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Siebel EAI and Message Based Integration

Figure 1 illustrates how Siebel EAI supports message based integration with an external application, where the Siebel application is the initiator of the request or the receiver.

Figure 1. Configurable and Upgradeable Integration

Siebel EAI and Integration Objects

An integration object is the contents of messages that are exchanged, as described in Figure 1. An integration object is defined in Siebel Tools.

The types of integration objects include:

• Siebel integration object. Data to be loaded into or read from a Siebel Business Object.
• External integration object. Data received from or sent to the external application.

A configuration engine provides configurable data transformation to match the difference in the way that entities are represented, while integration objects represent the information exchanged.

A Siebel integration object is defined as a subset of a Siebel business object. The map between an integration object and the business object is maintained in the Siebel Repository. EAI Siebel Adapter is a predefined business service that uses a Siebel integration as input, then calls the appropriate business object APIs to operate on the object called. External integration objects are based on external metadata. This metadata is in the form of XML Schema Definitions (XSD), Document Type Definitions (DTD), External Data Representations (XDR), SAP BAPIs and SAP IDOCs, and metadata for an Oracle application. Siebel Tools provides wizards to access this metadata from the external application, and to create external integration objects that are based on that metadata within the Siebel repository.