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Siebel Web Engine Infrastructure


This section describes the Siebel Web Engine (SWE) architecture and functionality in greater detail.

The Siebel Web Engine makes possible the deployment of applications in HTML and other markup languages. A Web browser client (or other Siebel client) interacts with the server-based object manager through the Siebel Web Engine, as shown in Figure 13.

In the Siebel architecture, no components are hosted on the client. The client interacts through a Web browser. The user accesses a specified URL that navigates to a Web-server hosted application. This Web server application is, in turn, supplied with HTML (or equivalent) pages generated by the Siebel Web Engine service in the object manager. The Siebel Web Engine consists of components on two servers—the Siebel Plug-In (also called Siebel Web Extension) on the Web server, and the Siebel Web Engine service in the object manager on the Siebel server.

A Siebel plug-in (for Microsoft Web server software) runs on the Web server, and interfaces with the Siebel Web Engine service in the object manager. Most of the work takes place in the Siebel Web Engine (SWE); the Web server plug-in mostly maintains the session and functions as a communication intermediary. Network communication between the Web server plug-in and the object manager is through SISNAPI, a TCP/IP-based Siebel Communication protocol that provides a security and compression mechanism.

The Siebel Web Engine runs as an object manager service called the Web Engine Interface Service. This service implements most components of the Siebel Web Engine, deploying an interface between the Siebel plug-in on the Web server and the object manager. From the perspective of the Siebel plug-in, the SWE interface service provides processing for incoming HTTP requests bearing the SWE prefix, and generates HTTP responses. From the object manager's perspective, it provides a user interface in its OM interactions.

Applets and views are made available to the Web by associating a set of HTML templates, which is done using Siebel Tools. At run time, when an applet needs to be rendered, the SWE obtains the information defining the applet, the appropriate data for the various the applet controls or list columns, and the HTML template; it then combines them to generate the final Web page that is then sent to the browser.

Applet Web templates are defined and laid out in Siebel Tools using the Applet Web Template and Applet Web Template Item object types and the Web Applet Designer. View Web templates are defined using the View Web Template and View Web Template Item object types.

How the Siebel Web Engine Generates the Web Application

Users of a Web application interact with the application through their Web browsers. The interface they see is a set of Web pages dynamically generated by Siebel Web Engine by matching the repository definition of the application with the templates customized by the Web application developer.

The diagram in Figure 12 provides a graphical depiction of the relationships between the various objects in a Web application.

Figure 12. Relationship Between Objects in a Web Application

Click for full size image

Running the Web Application

When a user interacts with the Web application (by clicking a button or hyperlink in a browser window), the Siebel Web Engine does the following:

  1. Reads the repository definition of the application.
  2. Retrieves relevant data from the database through the Application Object Manager.
  3. Retrieves the repository object definition of the view and applet to display the data within it.
  4. Reads the .SWT file and maps the retrieved data and applet and view information to the corresponding placeholders in the .SWT file.
  5. Delivers the HTML page (including the standard HTML and the retrieved data) through the Web Server, back to the user's browser for display as a Web page.

 Siebel Tools Reference, Version 7.5, Rev. A 
 Published: 18 April 2003