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Data Exchange with a Siebel Application

If your business requirement is to access another application from within a Siebel application, or to access a Siebel application from within another application, then you must determine exactly the type of data exchange that is required, which can include:

• Data Sharing. You might be required to share data that exists outside of the Siebel Business Application. For example, several legacy mainframe systems might exist in your environment that you must access with Siebel Call Center in order to provide a customer with information on their account. Instead of replicating this information across Siebel Business Applications, you can dynamically share it and display it within a single Siebel application. For data sharing, use a virtual business component.
• Replication. Replication of data is often useful. For example, you might be required to integrate data in SAP with data in a Siebel application, keeping information about order status in both systems. To mass replicate information about the order status in a Siebel application, use Siebel Enterprise Integration Manager (EIM).
• Presentation Layer (UI) Integration. If you only need to consider the user interface for the other application, then integration at the presentation layer is useful. The data itself does not need to be retrieved for the Siebel application. In this case, you use ActiveX Data Controls (ADC) to capture only the screen from the external system, then represent it natively within a Siebel application. Although this technique is a cost effective way to integrate two applications, it is also less flexible. Presentation Layer Integration is sometimes referred to as screen scraping.