So, you got Ubuntu installed in your computer, made your personal customizations and everything seems to be fine.
Well, that until you start using spell checking with Firefox and/or Thunderbird and discover that you haven't exactly tamed those animals.
For default, Ubuntu seems to install lots of dictionaries for both programs. If it's language settings include, for example, Portuguese and English, you will got spell checking with both languages in Firefox and Thunderbird, but probably not exactly what you want: when you click if your right mouse button in your text in progress, you will discover that English spell checking will take you four different English options, one for a different country. If you're coming from a upgrade or restore a previously used backup, then probably you'll get repeated options.
Fortunately, you can get rid of those country-specific dictionaries, but configuration for it will not be available in Firefox or Thunderbird.
Open up a terminal session and check out the commands output below:
youruser@yourhost:~$ ls /usr/lib/firefox/dictionaries
en_AU.aff en_AU.dic en_GB.aff en_GB.dic en_US.aff en_US.dic en_ZA.aff en_ZA.dic pt.aff pt_BR.aff pt_BR.dic pt.dic pt_PT.aff pt_PT.dic
This list shows all dictionaries installed to Firefox. If you look for the same thing in the thunderbird folder of Thunderbird e-mail program, you'll see a similar output.
Let's remove them and configure dpkg to not install new files then, but move then to other location instead, which is a nice way to avoid the files to be restored every time you upgrade Firefox and/or Thunderbird.
youruser@yourhost:~$ sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firefox/dictionaries
[sudo] password for youruser:
youruser@yourhost:~$ sudo dpkg-divert --add /usr/lib/firefox/dictionaries
Creating 'local diversion from /usr/lib/firefox/dictionaries to /usr/lib/firefox/dictionaries.distrib'
Restart Firefox and/or Thunderbird. If you got no dictionary after that, don't worry: just go to Tools -> Complements menu options and install your desired dictionaries. After that, you probably won't need to worry about those settings again until you got a fresh setup of Ubuntu.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Monday, September 30, 2013
Recreating your customized components the easy way
About 2 years ago, I received the task to migrate Siebel Enterprises to a new data center. That would require checking all necessary steps to reinstall the Siebel Enterprise since the new hosts would be using different names due a network policy.
One of the tasks were migrating the customized components, most of them workflow monitors. Creating customized components can be a lot of typing, a boring and repetitive task prone to errors. Wouldn't be cool if one could just do something like a CRTL+C and CRTL+V to all parameters from an Enterprise to another?
That is possible. Well, at least with two operations.
About that time the API of Siebel::Srvrmgr was already usable, so I took a shot to build such automation.
The result is a Perl script named Siebel Srvrmgr Exporter. This little command line tool connects to a Siebel Server and exports components information in the form of multiple CREATE COMPONENT commands to standard output. With that, it is just a matter to connect to the new Siebel Enterprise and execute the same commands for the new servers with srvrmgr program.
Here is the command line help:
The program also includes a simple ASCII animation for the user to avoid the feeling that the application stopped working because it's expending some seconds retrieving data from the Siebel Server.
Siebel Srvrmgr Exporter started as a tool to solve a real problem, and later I had included it as an POC (proof of concept) of Siebel::Srvrmgr API. In release 0.9 of Siebel::Srvrmgr, I had included more features to it:
In those two examples, all components with "Work" in their respective names are exported, the difference is that the first one exports all parameters of the component, the second only the parameters that actually have a defined value.
Recently I was showing the tool to a colleague at work and he asked how so I had the patience to type all that information. I found it funny because in fact I had typed quite a few lines of Perl code to do that. By using the classes available at the Siebel::Srvrmgr API, the program:
Later, by using srvrmgr, you can submit those commands to the new Siebel Server, recreating those components with the same parameters defined before.
And that's it! Two commands:
If anything fails and you don't know why, make to sure to check the Troubleshoot wiki on the project main page.
One of the tasks were migrating the customized components, most of them workflow monitors. Creating customized components can be a lot of typing, a boring and repetitive task prone to errors. Wouldn't be cool if one could just do something like a CRTL+C and CRTL+V to all parameters from an Enterprise to another?
That is possible. Well, at least with two operations.
