Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration > External Business Components >

Usage and Restrictions for External Business Components

The following usage guidelines and restrictions apply to EBCs:

• Creating and populating the external table is the responsibility of the customer. Consult your database administrator for the appropriate method to use.
• EBCs cannot be docked, so they do not apply to mobile users on the Siebel Mobile Web Client. Siebel Remote is not supported.
• EBCs support many-to-many relationships with the limitation that for such relationships the intersection table must be from the same data source as the child business component.
• EBCs cannot be loaded using the Enterprise Integration Manager.
• EBCs rely on the Business Object Layer of the Siebel Architecture. Therefore, EBCs are used only in Siebel Server components using this layer such as the Application Object Manager (for example, the Call Center Object Manager), Workflow Process Manager, and so on. EBCs are not used on components not using this layer such as Workflow Policies (the Workflow Monitor agent), Assignment Manager, Incentive Compensation, and so on.
• The Id field must be mapped to an underlying column in the external table in order to support insert, update, delete, and query operations.
• Using the Oracle Sequence Object to populate the Id system field is not supported. The value of the Id system field has to be known by the object manager at the record commit time, while the Oracle Sequence Object value is populated by the database server when the change is being processed inside the data base.
• If the column that was mapped to the Id system field has Primary Key checked, then rowid values are generated by the object manager. Otherwise, a user-entered rowid value is assumed, and the object manager does not generate a rowid value for it.

  However, in either configuration, the Primary Key column should not use the Oracle Sequence Object.

• For EBCs that contain multi-value groups, if a primary join is enabled, then both the parent and the child business components must be from the same data source. Multi-value groups are also supported as long as such configuration does not require that a distributed join or a subquery be performed.
• Siebel visibility control (for example ViewMode) is not supported for EBCs.
• An external join alias must have the same name as the name used for the external table.
• EBCs based on Database views can be used for queries only, updates are not supported.

NOTE:  Significant configuration effort and changes may be required if you choose to reconfigure a standard Siebel business component on an external table. For example, existing join and link definitions are unlikely to function, because the source fields and underlying columns may not exist in the external table.