Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel eBusiness Application Integration Volume II > About Integration Objects > Structure of Siebel Integration Objects >

Picklists

If an integration component field is created for a Siebel business component field and the business component field is based on a picklist, validation of the field can be done in EAI Siebel Adapter or Object Manager. To have the validation done in EAI Siebel Adapter, the integration component field should have a user property with the name PICKLIST and a value of Y; otherwise, validation is done by Object Manager.

If validation is done by EAI Siebel Adapter, and the pickmap for the picklist contains more than one field, when designing the integration object, you need to decide which of the fields to use as a search criterion and which to simply update if input values are different than those in the picklist (provided that picklist allows updates).

An example would be an integration object based on Order Entry business object. The root component of the Order Entry business object is Order Entry - Orders with a field Account, whose pickmap contains a large number of fields such as Account, Account Location, Account Integration Id, Currency Code, Price List and so on. One of the tasks the integration object designer needs to perform is to determine which of these fields should be used to identify the account for an order.

If the PicklistUserKeys user property on the integration component field that is mapped to the field with the picklist (in the example above: Account) is not defined, then any integration component fields that are mapped to columns in the U1 index of business component's base table, and are present in the pickmap will be used by EAI Siebel Adapter to find the matching record in the picklist. (In the example above, this would be Account and Account Location.)

In cases where the default user key for the picklist does not satisfy your business requirements (for example, Account Integration Id should be solely used instead of the default user key to pick an Account), or you want to make the user key explicit for performance reasons, then the PicklistUserKeys user property should be used.

The value of the PicklistUserKeys user property is a comma separated list of integration component fields that are used to find the matching record in the picklist (for example, 'Account, Account Location' or 'Account Integration Id').

In order for EAI Siebel Adapter to use the fields referenced in PicklistUserKeys user property, the fields must be included in the pickmap of the underlying business component field. Please note that if the business component field names and integration component field names, listed in the PicklistUserKeys property, are not the same, then the picklist should contain external names of the fields listed in the PicklistUserKeys user property.

If there is a field present in the business component and in the pickmap, and it is stored in the base table, then EAI Siebel Adapter can use the picklist to populate this field, only if this field is present and active in the integration component. This field should also be present and empty in the input property set.

NOTE:  Picklist validation in EAI Siebel Adapter is required for dynamic picklists. For details, see Picklist Validation.


 Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel eBusiness Application Integration Volume II 
 Published: 18 July 2003