About that time the API of Siebel::Srvrmgr was already usable, so I took a shot to build such automation.
The result is a Perl script named Siebel Srvrmgr Exporter. This little command line tool connects to a Siebel Server and exports components information in the form of multiple CREATE COMPONENT commands to standard output. With that, it is just a matter to connect to the new Siebel Enterprise and execute the same commands for the new servers with srvrmgr program.
Here is the command line help:
The program also includes a simple ASCII animation for the user to avoid the feeling that the application stopped working because it's expending some seconds retrieving data from the Siebel Server.
Siebel Srvrmgr Exporter started as a tool to solve a real problem, and later I had included it as an POC (proof of concept) of Siebel::Srvrmgr API. In release 0.9 of Siebel::Srvrmgr, I had included more features to it:
- Exports only components attributes that have a defined value;
- Exports all components which name that matches a given regular expression;
- Some internal improvements;
 | ||||
| Components with "Work" string in their names, with all parameters |
 |
| Components with "Work" string in their names, with only the parameters that have defined values |
How does this thing work?
Recently I was showing the tool to a colleague at work and he asked how so I had the patience to type all that information. I found it funny because in fact I had typed quite a few lines of Perl code to do that. By using the classes available at the Siebel::Srvrmgr API, the program:
- Connects to a Siebel Server in a Enterprise;
- Recover each component (that is available in the server) information;
- Recover their parameters;
- Enter in a loop print all the information as a "create component" command of srvrmgr.
Later, by using srvrmgr, you can submit those commands to the new Siebel Server, recreating those components with the same parameters defined before.
And that's it! Two commands:
- export_comps.pl
- srvrmgr
Caveat
There is always one: the parameters that includes passwords are recovered from the Siebel Server as a "****", so you probably will want to change those (a search/replace with your favorite text editor will do) between steps 1 and 2. Maybe I'll implement some feature to ask for a real value before printing the CREATE COMPONENT commands in the future (probably after Christmas lunch, just don't know from which year).If anything fails and you don't know why, make to sure to check the Troubleshoot wiki on the project main page.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Why Siebel UCM uses PIP instead of Siebel Replication Manager?
Originally this was posted in one Linkedin's Siebel group that I'm subscribed, but since I got no answer, I decided to post here too... maybe a good soul can answer this one in the future because for me it still does not make any sense.
Some time ago I started wondering why Siebel UCM 8 does not uses the Siebel Replication Manager instead of using web services from PIP.
While Siebel Replication Manager can update slave-configured systems with only the absolute necessary data, PIP sends the entire "entity" (think about updating the e-mail of a contact, for example, PIP will send the whole contact in the payload).
I'm not a Siebel UCM professional, but every time I talk about it with a college I hear "it is quite the same thing than Siebel CRM, using basically the same infrastructure". I even asked Oracle support about it and all I got is:
Some time ago I started wondering why Siebel UCM 8 does not uses the Siebel Replication Manager instead of using web services from PIP.
While Siebel Replication Manager can update slave-configured systems with only the absolute necessary data, PIP sends the entire "entity" (think about updating the e-mail of a contact, for example, PIP will send the whole contact in the payload).
I'm not a Siebel UCM professional, but every time I talk about it with a college I hear "it is quite the same thing than Siebel CRM, using basically the same infrastructure". I even asked Oracle support about it and all I got is:
"I contacted the Product Manager for Siebel Remote and he advised that you ask your Sales Consultant or TAM to get the answer. He is doubtful that Replication Manager can replace PIP integration."I see no technical reason for that: Siebel CRM and UCM are products from the same vendor and use the basic infrastructure, so why would be necessary to use expensive "heavy" calls between the systems by using SOAP compared to moving tiny DX files between them? On the other hand, using PIP to integrate with other systems would make much more sense.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Siebel eScript and your file system
Everybody knows (including you, right?) that the usage of eScript should be limited for customizations in Siebel in all cases that is not possible (or too hard) to use Siebel Workflows and vanilla Business Services.
Considered that, eScript surely has it's space: in some cases, applying business logic with eScript is far easier than using a Workflow. eScript also has more generic features than Workflows, like working with Siebel Server file system.
