XML Reference: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration > Overview of Support for XML in Siebel Business Applications >

Siebel CRM Integration and XML

Siebel Business Applications support for XML allows you to communicate with any Siebel application or external application that can read and write XML (either arbitrary XML or Siebel XML, also known as the Siebel Message format).

XML documents are delivered directly to and from Siebel Business Applications, or through middleware using any of the supported transports: HTTP, IBM WebSphere MQ, File, and so on. XML communicated in this way can query the Siebel Database, upsert (update or insert) data, synchronize the two systems, delete data, or execute a workflow process.

Objects from various systems, such as Siebel business objects and Oracle application data, can be represented as Siebel integration objects.

Siebel CRM can also communicate bidirectionally with Web services using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and Representational State Transfer (REST) through Siebel Application Integration (SAI) for Oracle Fusion Middleware. For details, see Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration and Siebel Application Integration for Oracle Fusion Middleware Guide.

NOTE:  If you do a minimal client installation, make sure you select the XML parser option; otherwise, you will encounter the following error when attempting to run any client process that uses the XML parser: Unable to create the Business Service 'EAI XML Converter.' The XML parser is included by default in the full installation.

XML Integration Objects

The Integration Object type of XML is available within Siebel Business Applications to represent externally defined XML documents, where the object's XML representation is compliant with the XSD or DTD supplied by your trading partner or external system. This type of integration object supports a representation of XML documents.

NOTE:  Siebel XSD does not support the use of <import> and <include> elements and the <any> attribute. To implement the <import> or <include> functionality, place the schema definition into a single file.

Bidirectional Data Flow

Figure 1 shows the bidirectional progress of XML documents into and out of Siebel Business Applications.

Figure 1. Document to Integration Object Flow

NOTE:  For details on integration objects and Web services, see Integration Platform Technologies: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration. For an overview of Siebel EAI, see Overview: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration.