Siebel Enterprise Integration Manager Administration Guide > Merging Data >

Overview of EIM Merge Processing

EIM uses a combination of EIM table row contents and configuration file parameter values to control the merge process. A merge process deletes one or more existing rows from the base table and makes sure that intersecting table rows are adjusted to refer to the remaining rows. Data from the record you select as the surviving record is preserved. Data from the other records is lost. If there are other records associated with the records you merge, those records—with the exception of duplicates—are associated with the surviving record.

Duplicate child records of the deleted rows will have CONFLICT_ID updated during the merge process. For example, when merging two Accounts (parent), the user keys of the Contacts (child) will be compared, and if the same Contact belongs to both Accounts, the Contact of the deleted Account will have its CONFLICT_ID updated.

You can only merge records that have primary user keys. Because records in the following tables do not have primary user keys, these records cannot be merged:

• Notes
• Territory Items
• Fulfillment Items

  CAUTION:  Using EIM to merge data in the Products and Positions base tables is not recommended and can lead to inadvertent data integrity loss.

It is not possible to merge rows that have the same primary user key and different conflict IDs using EIM, because EIM relies on user keys to identify rows in base tables. If there are two rows in the base table that have the same user key but different conflict IDs, EIM cannot distinguish between these rows. In such cases, the IF_ROW_STAT field of the row in the EIM table will be marked as AMBIGUOUS.

EIM can only be used to merge rows from target base tables and not secondary tables. For example, the target base table for EIM_ASSET is S_ASSET. EIM can only be used to merge two or more S_ASSET rows into single S_ASSET rows. You cannot use EIM to merge two or more S_ASSET_CON rows into single S_ASSET_CON rows.