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Siebel EAI and Business Components

This topic describes Siebel EAI usage with business components.

Siebel EAI and the Virtual Business Component

A Virtual Business Component (VBC) is a mechanism in Siebel EAI by which data from an external system is viewed in a Siebel application without having to replicate that data within the Siebel database. For example, assume an end user accesses detailed credit card information from a mainframe system for a particular customer account, which is viewed in the Siebel application interface. In this case, the basic customer account data, such as account number, name, and so forth, is stored in a Siebel application while the detailed transaction information on the credit card account for that customer is stored in an external database. The detailed transaction information for a particular account is retrieved from the external system on demand without replicating that information in the Siebel application.

A VBC is configured in Siebel Tools and uses business services to access data from an external system. A VBC can use a standard transport, such as MQSeries, HTTP, and MSMQ, to query, insert, and update data. A VBC also uses the XML Gateway Service.

Siebel EAI and the External Business Component

An External Business Component (EBC) is a mechanism in Siebel EAI that provides access to relational data sources that reside in a non Siebel table or view that uses a Siebel business component. Unlike a VBC that requires a business service, an EBC can use a Siebel database connector to access data.

An EBC is configured in Siebel Tools by using a Table object definition in the Siebel Repository, and a physical table that resides in the same Siebel database instance or subsystem that contains other Siebel tables.