Outbound Integration of C/OM Services

You can call an external service from C/OM. Predefined integration interfaces can be implemented or hosted by an external application. Service can be provided by an external application, an integration server, a Siebel business service, or a Siebel business process (workflow).

The following figure illustrates services integration for outbound integration.

Services Interfaces for Outbound Integration: This image is described in the surrounding text.

As shown in this image:

UI Event and Business Process connect to the Service Invocation Layer.

The Repository (Service Metadata) also connects to the Service Invocation Layer.
The Service Invocation Layer connects to Map (Web Services and XML), Siebel Service, and the Integration Server Adapter.
Connection to the External Application is possible via:
- SOAP (HTTP) using Web Services.
- HTTP/MQ/MSMQ using XML.
- Integration Server using Integration Server Adapter.

Calling an External Service from C/OM

The workflow process shown in the following figure provides an example of calling an external service from Siebel order management. The figure shows a workflow process that includes a subprocess called Check Inventory Levels. The subprocess includes a step called Perform Inventory Check, which involves a Web service invocation.

Example: Check Inventory Level During Product Recommendations Algorithm. This image is described in the surrounding text.

As shown in this image:

The steps in the main workflow are as follows: Start, Look Up Recommended Products, Check Eligibility, Remove Ineligible Products, Check Inventory Levels, Price Products, Format Messages, End.
The Check Inventory Levels step in the main workflow connects to the subprocess workflow.
The steps in the subprocess workflow are as follows: Start, Transform Line Items to XML, Perform Inventory Check (Web Service Invocation), Transform XML to Line Items, End

Web Service Performance

C/OM services such as Pricer or Eligibility are designed to work on batches of data to improve end-user response times. Any external service called by Pricer or Eligibility must support a batched interface that processes an entire set of data (such as all line items in an order) in a single invocation. Thus the overhead associated with Web Service invocation and with context establishment within the Web Service is only incurred once instead of, potentially, hundreds of times.