Configuring Siebel eBusiness Applications > Configuring Tables and Columns >

About System Columns

System columns appear in all tables in Siebel applications, although the same set of system columns does not appear in every table. You can use the data in system columns for various purposes; for example, the ROW_ID column in tables is used in the construction of joins. Generally you should not modify the data in system columns. However, there are exceptions, such as certain system columns in interface tables. Some common system columns are described below:

• ROW_ID. The ROW_ID column is present in all tables and provides a unique identifier to the rows in the table. It is the typical destination column of foreign key relationships from other tables. In standard data tables, it is often represented by a field called Id for use in joins and links. For example, the ROW_ID column in the S_ORG_EXT table is represented as the Id field in the Account business component.

  NOTE:  The Id field that represents the ROW_ID column in business components is an implicit field, and does not appear in the Object Explorer as a child field of any business components. However, every business component has an Id field, which represents the ROW_ID column of its base table, as defined in the Table property of the business component. The Id field is referenced in various property settings throughout Siebel applications, such as in the Source Field property of a link (in which a blank value also means the Id field).

• CREATED. Provides the creation date and time of each record.
• CREATED_BY. Stores the ROW_ID of the S_USER record of the person who created the record—not to be confused with the user name that the user logged in with.
• LAST_UPD. Provides the date of last update of each record.
• LAST_UPD_BY. Stores the ROW_ID of the S_USER record of the person who last updated the record—not to be confused with the user name that the user logged in with.

  NOTE:  The CREATED, CREATED_BY, LAST_UPD, and LAST_UPD_BY columns show the client date-time and user values. They do not show server DBMS date-time and user values.

• PAR_ROW_ID. The PAR_ROW_ID column is a foreign key to the ROW_ID column of the base table. Extension tables, as well as _ATT and _T tables, have this system column.

LAST_UPD, ROW_ID, LAST_UPD_BY, CREATED, and CREATED_BY columns are system fields that are updated automatically by the Siebel application.

System fields should not be explicitly defined for a business component. If the business component fields that are based on these columns are defined, the application will attempt to write a value to these columns twice in the insert statement and will cause a duplicate column SQL error.

Table 14 identifies the correspondences between system fields and system columns.

These fields are automatically provided, and do not need to be explicitly declared. You can reference them in the Field property of controls, list columns and other object definitions, even though they do not display in the Object List Editor for the business component.