Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration > Integration Objects >

About Integration Objects

Siebel integration objects allow you to represent integration metadata for Siebel business objects, XML, and other external data structures as common structures that the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) infrastructure can understand. Because these integration objects adhere to a set of structural conventions, they can be traversed and transformed programmatically, using Siebel eScript objects, methods, and functions, or transformed declaratively using Siebel Data Mapper.

NOTE:  For more information on Siebel Data Mapper, see Business Processes and Rules: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration.

The typical integration project involves transporting data from one application to another. For example, you may want to synchronize data from a back-office system with the data in your Siebel application. You may want to generate a quote in the Siebel application and perform a query against your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system transparently. In the context of Siebel EAI, data is transported in the form of an integration message. A message, in this context, typically consists of header data that identifies the message type and structure, and a body that contains one or more instances of data—for example, orders, accounts, or employee records.

When planning your integration project, consider several issues:

• How much data transformation does your message require?
• At what point in the process do you perform the data transformation?
• Is a confirmation message response to the sender required?
• Are there data items in the originating data source that will not be replicated in the receiving data source, or that will replace existing data in the receiving data source?

This guide can help you understand how Siebel EAI represents the Siebel business object structure. It also provides descriptions of how Siebel EAI represents external SAP R/3 structures.