Scenario based Interview Questions - Part 1

Long ago an avid reader of the blog requested me to post some scenario based interview questions, and sent some good samples as well. I asked the same on siebel-developers slack community and got some really good answers. This is a three post series so stay tuned for next two posts.

If you like the questions and would like to see more like this, then please +1 this post on google, and don't forget to share your answer in comments below.

Is siebelhub.com down?

Is siebelhub.com down ? Probably not. I am sure team is working hard to keep it up , by the time you will read it, site will be back up.

Today for siebelhub.com CDN and host keep erroring out every now and then :( You might see following error if that happens.

Server Error:

Siebel-Hub is down?

or Cloud flare :

I know the feeling, when you are in middle of doing something and best siebel resource "Siebelhub" goes down, bummer!

Today I am going to share tricks that I use to view offline sites. It's not specific to siebelhub.com and can be very useful.

Solution 1: Use wayback machine. 
This will be simplest  and the best solution to view any website in past point in time. Way Back Machine has cached copies of nearly all websites in world and copies are available to search quite easily. I found a good cached copy of siebelhub.com on : http://web.archive.org/web/20150130060038/http://www.siebelhub.com/main/blog

Solution 2 : Use chrome's offline mode
Use this solution if you are offline. Like other browsers offline feature is also available from chrome, however it is hidden in chrome://flags . Good part of this is that you can view cached websites from your mobile device as well.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

To enable cache views open chrome://flags on any device and enable show saved copy button. After this whenever you are offline you will be presented with an option to view the cached copy from your device. However it is not guaranteed that all the webpages you opened will be available in device cache.

BTW, Do you know chrome has on offline game and it starts when you click on the dinosaur?

Solution 3: Use https://www.httrack.com - Desperate Measure
Don't try this at home. This is an open source tool which copies the whole website to your local pc. and the data is cached on your device for as long as you want.

Hope it helps.

PS: Posted just for the love of information present on siebelhub.com. hats off to guys who built it.

SBL-DAT-00501 : Invalid search specification ' < ? > '.

We detected an Error which may have occurred for one or more of the following reasons:
Invalid search specification '<?>'. Please continue or ask your systems administrator to check your application configuration if the problem persists.(SBL-DAT-00501)

SBL-DAT-00501

This error can come out of the blue moon and can cause some serious time waste and frustration. I learned to resolve it the hard way. In my case it was only occurring in the dedicated client and same srf was working on server perfectly fine.

This is error doesn't mean there is problem in search spec in eScript or MVLs or BCs. It usually occurs when calculated fields is having issues.

Possible reasons for this error:

1. Any type of syntactical mistake in calculated fields
2. Presence of carriage return in any calculated fields
3. Calculated fields declared as DTYPE_TEXT however they are compared in another calculated field as integer.

How to resolve it?

1. Turn on the siebel logs to level 4 and try the scenario again. And search for the error code in log file. 
2. Just above the error code you should see the calculated expression which is causing issue. 
3. Now go to flat tab and search with this calculation to find calculated field. Once culprit is found, BC recompile after change does the job.

Hope it helps.

Dynamically change start-up view for group of users

Requirement: To have a different start-up view for certain group of users in application.

Siebel sets start-up view of all the users using Application property which is a static view and the only way default view can be changed is by end user by updating user preferences. 

Solution: To make the view dynamic and override the user preferences following script can be added to Application_Start event of Application to redirect all the users to a specific view based on their responsibility.  These views can be used to show statuary information or terms and conditions.

Script queries Employee BC for logged in user and search for specific responsibility and executes a go to view if specific responsibility is found. Similar script can be used to change other part of the application. Feel free to share in comments below if you have come across similar behavior in your implementation.

var EmployeeBO = TheApplication().GetBusObject("Employee");
var EmployeeBC = EmployeeBO.GetBusComp("Employee");
var userResp;
with (EmployeeBC)
{
ActivateField("Login Name");
ActivateField("Responsibility");
var UserName = TheApplication().LoginName();
SetSearchSpec("Login Name", TheApplication().LoginName());
ExecuteQuery(ForwardOnly);
if(FirstRecord()){
userResp = GetFieldValue("Responsibility");
}
return (CancelOperation);
}
if( userResp == ""){
{
TheApplication().GotoView("");
}else{
return (ContinueOperation);
}

Hope it helps

Siebel Open UI Interview Questions plus bonus jQuery tips

Question 1 : What are different layers of JavaScript classes in Open UI ?

Answer: Siebel Open UI framework provider 4 different type of js files , proxy, presentation model(PM), physical renderer(PM), and plugin wrapper(PW). Out of these only PM, PR and PW are recommended to modify and extend. Proxy is an interface between Siebel server and browser, thus should never be changed.

Siebel Open UI Architecture

Read more