About Integration Object Terminology

This chapter describes concepts that are often referred to using inconsistent terminology on different systems. The following table has been included to clarify the information in this chapter by providing a standard terminology for these concepts.

Term	Description
Component	A constituent part of any generic object.
Field	A generic reference to a data structure that can contain one data element.
Integration message	A bundle of data consisting of two major parts: Header information that describes what will be done with or to the message itself Instances of integration objects; that is, data in the structure of the integration object
Integration object	An integration object of any type, including the Siebel integration object, the SAP BAPI integration object, and the SAP IDOC integration objects.
Integration object instance	Actual data, usually the result of a query or other operation, which is passed from one business service to another, that is structurally modeled on a Siebel integration object.
Metadata	Data that describes data. For example, the term data type describes data elements such as char, int, Boolean, time, date, and float.
Siebel business component	A Siebel object type that defines a logical representation of columns in one or more database tables. A business component collects columns from the business component’s base table, its extension tables, and its joined tables into a single structure. Business components provide a layer of abstraction over tables. Applets in Siebel applications reference business components; they do not directly reference the underlying tables.
Siebel business object	A Siebel object type that creates a logical business model using links to tie together a set of interrelated business components. The links provide the one-to-many relationships that govern how the business components interrelate in this business object.
Siebel integration object	An object stored in the Siebel repository that represents a Siebel business object.
Siebel integration component	A constituent part of a Siebel integration object that represents a Siebel business component.
Siebel integration component field	A data structure that can contain one data element in a Siebel integration component. Represents a Siebel business component field.