Developing and Deploying Siebel Business Applications > Configuring the House and Opportunity Entities > Process of Configuring the House Detail - Appraisals View >

Examining Business Requirements for the House Detail - Appraisals View

This task is a step in Process of Configuring the House Detail - Appraisals View.

The House Appraisals view provides a list of appraisal details for a particular house. These details include the appraisal date, appraisal value, and the appraiser. A one-to-many relationship exists between products and appraisals. The products represent houses. A user can associate each house with many appraisals. For more information, see Design Strategy for the Data Layer.

Because the predefined Siebel data model does not include an appraisal entity, NREC must create a new business component for appraisals that stores data in a predefined one-to-many extension table. In the NREC example, you use the S_PROD_INT_XM table, which is a one-to-many extension table of the S_PROD_INT table. For more information about extension tables, see Configuring Siebel Business Applications.

NREC determines that it must use a master-detail view to display appraisal data. The view includes a house record in the top applet and a list of appraisals in the bottom applet. For the top applet, you can use the Product Form Applet that you configured in Modifying the Product List Applet. To display the list of appraisals in the bottom applet, you must create a new applet. To view the end result of this configuration work, see Figure 12.

About Predefined One-to-Many Extension Tables

A one-to-many extension table is a predefined table that includes a one-to-many relationship with a base table. This extension table includes generic columns that you can use to store data. You can extend the data model for your purposes and track entities that are not part of the predefined Siebel data model. Because extension tables are part of the predefined data model, you do not modify the database schema. There are more than 20 one-to-many extension tables in the predefined data model. The name of a one-to-many extension table contains the _XM suffix.

If you use a one-to-many extension table to store data, then you use the TYPE column to group records. You create a new business component for the entity. This business component must include the following items:

• A Type field that defaults to a unique value
• A search specification that finds only those records that contain this unique value

If you use this technique, then the following items apply:

• You can use a single one-to-many extension table to store data for multiple business components.
• If only one business component uses the extension table, then you must use this technique.

For more information, see Creating the Appraisals Business Component.

Screen Capture of the House Detail - Appraisals View

Figure 12 includes a screen capture of the House Detail - Appraisals View you will configure.

Figure 12. Screen Capture of the House Detail - Appraisals View