Clib provides several functions to work with file systems, most of them looking like ANSI C functions. I won't write here the same information that is already available at the corresponding Siebel Bookshelf (Siebel eScript Language Reference) but I will give some tips about what I had learned the hard way.
function testDir(dir)
{
try
{
//tests if the directory is valid
var previousDir = Clib.getcwd();
var testResult = -1;
testResult = Clib.chdir( dir );
if ( testResult == -1 )
{
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('The directory ' + dir + ' does not exists or cannot be accessed.');
}
}
catch(e)
{
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('Error in function testDir: ' + e.toString());
}
}
This will help to find out missing file system permissions (or missing the directory itself) before trying to use the directory.
Of course, using Clib.strerror should be your first option if the function is returning the error message from the OS as expected!
fp = Clib.fopen(myFile,"au");
if ( fp == null )
{
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('An error ocurrered when trying to open ' + myFile);
}
With three lines of code you will avoid having to debug code due file system permissions, for example. Why that? Because those errors are not considered exceptions by Clib, and failure will happen only if you try to use the file pointer...
By the way, the functions Clib.fputs e Clib.fclose follows the same idea, returning null in something goes wrong. If you're felling specially paranoiac you can include tests for those functions as well.
fp = Clib.fopen(myFile,"au");
if ( fp == null )
{
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('An error ocurrered when trying to open ' + myFile);
}
Clib.fputs(myData,fp);
Clib.fclose(fp);
//later your repeat the same process
you're simply wasting buffer usage.
Once a college of mine argued that using Clib for logging messages would be "reinventing the wheel" since there are already functions for that like TheApplication().Trace. The problem with Trace is that you don't have any control about the buffer: the function would (probably) use I/O immediately to the disk, in other words:
With Clib you could have better control about buffer usage and if you need to write large sets of data to a file it will help with the I/O performance.
To accomplish that, just create a global file pointer variable (in the Declarations area) and open the file just once with Clib.fopen. After that, just go on using Clib.fputs and it's cousins.
How to guarantee that the file will be properly closed? This is even more important if the Siebel Server is using a file system with mandatory locking like NTFS: the file will be kept as locked until the process that opened it close the file or cease to exist.
To avoid this kind of issue, just use the finally block to close the file:
# Declarations area
var fp;
function foobar {
try {
fp = Clib.fopen(myFile,"au");
if ( fp == null )
{
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('An error ocurrered when trying to open ' + myFile);
}
Clib.fputs(myData,fp);
} catch(e) {
//do something
} finally {
Clib.fclose(fp);
}
}
Doing this will guarantee that the process that is executing the Business Service will release the file lock and the file will be closed, having all data that was not yet written to the file to be flushed from the buffer.
And finally, if you need to give more security to not loosing data in the case of a hard failure, at each execution of Clib.fputs execute a Clib.fflush, without closing the file.
One of the solutions is to use Clib.rename: if you ever used any UNIX shell you will notice it looks like the mv command.
The other alternatives in the article (Clib.system and SElib) would be too "expensive" in terms of computer resources to use in my opinion (while I must say I never did a formal test about this).
If you need to copy lots and lots of files, my suggestion is to create a small program (in any language that you prefer) and then execute it with Clib.system: this way you will create just one additional OS process to do all the necessary work.
The Oracle technical support website has several articles teaching to use SElib and the kernel32.dll to look for filenames patterns in some directory. Unfortunately those articles just teach you that you should use kerne32.dll for the job, but not how to use it. I had already saw code that keeps calling FindFirstFileA recursively when the function FindNextFileA is just there waiting to be used. Reading the kernel32.dll documentation is a painful process if you're not a C++ programmer (and I'm not) but it is there ((http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364418%28v=vs.85%29.aspx) to be checked to avoid doing silly things with the DLL.
Another issue is to deal with NUL characters: a predefined amount of memory is allocated to keep the filename that was found and in the case missing something more interesting the functions FindFirstFileA and FindNextFileA fill the missing alocated space with NUL characters if the filename is as large as the buffer. This is quite normal to be expected if you're programming with C or C++, but try to concatenate strings (or do anything else like using split) with eScript and the result will not be something that you're expecting.
