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

JavaScript Execution Sequence of Siebel Open UI

Hope everyone remembers Siebel event model explained by +Alexander Hansal 

No doubt that is one the best post in Siebel blogosphere till date, in case you haven't read it, I would recommend you to go through it here. This model still holds true and has helped many businesses to model processes. However with introduction of Siebel Open UI there are few more events available for customization on browser side. 


In this post I will show you how Open UI invoke different events and methods on custom PM and PR JavaScript files.

For this proof of concept I have created and associated PM PR files with some logging for all the applets and views. I have also wrote some browser script in applet load event in tools. Following summarizes what I found.

Sequence of JavaScript Execution in Open UI

What I found out that view PM layer is the first in sequence of execution, it is executed even before preload event. Thus all the data is available in preload to build the UI. Preload.js is not the event if someone is looking to execute at very start of view building.

Sequence of execution breakdown

Breakdown of events shows that List applet are executed first by Siebel Open UI (even if they are child objects). I suspect it is done to improve performance.

Additionally Applet load event are executed at last. Thus technically it is possible to override events available in "pre" Open UI era browser scripts in Open UI.

Points to be noted here that:

1. Prelaod.js is not the first thing which gets executed during a view load.
2. Open UI executed PM layer for view first and then applets, however for PR layer, applets were loaded first then view.
3. Open UI also seems to execute list applet code first than form applet irrespective of hierarchy in tools!!
4. After all the processing of PM PR layers(including view), Siebel at last executes applet load event of tools browser script.

Console Outputs:

Hope this will help developers to know the correct event they need to code and execution sequence in which Siebel will execute the code.


For this experiment I have created following PM / PR files .

• OpportunityFormAppletPM
• OpportunityFormAppletPR
• OpporunityContactListAppletPM
• OpportunityContactListAppletPR
• OpportunityDetailContactViewPM
• OpporuntiyDetailContactViewPR
• OpportunityListViewPM
• OpportunityListViewPR
• OpportunityListAppletPM
• OpportunityListAppletPR

All files I have used is available will be available for download soon.

Thanks to Duncan Ford for helping us in getting us code ready by creating the beautiful template generator.

Happy to discuss in detail on slack community or in comments below.

Chrome's hidden menu for Open UI

If you are working on css or js changes for Siebel Open UI, you would be struggling with browser caching. I have noticed some cache even when I am using incognito mode of chrome.

Out of frustration one might end up installing chrome app/plugin to forcefully clear cache. One of them is "Clear Cache" 

Interestingly chrome has now created a very discreet "Empty Cache and Hard Reload" option for developers. To see this option open developer tools by pressing F12 and then press and hold reload button. I have been using this option from past one week and it worked every time as expected.

Chrome Hard Reload for Open UI

Please be mindful that this is an hidden menu and only shows up when chrome's developer tools are open.


Happy coding :)

My top 5 Siebel Mistakes in 2015

I received a very candid email from a reader, asking me what mistakes I make in Siebel development and how do I overcome those?

Surprisingly I had a long list of mistakes, and I wasn't doing anything about it. So I decided to write this post to attempt on reducing these mistakes.

I believe in learning from mistakes, thus I challenge all my readers to list down their mistakes and leave them in comments below. Remember no one is perfect, so don't be shy and leave comment.

1. Using InvokeServiceMethod in calculated fields.

This is biggest performance degrader.I regret this one the most, I used this trick to calculate an status of opportunity and it turned out to be biggest technical debt of all time. No one want to fix it now and it is stuck there churning away time, memory and CPU every time it is referred.

2. Not checking CountRecords() Or FirstRecord() before get field value.

This is one of my most frequent mistake in Siebel. It goes unnoticed because the logic works for mostly all scenarios but one, what if there are no records retrieved from query? Siebel is going to throw it back to you, logic won't proceed and service will halt making you accountable.

So please don't be a Jim and always check for record count or First Record before proceeding.


3. No comments

Leaving no comments on blog post is ok, but leaving no comments in script is a big no no. Have your ever noticed how much easy it becomes if there is one of two line of comments in script? just one or two line makes it so convenient for developer to understand the code without going into details.

My self plead guilty of committing this some time.

If I have to create a standard I will try to use following template for comments:

/*
[jim] [25 Dec 2015] [ added code for xxxxx reason, code is invoked from xxxxx places]
*/

simple isn't it? Please share in comments below what type of comments you use.

3. Not nullifying objects after use.

Developers believe that ST script engine will clear up memory for them. But no memory leaks are real still in Siebel 8. So please Jim don't make that mistake again.

4. Try catch finally block

This is the only way for keeping some dignity, and we still avoid it to save time.  Do you also make that mistake?

5.  Using profile attributes.

They work like magic in some scenarios, but it is so difficult to trace them back, and using it in Open UI is like calling Mayhem. Please share your thoughts on this. How do you trace back the creation of profile attributes?

Please don't forget to leave your list of mistakes in comment below.

How to get name of siebel server in eScript?

I found this script recently on support web which allows us to get value of Siebel server name, log directory of the current session. I quickly extended script to get value of siebel task id and process id to help me in my debugging.

These values can be very useful if you are working on multi server issue. With the help of task Id I was able to find the log of current session without opening each log file. Please share in comments below on how you choose to use this script.

var serverSession_BO = TheApplication().GetBusObject("Server Admin - Sessions");
var serverSession_BC = serverSession_BO.GetBusComp("SA-VBC Session");
var taskParam_BC = serverSession_BO.GetBusComp("Server Task Parameter");

serverSession_BC.ClearToQuery();
serverSession_BC.SetSearchSpec("OM_LOGIN", logInName);
serverSession_BC.ExecuteQuery(1);
serverSession_BC.FirstRecord();

taskParam_BC.ClearToQuery();
taskParam_BC.SetSearchSpec("Parameter", "Log directory");
taskParam_BC.ExecuteQuery(1);
taskParam_BC.FirstRecord();


var compName = serverSession_BC.GetFieldValue("CC_ALIAS");
var siebsrvrName = serverSession_BC.GetFieldValue("SV_NAME");
var task_id = serverSession_BC.GetFieldValue("TK_TASKID");
var p_id = serverSession_BC.GetFieldValue("TK_PID");
var logDir = taskParam_BC.GetFieldValue("Current Value");

Additionally one can also find the windows process id and thread id by using following script.

var processId, taskId;
processId = taskId = ""; // initialize to satisfy eScript parser

//evaluate to suppress STDCALL not being recognized with eScript parser
eval('processId = SElib.dynamicLink("kernel32.dll","GetCurrentProcessId", STDCALL)');
eval('taskId = SElib.dynamicLink("kernel32.dll","GetCurrentThreadId", STDCALL)');

processId = processId.toString();
taskId = taskId.toString();

I bet you wont be able to do this in any cloud application. :)

Hope it helps. 

Let's Slack

Have you noticed declining activity on siebel community on IT Toolbox? There is hardly any other community where you can get your answers quickly.

And as a wise man has said All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, I am starting a new Siebel-Developers community on slack. http://siebel-developers.slack.com

Slack is fastest growing community platform, there is no bullshit for email or waiting for approval. Simply talk to fellow team-mates straight away. Share ideas, make new connections and have fun with fellow siebelites.

Share files and get help in real time.

you can access community from mobile or desktop.

Only drawback of the platform is that invite has to go on email address, so please register to this blog to get invite. I have sent invite to all registered readers till date, hope to see you all there.

Let's Slack Siebel :)