Configuration Guide for Siebel Offline Client for Life Sciences > Overview of the Offline Client for Life Sciences >

About the Offline Client for Life Sciences

The Offline Client for Life Sciences is a mobile application that is designed to use metadata that supports application configuration. Customers can configure it to meet their specific requirements. The configuration projects and the utilities plug-in for Oracle JDeveloper 11g provide an application development environment from which you can configure the component applications for the Offline Client for Life Sciences.

NOTE:  You can only use the Oracle JDeveloper utilities plug-in with the Offline Client for Life Sciences Release 1.5; the previous Utilities application for Release 1.0 will not work with the Offline Client for Life Sciences Release 1.5.

The following components make up the Offline Client for Life Sciences:

• Client applications. The client applications include the Sales application and the Asset Message Planner application:
  • The Sales application allows sales representatives to manage sales visits and deliver electronic presentations to customers through its user interface that is designed and optimized for mobile PC pen- and touch- based computing.
  • The Asset Message Planner application allows marketing and sales users to manage assets and message plans. These client applications operate offline and use the local database, supporting database queries and Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD) operations. They also provide local client business services, such as validation rules and scripting logic.
• Offline database. The client applications use offline databases (also called local databases) to store the relevant data from the Siebel CRM Server, which allows users to work uninterrupted. If a user makes a change to a local database, the change is uploaded to the application server when network connectivity resumes. No user intervention is required during data synchronization between the local databases and the application server.

  NOTE:  User intervention is required only if a conflict between the local database and the Siebel CRM database occurs.

• Sync application. The Sync application creates the local database, manages the overall synchronization process, and sends and retrieves data from Siebel CRM. The synchronization process is automated so that the end user rarely sees or manages the process directly. The Sync application detects network connectivity and performs synchronization at predefined intervals. It manages the connectivity, authentication, and data transfer to Siebel CRM. It also creates local databases, composes, and decomposes Web services, and tracks changes made to the local database.
• The following application:

  Siebel CRM. The source for the data downloaded to and the destination for changes made locally to the Offline Client for Life Sciences. Oracle's Siebel CRM Web services interface allows the downloading and uploading of data. For more information about Siebel CRM Web services, see Siebel CRM Web Services Reference on Siebel Bookshelf.

  NOTE:  The Siebel Bookshelf is available on Oracle Technology Network (OTN) and Oracle E-Delivery. It might also be installed locally on your intranet or on a network location.

• Utilities plug-in and a set of configuration projects. The Offline Client for Life Sciences is designed to use metadata that supports application configuration. A set of configuration projects and a utility plug-in for Oracle JDeveloper allow you to configure your own version of the Offline Client for Life Sciences for deployment. The configuration projects are different depending on whether you intend to connect to Siebel CRM.

  NOTE:  Siebel CRM does not publish all Web services, however, a number of Web services are delivered with Siebel CRM. For more information, see Filter Definition Files Available with Siebel CRM.

  The utilities plug-in for Oracle JDeveloper supports the editing and changing of a series of metadata definition files contained within the configuration projects. In addition, you can configure custom validation rules, business service scripts, and specialized user interfaces layouts using Adobe Flex. You can also use Oracle JDeveloper to edit a series of metadata definition files that define the Sales application for the Offline Client for Life Sciences.