siebel data migration and eim tables

13th January 2008

Siebel Data Migration and EIM Tables

ETL is Extraction Loading and Transformation of data. There are different tools like DataStage and Informatica

which can be used for the ETL purpose. These tools give a facility to read the data from different databases or

systems and ETL data to other databases or systems. These tools are used for data cleansing, transformation and

data validations.

Data Sources for Data Migration

Data sources for the Siebel applications can be the data from Legacy system, other OLTP systems, EDW

(Enterprise Datawarehouse), or independent systems for different departments of the company. The data from

external data sources needs a lot of data cleansing, data transformation, data validations and data massaging

before loaded into the Siebel applications.

What is EIM

Siebel Enterprise Integration Manager (EIM) is a server component in the Siebel EAI component group that

transfers data between the Siebel database and other corporate data sources. This exchange of information is

accomplished through intermediary tables called EIM tables. The EIM tables (or Interface Tables) act as a staging

area between the Siebel application database and other data sources.

Need of EIM Tables

In the Siebel application database, there are application tables (known as base tables),which Siebel applications

use. For data to come from other corporate data sources (external databases) into Siebel application tables, the

data must go through EIM tables. So the data exchanges between the Siebel database and external databases

occur in two parts:

1. Load data into EIM tables.

2. Run Siebel EIM to import the data from the EIM tables into the Siebel base tables.

EIM is the primary method of loading mass quantities of data into the Siebel database.

EIM should be used to perform bulk imports, updates, merges, and deletes of data.

EIM tables are used as the staging tables for the data to be loaded from the external databases. EIM uses several

columns common to every EIM table. Several columns are mandatory. Others are conditionally mandatory,

depending on the conditions of your import. To determine mandatory columns, use Siebel Tools to view each column

in an EIM table and the EIM table’s target base table columns.

1. Mandatory Columns

ROW_ID

For an EIM table row to be eligible for processing, you must initialize its ROW_ID. The ROW_ID, in combination with

the value of IF_ROW_BATCH_NUM, must yield a unique value. The ROW_ID values in the EIM tables are not the

ROW_ID values that are assigned to the row when it is loaded into the base table. Generally the running sequence

number can be assigned to this column.

IF_ROW_BATCH_NUM

You must set the values in this column to the same integer, greater than or equal to 0, as an identifying number for

all rows to be processed as a batch. The maximum value is 2147483647. Use this column as the first key of any

new indexes created on an EIM table.

Siebel Data Migration and EIM Tables

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IF_ROW_STAT

EIM updates this column after processing the row to indicate the status of the record. The IF_ROW_STAT column is

not used by EIM when determining which rows to process. When populating the EIM tables, you can set this column

to any value except NULL. You can initially set this value to FOR_IMPORT to indicate that the row has not been

imported.

2. User Key Columns

These are the columns which are mapped with the user key column into the base tables.

3. Default Value Columns

These columns are the ones which are required for the visibility on UI. These columns are assigned with some hard

coded values as identified by the EIM person required for further processing. The values are generally like ‘Y’, ‘N’,

‘Siebel Administrator’, ‘Default Organization’ etc…

4. Data Columns

These are the columns which hold the data coming from the source systems.

5. Extended Columns

EIM tables can be extended for your specific need. If there is a need to store some source data which do not have

any place holder, the EIM table can be extended with new columns and those columns are known as extended

columns.

Lookup on Siebel Base Tables

As mentioned earlier, Siebel doesn’t recommend accessing the base tables directly. So if there is a need of doing a

lookup against any base table, what to be done? To resolve this issue, data can be retrieved in to the XML format.

Siebel gives the facility to export data into the XML format. ETL tool can read these XML files and create the

required lookup files. These look up files can be used for the lookup purpose.

EIM Process

This is the second part of the data migration. After data is loaded into the EIM table using ETL tools, EIM process is

used to load the data into base tables. These processes read the data from the EIM tables and load it in to the

appropriate base tables. Generally not much transformation is done into EIM process. EIM process can be run

either navigating through Administration - Server Management > Jobs in the GUI or from the command line

interface. EIM Configuration file (.IFB) is used to define the EIM process.

Data Load Strategy in EIM Tables

As mentioned earlier EIM tables are like the staging tables. Generally the data load strategy used for the staging

area is truncate and load. A similar approach with a little different strategy is taken for EIM tables.

Data is always inserted into the EIM tables. To avoid the unique key constraint with the existing (previous load) data

the existing IF_ROW_BATCH_NUM is updated with the SYSDATE+IF_ROW_BATCH_NUM (concatenation). This

way the previous data is retained and new data is also inserted. This approach is taken to enable the possibility of

any finding/debugging on the previous data. This data can be retained for few days.

Posted 13th January 2008 by J N

Labels: Siebel Data Migration and EIM Tables

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siebel data migration and eim tables

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