Thursday, March 21, 2013

Siebel Architecture - a high level overview


Testing of Siebel application is similar to testing of any web based application. Before we start testing of any application, it is recommended to get familiar with the application architecture. Here we will get and idea about Siebel application architecture.

This is an n-tier architecture where a Siebel web client that access the business data and a web server that interacts with web clients. There is a enterprise server which is again a logical collection of multiple Siebel servers. Other than this there a relational database and file system which stores the business data.

The figure below illustrated the typical architecture.




Here I used term Siebel web client which is one of the types of Siebel client. The Siebel client may be: Siebel Web client, Siebel Developer Web Client, Mobile web client, Wireless client etc

The Siebel web client runs in variety of environment that may be web browsers, WML devices, and PDA.

So in general term if we practically say, a request is made through web client which goes to web server that identify the request and pass this request to Siebel Server , Now Siebel server process the business data and interact with DB and file system and return the data to web server. Now web server passes completed HTML pages back to Siebel Web Clients. In between few other things also come in picture like gateway names server and load balancer.

See the below figure which state that a Siebel server consist of following entities:

Siebel Repository File (SRF)
Configuration File (CFG) and Component Parameters
Siebel Web Templates (SWT)
Server Components






For more detail of these entities, please refer my next post.

Here the physical architecture. The Siebel Gateway Name Server, Siebel Server, Database Server, and File System can be implemented on one machine or spread across multiple machines.
The Siebel Server(s) should have a high-speed LAN connection to the Database Server



Thursday, March 7, 2013

Siebel Vertical and Horizontal

Siebel Vertical and Horizontal concept

The main difference between both is that “Vertical Applications are specifically made for one domain and Horizontal Applications are Common which can be used for any domain”.

So basically we can say the vertical applications are designed industry wise and horizontal applications are designed field wise.

Like in my project we are working for a telecom based company and customizing the application fand that is specific to communication only. That is an Siebel e-communication application and will come in Vertical application category.

Now taking another example like Siebel call center application, as its name, it is for the call center process and the call center process is generally common everywhere. So this call center application can be customized for different domain, like for health domain, telecom, banking or any other so this will fall under Horizontal application.

Below are some examples:

Siebel Vertical
Financial Services
Banking
Insurance
Healthcare
Communications/Media/Energy
Communications
Media
Utilities
Oil and Gas
Consumer Sector
Life Sciences



Siebel Horizontal
Sales
Call Center and Service
Customer Telephony Integration (CTI)
Partner Relationship Management (PRM)
Employee Relationship Management (ERM)
Marketing
eBusiness Application Integration (eAI)
Mobile eBusiness