Configuring Siebel eBusiness Applications > Configuring Special Purpose Applets >

About Recursive Trees

In a recursive tree, all levels in the hierarchy are of the same object type. For example, the Account Explorer Applet consists of a tree applet in which the only node is for the Account business component, and subaccounts appear beneath accounts which have them. Recursive trees are provided in standard Siebel applications for accounts, activities, campaigns, opportunities, positions, and various other business components in which records can have subrecords. Almost any number of levels of subrecords are possible in a recursive tree.

For a recursive tree to be implemented, the business component used must contain a pointer to the record of the same type at the next level up in the hierarchy. In the accounts tree example, the Account business component has a Parent Account Id field which points to its parent account. A Link object definition must exist that references this field in its Destination Field property. In the accounts example, this link is Account/Account.

A recursive tree is implemented with a tree object definition to which only one tree node object definition is attached. In the Tree Node object definition, the following special properties are set:

• Recursive. This property is set to TRUE to indicate that this is a recursive tree.
• Recursive Link. This property points to the link object definition that specifies the one-to-many relationship between the master business component and itself.
• Root Search Spec. This property contains a search specification expression that identifies how the list of top-level records is derived. Generally the top-level records are those that have nothing in the parent Id field, and therefore the search specification is of the form "[Parent xxx Id] is NULL," for example, "[Parent Account Id] is NULL."