Siebel Product Configurator Architecture
Because product configuration can sometimes be computationally expensive, the configuration infrastructure provides flexible deployment options to suit different business needs. Topics in this section discuss considerations for choosing among different deployment options.
Before the Siebel Product Configurator parameters, and where to set them, are described, a brief overview is presented of the Siebel Product Configurator architecture and of the various services in a Siebel Product Configurator deployment.
The following figure shows detailed Siebel Product Configurator architecture and the interaction of various services with each other during run time.
The important services depicted in the preceding figure are as follows:
UI. The UI business service is a service that the Siebel Product Configurator uses to render the user interface by binding the customizable product structure with the templates and submitting it to the Siebel Web Engine for rendering to the client browser. The UI business service is the way the user interacts with the Siebel Product Configurator. A unique instance of this service is required for each user.
Instance Broker. The Instance Broker is a service that interacts with the UI service and maintains all of the information about the current configuration of the customizable product that the user is configuring. This service interacts with other services in response to user requests during configuration, receives their responses, and serves as backup to the user through the UI service. The Instance Broker is accessed through a proxy service: either the Complex Object Instance Service business service or the Remote Complex Object Instance Service business service.
Configurator Object Broker. The Configurator Object Broker is a service (Cfg Object Broker business service) that extracts the customizable product definition from the database for use by other configuration services.
Config Services. This is a configuration service that consists of factories (defined as follows).
Factory. The factory is a service that represents a translation of the customizable product definition that is retrieved by the Configurator Object Broker into a format a worker (defined as follows) can understand.
Constraint Engine or Worker. The constraint engine, also called a worker, is a service that enforces all of the rules associated with the customizable product. It validates all selections (interactive or batch) as they are made to ensure a valid configuration. A worker of a factory can be shared among different requests originating from the same Application Object Manager process.
For more information about elements of Siebel Product Configurator’s internal architecture, including the Instance Broker and the Configurator Object Broker, see Siebel Product Administration Guide.