Guidelines for Siebel Product Configurator Tuning

Using your hardware resources optimally, and configuring your system appropriately, can help you to achieve your performance goals. Consider your resources and requirements carefully, and test and monitor system performance on a continual basis.

Review information presented in Siebel Product Administration Guide, Siebel System Administration Guide, and other sources.

Activities that you can perform to achieve performance and scalability goals include:

• Adjusting your system topology. For more information, see "Topology Considerations for Siebel Product Configurator".

• Configuring Siebel Server server components for Siebel Product Configurator.

• Designing and deploying your customizable product models. For more information, see "Defining Customizable Product Models and Classes".

This topic applies to deployments using Siebel Web Client. It contains the following information:

• "Tuning Siebel Product Configurator"

• "Specifying the Siebel Product Configurator File System Location"

• "Defining Customizable Product Models and Classes"

Tuning Siebel Product Configurator

This topic is part of "Guidelines for Siebel Product Configurator Tuning".

How you configure your Siebel Server components for Siebel Product Configurator server deployments, for appropriate tuning, depends in part upon which deployment method you use, as described in "Topology Considerations for Siebel Product Configurator".

• If you deploy Siebel Product Configurator on the Siebel Application Object Manager, then your Siebel Product Configurator tuning calculations must be made in combination with your Siebel Application Object Manager tuning calculations.

• If you deploy Siebel Product Configurator using the Siebel Product Configuration Object Manager (eProdCfgObjMgr) server component on a dedicated Siebel Server computer, then your Siebel Product Configurator tuning calculations will be only indirectly related to your Siebel Application Object Manager tuning calculations and will be determined primarily by configuration-related concurrent users and request loads.

In particular, note that, for a dedicated Siebel Product Configurator server, the MaxTasks parameter is generally set much lower than it is for a Siebel Application Object Manager. By default, the ratio of MaxTasks to MaxMTServers is 20:1 for eProdCfgObjMgr. In addition, depending on the request load, MaxTasks is generally set lower for a Siebel Application Object Manager running Siebel Product Configurator than it is for a Siebel Application Object Manager that is not running Siebel Product Configurator.

You can follow this general procedure to determine how to set these parameters:

• Determine what percentage of users for your Siebel application are also users of Siebel Product Configurator. For example, for every 100 users, 60 work with Quotes.

• Calculate what percentage of time these users spend using Siebel Product Configurator. For example, out of the 60 users mentioned previously, only 30 are concurrently using Siebel Product Configurator.

• Maintain the default ratio of 20:1 for MaxTasks divided by MaxMTServers.

If you deploy Siebel Product Configurator using eProdCfgObjMgr on a dedicated Siebel Server computer and the database connection (login and logout) is slow, then it is recommended that you do the following:

• Enable database connection pooling

  To enable connection pooling, set the parameters MaxSharedDbConns and MinSharedDbConns to positive integer values (at least 1) that are no higher than MaxTasks minus 1.

  This setting pools all user connections without sharing and avoids the creation and deletion of a new database connection for each eProdCfgObjMgr session. For more information about database connection pooling, see "Configuring Database Connection Pooling for Siebel Application Object Managers".

• Use third-party user authentication

  Using third-party user authentication, such as LDAP, rather than database authentication avoids creating an additional database connection for authentication. For more information about authentication options, see Siebel Security Guide.

Specifying the Siebel Product Configurator File System Location

This topic is part of "Guidelines for Siebel Product Configurator Tuning".

The Siebel Product Configuration Object Manager, running on a dedicated Siebel Server computer, can use a Siebel File System directory to cache all configuration-related object definitions. The server parameter, Product Configurator - FS location (alias eProdCfgCacheFS), specifies the location of this directory. Specify a value for this parameter to reference a directory path that has write permission. For example, you might specify \\MyServer\SiebFS\SiebConfig. Note the following considerations:

• Although you can specify any network-accessible directory for caching object definitions, it is strongly recommended that you specify the full path to a directory that is local to the dedicated Siebel Product Configurator server, such as C:\siebel\SiebConfig on Microsoft Windows. Do not specify a top-level directory of a network directory. For example, if SiebFS is a top-level directory (at a location like \\MyServer\SiebFS), then specify a subdirectory, such as \\MyServer\SiebFS\SiebConfig, as the value for the eProdCfgCacheFS parameter.

• If you do not specify a value for eProdCfgCacheFS, then Siebel Product Configurator attempts to use the location of the Siebel File System directories, as configured for the Siebel Server, for caching object definitions.

Note: If your deployment uses the File System Manager (alias FSMSrvr) component, however, then Siebel Product Configurator cannot cache object definitions in the Siebel File System directories, and you must specify a location using the eProdCfgCacheFS parameter. For more information about the Siebel File System, see the Siebel Installation Guide for the operating system you are using and Siebel System Administration Guide.

For more information about caching in the Siebel Product Configurator File System, see "About Siebel Product Configurator Caching".

Defining Customizable Product Models and Classes

This topic is part of "Guidelines for Siebel Product Configurator Tuning". It describes some guidelines about creating customizable products and classes in a manner that will optimize performance:

• To maintain good performance, do not make your customizable products or classes any larger or more complex than absolutely necessary.

• Complexity is a function of the number of hierarchical levels and constraints built into the customizable product models and of the structure of the class.

• For defining class relationships, use specific classes as much as possible. For example, avoid defining class relationships without specifying classes, or use a subclass rather than a parent class if it is so defined.

• Minimize the complexity of user interface elements that you associate with your customizable product models.

• Generally, using interactive or automatic pricing updates for customizable products is recommended. If performance is adversely affected, consider switching to manual pricing updates.

• When creating rules, using the Set Preference template allows you to create soft constraints that guide the Siebel Product Configurator engine in producing solutions, but which the engine can ignore if needed to avoid conflicts or performance problems.

• By default, when you add a customizable product to a quote, for example, default products and selections will be included, and Siebel Product Configurator can be invoked to create this default instance. If the customizable product default selections are large and complex, and if users are required to immediately customize the product, then turning off the Default Instance Creation feature will enhance performance with no loss of functionality.

For more information about these issues, see Siebel Product Administration Guide.