The function below is a possible solution for the problem (probably not the most elegant one): it will look for a NUL character in a string and return the number of "printable" characters read until it.
function removeNul(string)
{
try
{
var iEndPos = string.length;
var lastPrintChar = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < iEndPos; i++) {
//if char is printable, go to next until test fails
if ( Clib.isprint( string.charAt(i) ) )
{
lastPrintChar++;
}
else {
break;
}
}
return string.substring(0, lastPrintChar);
}
catch(e) {
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('An error ocurred with removeNul function: ' + e.errText);
}
}
Finally, below I put a complete example of listing files considering the points that I commented, just to illustrate the concepts. Pay attention that the results of found files are stored in a array so the garbage collector of eScript will have a chance to release as soon as possible the allocated memory for the objects and kernel32.dll.
try {
var blob = new blobDescriptor();
var fileData;
var hFind;
blob.dwFileAttributes = SWORD32;
blob.ftCreationTime = SWORD32;
blob.ftCreationTime_ = SWORD32;
blob.ftLastAccessTime = SWORD32;
blob.ftLastAccessTime_ = SWORD32;
blob.ftLastWriteTime = SWORD32;
blob.ftLastWriteTime_ = SWORD32;
blob.nFileSizeHigh = SWORD32;
blob.nFileSizeLow = SWORD32;
blob.dwReserved0 = SWORD32;
blob.dwReserved1 = SWORD32;
blob.cFileName = 1000000;
blob.cAlternateFileName = 1000000;
var nextIndex = filesToProcess.length;
// brand new start of filesToProcess
if (typeof nextIndex == 'undefined') {
nextIndex = 0;
filesToProcess[0] = '';
}
hFind = SElib.dynamicLink("Kernel32.DLL", "FindFirstFileA", STDCALL, filenameToMatch, blob, fileData);
//found a file with the request pattern
if (hFind != -1) {
filesToProcess[nextIndex] = removeNul(fileData.cFileName.toString());
while (SElib.dynamicLink("Kernel32.DLL", "FindNextFileA", STDCALL, hFind, blob, fileData) != 0)
{
nextIndex++;
filesToProcess[nextIndex] = removeNul(fileData.cFileName.toString());
}
return true;
}
}
catch(e) {
throw(e);
}
finally {
nextIndex = null;
fileData = null;
}
}
Thinking a little bit more, working with a UNIX-like OS would be possible if you have a library with the same functions of kernel32.dll, but this would be highly dependent of the OS being used (as the same thing happens to kernel32.dll). So, I wonder, why doesn't Siebel have such an library? Doing something with ANSI C should be enough portable.
Working with this mode is a better guarantee that you will be able to export or import data in a portable way between systems, specially if the Siebel data base is configured to use Unicode. Working with Unicode will avoid a lot of headaches with accents and other characters.
But be sure to remember this: about the time I'm writing this article, Siebel regular expressions does not support Unicode.
Considered that, eScript surely has it's space: in some cases, applying business logic with eScript is far easier than using a Workflow. eScript also has more generic features than Workflows, like working with Siebel Server file system.
Clib provides several functions to work with file systems, most of them looking like ANSI C functions. I won't write here the same information that is already available at the corresponding Siebel Bookshelf (Siebel eScript Language Reference) but I will give some tips about what I had learned the hard way.
Test the directory before using it
Before trying to use a directory it is always a good idea to check if the eScript will have access to it (specially if the Siebel version that you have doesn't have the Clib.strerror working correctly). One way to test a directory is using the functions Clib.chdir and Clib.getcwd combined, as shown the testDir function below:function testDir(dir)
{
try
{
//tests if the directory is valid
var previousDir = Clib.getcwd();
var testResult = -1;
testResult = Clib.chdir( dir );
if ( testResult == -1 )
{
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('The directory ' + dir + ' does not exists or cannot be accessed.');
}
}
catch(e)
{
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('Error in function testDir: ' + e.toString());
}
}
This will help to find out missing file system permissions (or missing the directory itself) before trying to use the directory.
Of course, using Clib.strerror should be your first option if the function is returning the error message from the OS as expected!
