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Creating and Modifying Business Objects

A business object groups one or more business components into a logical unit of information. For example, the Opportunity business object may group the Opportunity, Contact, and Product business components as Business Object Components. This exposes the relationships between the data residing in the child business components (such as Contact and Product) with the parent business component, Opportunity. In other words, by grouping these business components within the business object, you can now use the foreign key relationships within the underlying data model to manipulate the products related to an opportunity or the contacts associated with the opportunity.

Business objects are the basis for views, which are then grouped into screens. Typically, all the views within a screen have the same driving data for the view based upon the same business component. For example, in the Opportunity screen, the views that make up the screen definition include the All Opportunity List view, Opportunity Detail - Contacts view, and Opportunity Detail - Products view. The key to all of these views is that the driving data is based on the Opportunity business component. Therefore, all the views with Opportunity-driven data are grouped into the Opportunity screen. Because all views in a screen are usually based on the same business object, a screen is indirectly related to the business object.

NOTE:  In the Siebel eBusiness Application, under the Contacts screen, in any of the Contact views, users can create identical contact records — that is, records with the same values for first name and last name even when connected to the server database. This is the application's intended functionality. The user keys were altered to allow users to create identical contact records because there may be contacts with the same first name and last name in a large company database. To prevent the same contact from being entered twice, run real-time data matching using the data quality module.

You rarely need to create a new business object. The only times to do so are when your design requires a new screen that groups several new business components together or groups existing business components in a way that is not supported by an existing business object. The business components that must be included in each business object are:

A business component can be included only once in each business object, and can be linked to only one other business component in the business object. In terms of the user interface, this means that applets can be linked to only one other applet in a view. Except for the Home Page view, each view has a driving applet based on the driving business component in the business object. This driving applet can have related applets based on other business components; however, these applets are always child applets of the driving applet. Therefore, all business components within the business object are either the driving business component for the business object or include data related to the driving business component. For example, to show the Contacts related to the Opportunity, the Contact business component should be part of the Opportunity business object. To show the Contacts related to an Account, the Contact business component should be part of the Account business object.

When you create a new business component to support administration or system activities, you do not need to create a new business object; make sure the new business component is part of the existing business object used to support administration views, and then assign the view to the Marketing Administration or System Administration screen.


 Configuration Guidelines 
 Published: 18 April 2003