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Setting Up Household Financial Accounts Virtual Business Components

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Siebel eFinance includes virtual business components to display financial account related data sourced from a back office or a third party system for specific financial accounts views within the Households screen. These views include FINS IBD Holdings Model Value - Asset Class, FINS IBD Holdings Model Value - Asset Sector, FINS IBD Household Cash Flow, FINS IBD Household Performance, and FINS IBD Holding External. For more information on using these views, see Viewing and Evaluating Household Portfolios.

In Siebel eFinance, the term virtual business components refers to external data obtained from a location other than a database table in a Siebel database and presented in a standard Siebel user interface. Typically, information is pulled real-time from an external database, such as from the Report Encyclopedia in Actuate or from a SAP table, using a SQL query.

These virtual business components are driven by the Siebel XML Gateway business service which communicates between Siebel eFinance and an external data source using XML. You can configure the XML Gateway business service using the EAI HTTP Transport.

For more information on virtual business components see Siebel Tools Reference. For more information on XML Gateway business service, see Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel eBusiness Application Integration Volume II.

Configuring Virtual Business Components User Properties

For each of the virtual business components driven by XML Gateway business service, you need to configure these user properties in Siebel Tools:

• Service Name. The name of the business service.
• Service Parameters. Any parameters required by the business service (Optional). The Siebel application passes this user property, as an input argument, to the business service only when it is attempting to load or initialize the business service.

To configure virtual business components user properties

1. In Siebel Tools, lock the appropriate project.
2. In the Object Explorer, click the Business Component folder to expand the hierarchical tree.
3. Select each of the following business components and define its user properties:
   • FINS IBD Holdings Model Value - Asset Class
   • FINS IBD Holdings Model Value - Asset Sector
   • FINS IBD Household Cash Flow
   • FINS IBD Household Performance
   • FINS IBD Holding External
4. In the Object Explorer, click the Business Component User Prop folder.

   The Business Component User Properties list appears.

5. Choose Edit New Record to create a new blank user property record.
6. In the Service Name field, enter XML Gateway.
7. In the Service Parameters field, enter the following:

   Transport=EAI HTTP Transport; HTTPRequestMethod=POST; XMLCharEncoding=UTF-16; HTTPRequestURLTemplate=http://machine name/virtual directory name/active server page file

NOTE:  Business component user properties are case sensitive.

For more information on XML Gateway business service, see Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel eBusiness Application Integration Volume II.

Setting Up a Test ASP and Testing the Local Database

You can use an Active Server Page (ASP) to retrieve data from a test database and return an XML file in Siebel format to the Siebel XML Gateway business service.

To set up an ASP and local test database

1. Install Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 on a local Windows machine (Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000).
2. Create a virtual directory with the name you specify. Make sure the property for the virtual directory has write permission.
3. Create the following files in the folder to which the virtual directory points:
   • cashflow.asp
   • Perfomance.asp
   • ModelValueByClass.asp
   • ModelValueBySector.asp
   • holdings.asp

     NOTE:  To view these sample ASPs, see Sample ASPs for Household Financial Accounts Virtual Business Components.

4. In the same virtual folder, create a test database for all the fields in a Microsoft Access database titled mdb.mdb.

Virtual Business Components Testing

Assuming everything is configured correctly, Table 5 describes how to verify that your virtual business components are working.

Table 5.  Testing the Virtual Business Components

Virtual Business Component	Description
FINS IBD Holdings Model Value - Asset Class FINS IBD Holdings Model Value - Asset Sector	View the model types for these virtual business components in the drop-down list in the Financial Accounts, Class Allocation and Sector Allocation subviews in the Households screen. For more information, see To compare account holdings against a portfolio model and To view the selected account holdings by sector. After clicking Go, the application recalculates the model value at each subview and displays the percentage for each model weight. You can compare this with data in mdb.mdb database.
FINS IBD Household Cash Flow FINS IBD Household Performance	View the Financial Accounts, Cash Flow and Performance subviews in the Households screen. For more information, see To view expected future cash flows for selected accounts and To view selected accounts' past performance.
FINS IBD Holding External	This virtual business component replaces FINS Holding. In Buscomp FINS IBD Aggregated Holdings, specify which buscomp your aggregation is based at. The business component User Property Name is Aggregate Business Component.

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