Check if the file was really opened
Looks like a silly thing, but here and then I find some programs that still do not check the file pointer after trying to open a file with Clib.fopen. It is very simple to test it, as you can check below:fp = Clib.fopen(myFile,"au");
if ( fp == null )
{
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('An error ocurrered when trying to open ' + myFile);
}
With three lines of code you will avoid having to debug code due file system permissions, for example. Why that? Because those errors are not considered exceptions by Clib, and failure will happen only if you try to use the file pointer...
By the way, the functions Clib.fputs e Clib.fclose follows the same idea, returning null in something goes wrong. If you're felling specially paranoiac you can include tests for those functions as well.
Use the buffer Luke!
The read and write functions of Clib use buffering by default: that means they will keep data in memory before doing a I/O operation. This helps with I/O performance of your program since read/writing to the disk is slower than in RAM memory (I'm not even considering disk cache). If you write code like this in the same scope:fp = Clib.fopen(myFile,"au");
if ( fp == null )
{
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('An error ocurrered when trying to open ' + myFile);
}
Clib.fputs(myData,fp);
Clib.fclose(fp);
//later your repeat the same process
you're simply wasting buffer usage.
Once a college of mine argued that using Clib for logging messages would be "reinventing the wheel" since there are already functions for that like TheApplication().Trace. The problem with Trace is that you don't have any control about the buffer: the function would (probably) use I/O immediately to the disk, in other words:
- Open the file.
- Write to the file.
- Close the file.
With Clib you could have better control about buffer usage and if you need to write large sets of data to a file it will help with the I/O performance.
To accomplish that, just create a global file pointer variable (in the Declarations area) and open the file just once with Clib.fopen. After that, just go on using Clib.fputs and it's cousins.
How to guarantee that the file will be properly closed? This is even more important if the Siebel Server is using a file system with mandatory locking like NTFS: the file will be kept as locked until the process that opened it close the file or cease to exist.
To avoid this kind of issue, just use the finally block to close the file:
# Declarations area
var fp;
function foobar {
try {
fp = Clib.fopen(myFile,"au");
if ( fp == null )
{
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('An error ocurrered when trying to open ' + myFile);
}
Clib.fputs(myData,fp);
} catch(e) {
//do something
} finally {
Clib.fclose(fp);
}
}
Doing this will guarantee that the process that is executing the Business Service will release the file lock and the file will be closed, having all data that was not yet written to the file to be flushed from the buffer.
And finally, if you need to give more security to not loosing data in the case of a hard failure, at each execution of Clib.fputs execute a Clib.fflush, without closing the file.
Copying files
In the article "How Can You Copy Files from One Location to Another Using Siebel Scripting?" (ID 477948.1) available at Oracle support webpage there is a description of some solutions to copy files with eScript since Clib does not have those features (one thing that I still trying to understand why not).One of the solutions is to use Clib.rename: if you ever used any UNIX shell you will notice it looks like the mv command.
The other alternatives in the article (Clib.system and SElib) would be too "expensive" in terms of computer resources to use in my opinion (while I must say I never did a formal test about this).
If you need to copy lots and lots of files, my suggestion is to create a small program (in any language that you prefer) and then execute it with Clib.system: this way you will create just one additional OS process to do all the necessary work.
Listing files in a directory
This tip only works for Siebel setups in a Microsoft Windows OS.The Oracle technical support website has several articles teaching to use SElib and the kernel32.dll to look for filenames patterns in some directory. Unfortunately those articles just teach you that you should use kerne32.dll for the job, but not how to use it. I had already saw code that keeps calling FindFirstFileA recursively when the function FindNextFileA is just there waiting to be used. Reading the kernel32.dll documentation is a painful process if you're not a C++ programmer (and I'm not) but it is there ((http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364418%28v=vs.85%29.aspx) to be checked to avoid doing silly things with the DLL.
Another issue is to deal with NUL characters: a predefined amount of memory is allocated to keep the filename that was found and in the case missing something more interesting the functions FindFirstFileA and FindNextFileA fill the missing alocated space with NUL characters if the filename is as large as the buffer. This is quite normal to be expected if you're programming with C or C++, but try to concatenate strings (or do anything else like using split) with eScript and the result will not be something that you're expecting.
