How To Import Products and Other Versioned Object Definitions (VOD) in Siebel Versions above 7.8.x (Doc ID 475334.1)

Last updated on MARCH 21, 2023

Applies to:

Siebel eConfigurator - Version 7.8.2 SIA [19213] to 16.19 [IP2016] [Release V7 to V16]
Siebel CRM - Version 7.8.2 SIA [19213] to 16.8 [IP2016] [Release V7 to V16]
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Purpose

Notice:

This Technical Note should be used as an addendum to <Document 473917.1> which is referred to as Alert 1225 in the rest of this document. You should become familiar with Alert 1225 before commencing with this document.

Siebel 7.8.x uses a different import mechanism than prior Siebel 7.x versions for importing simple and customizable products. Alert 1225 details the key differences between the two import mechanisms and lists the steps involved in solving the behavior where object identifiers, for example Siebel generated ROW_IDs, come from different databases. However, Alert 1225 does not detail the differences and the specific steps involved in various multi environment situations.

This document details the approach and steps required to overcome the behavior in the following scenarios:

Before the Production environment has been upgraded.

When the development environment contains new or updated products which have not been migrated to Production prior to the Siebel version 7.8 upgrade.

When parallel development is required for some period of time after the Siebel version 7.8 upgrade.

When object identifiers need to be preserved on more than just a single environment for example Test and Production environments.

This document also provides a detailed explanation of the enhancement delivered in Siebel Fix Pack version 7.8.2.3 which allows for the name-based import mechanism to be used in Siebel version 7.8 in similar fashion as in previous Siebel versions.

NOTE: Please note that this new enhancement of allowing name-based import should not be used for frequent product migration and is not an alternative to the object identifier-based import, which is available in Siebel version 7.8. You should follow the highly recommended process of maintaining a product master database to do all product administration once the product definitions are consolidated. The name-based import enhancement should be used only as a last resort whereby you already have multiple databases on which product administration is being done. This results in object-identifiers being different across databases, causing the object identifier-based import to fail.

NOTE: Customization of the Import process

Oracle does not support customization of the import of versioned product. It is a dangerous operation which can easily damage versioned object structures. As an example, if you need additional fields or entities to be carried over, do not modify the underlying Integration Object “ISS Prod Def ImpExp”. Instead please use ADM after you imported the product header through joint workspace. More information can be found under Siebel bookshelf - Application Deployment Manager Guide - > Migrating Customizations Using Siebel ADM

NOTE: You cannot use EAI to import versioned data.

NOTE: EIM can be used to import simple products. Please see How to import products via EIM in Siebel 7.8. (Doc ID 485530.1)

NOTE: Changes in Siebel version 7.8.2.4

With Siebel version 7.8.2.4 importing and releasing an object, which does not have any difference to the existing last version, will not generate a new version in the workspace.