure numeric ROW_ID.
The conversion is performed for digits and letters after or before the hyphen '-'. The formula used by RowIdToRowIdNum is the following:
[Last digit or letter * 36^0] + [Second to last digit or letter * 36^1] + [Third to last digit or letter * 36^2] + ...+ [Second digit or letter * 36^n-1)] + [First digit or letter * 36^n]
By design, values of letter A is 10, B is 11, C is 12 ... Y is 34, and Z is 35.
This ROW_ID is the same as the ROW_ID in example 1 with the exception of the letter to the left of the hyphen, 'G'. Using the same conversion, G-5GYG0 would be 16-9189216 where G, the letter to the left of the hyphen, gets converted to 16.
0 * 36^0 = 0 * 1 = 0
G * 36^1 = 16 * 36 = 576
Y * 36^2 = 34 * 36 * 36 = 44064
G * 36^3 = 16 * 36 * 36 * 36 = 746496
5 * 36^4 = 5 * 36 * 36 * 36 * 36 = 8398080
Adding all the converted values right of the hyphen = 9189216
The unique identifier associated with every record in a Siebel Enterprise database is known as a Row Id. The column in which this value is found is ROW_ID and it is present on every table. The Row Id is unique for an entity. For example, the Row Ids for the same person in S_PARTY, S_CONTACT, and S_CONTACT_X are the same because they each refer to the same person.
Row Ids are used extensively throughout Siebel Enterprises to access specific records. Although users access records by a User Primary Key such as Opportunity Name, it is more efficient for the Siebel Enterprise to store and access related data via the Row Id.
The Row Id is a base-36 sequence number generated using a confidential, proprietary algorithm that ensures no duplication, thus protecting the referential integrity of the database. The ROW_ID column is VARCHAR(15), which may contain one or two non-numeric symbols (plus signs or hyphens, or both).
The format of the Row Id is one of the following:
CP-NS - Records created through the user interface
CP+NP+NS - Records created by Interface Manager (EIM)
CP-NP-NS - Records created by EIM (Starting in Siebel versions 6.2 and higher, and Siebel version 7)
Where:
CP = Corporate Prefix, up to 2 alphanumeric characters
NP = Next Prefix, up to 6 alphanumeric characters
NS = Next Suffix, up to 7 alphanumeric characters
The maximum length of the Row Id is 15 alphanumeric characters.
The corporate prefix will always be unique for any database (main or local). The server maintains its original value, and mobile databases created against that particular server database are always assigned a new, unique value.
All connected users share the same Next Prefix (NP), which is obtained from the table S_SSA_ID on the server database. Remote users are each assigned a unique prefix during extraction, which is also stored in the S_SSA_ID table, but on the local database.
Next Suffix (NS) is the heart of the Row Id and is generated with a proprietary algorithm. When a new record is created through the user interface, the Siebel application reads the value of the current NS column from S_SSA_ID table and increments this value by a value more than 1, for performance reasons. In Siebel applications version 7.5.3 and earlier, this value is generally incremented by 50. Starting in Siebel 7.7, the value is generally incremented by 1000. The client caches these potential Row Ids for future inserts. A new record entered from the user interface may result in many inserts to the underlying tables, depending on the business components used. When the client disconnects, cached Row Ids are lost.
In Siebel applications version 7.5.2 and earlier, the caching of Row Ids occurred on individual Application Object Manager (AOM) tasks. In Siebel applications version 7.5.3 and later, Row Id caching occurs on the AOM process itself. This change reduced the potential for contention issues on the S_SSA_ID table.
NOTE: If the client is in a database transaction when it needs to create a new Row Id, the object manager updates the S_SSA_ID table in a separate transaction and commits the transaction immediately.
NOTE: The logical schema reports the ROW_ID column as a VARCHAR, as does the physical schema.