The function below is a possible solution for the problem (probably not the most elegant one): it will look for a NUL character in a string and return the number of "printable" characters read until it.
function removeNul(string)
{
try
{
var iEndPos = string.length;
var lastPrintChar = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < iEndPos; i++) {
//if char is printable, go to next until test fails
if ( Clib.isprint( string.charAt(i) ) )
{
lastPrintChar++;
}
else {
break;
}
}
return string.substring(0, lastPrintChar);
}
catch(e) {
TheApplication().RaiseErrorText('An error ocurred with removeNul function: ' + e.errText);
}
}
Finally, below I put a complete example of listing files considering the points that I commented, just to illustrate the concepts. Pay attention that the results of found files are stored in a array so the garbage collector of eScript will have a chance to release as soon as possible the allocated memory for the objects and kernel32.dll.
try {
var blob = new blobDescriptor();
var fileData;
var hFind;
blob.dwFileAttributes = SWORD32;
blob.ftCreationTime = SWORD32;
blob.ftCreationTime_ = SWORD32;
blob.ftLastAccessTime = SWORD32;
blob.ftLastAccessTime_ = SWORD32;
blob.ftLastWriteTime = SWORD32;
blob.ftLastWriteTime_ = SWORD32;
blob.nFileSizeHigh = SWORD32;
blob.nFileSizeLow = SWORD32;
blob.dwReserved0 = SWORD32;
blob.dwReserved1 = SWORD32;
blob.cFileName = 1000000;
blob.cAlternateFileName = 1000000;
var nextIndex = filesToProcess.length;
// brand new start of filesToProcess
if (typeof nextIndex == 'undefined') {
nextIndex = 0;
filesToProcess[0] = '';
}
hFind = SElib.dynamicLink("Kernel32.DLL", "FindFirstFileA", STDCALL, filenameToMatch, blob, fileData);
//found a file with the request pattern
if (hFind != -1) {
filesToProcess[nextIndex] = removeNul(fileData.cFileName.toString());
while (SElib.dynamicLink("Kernel32.DLL", "FindNextFileA", STDCALL, hFind, blob, fileData) != 0)
{
nextIndex++;
filesToProcess[nextIndex] = removeNul(fileData.cFileName.toString());
}
return true;
}
}
catch(e) {
throw(e);
}
finally {
nextIndex = null;
fileData = null;
}
}
Thinking a little bit more, working with a UNIX-like OS would be possible if you have a library with the same functions of kernel32.dll, but this would be highly dependent of the OS being used (as the same thing happens to kernel32.dll). So, I wonder, why doesn't Siebel have such an library? Doing something with ANSI C should be enough portable.
Read and write in Unicode
One of the file modes available for Clib.fopen is reading and writing in Unicode by using the "u" character specified.Working with this mode is a better guarantee that you will be able to export or import data in a portable way between systems, specially if the Siebel data base is configured to use Unicode. Working with Unicode will avoid a lot of headaches with accents and other characters.
But be sure to remember this: about the time I'm writing this article, Siebel regular expressions does not support Unicode.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Reactivating the My Oracle Support autocomplete
This post is an updated version of the original one here (in Brazilian Portuguese).
I'm a Siebel CRM certified professional and I use My Oracle Support some couple of times during a week.
That said, it would be required that I type my login and password every time that I want to go in the website. Well, that is not very fun because even if you want your browser will not remember those values.
I strong disagree with such website configuration: if I want to keep my credentials saved within the browser, that's my problem, not Oracle's. A simple "remember me" check box would be far more polite.
In the meantime, Oracle's website is still HTML with steroids at the end of your HTTP request. Even if they disable the browser login reminder it is still possible to enable it. And that's the trick I'm posting here.
The restriction applied by Oracle is an HTML tag called autocomplete. What it does is tell to the browser if it can or cannot save values from form fields and automatically fill them in again when you come back. If the autocomplete=off, the web browser will not even try to save those values for you.
Nowadays several browsers have tools to access the HTML of the HTTP response and enable the user to change it in memory. Mozilla Firefox, my preferable web browser, has such tools.
There are some bookmarklets that would, theoretically, change those configurations automatically, but the ones that I tried didn't work. But it is still possible to change them manually.
First, install the Firebug plug-in into Firefox.
Then, after restarting Firefox, go to the My Oracle Support website login page and click the "sign-in" button.
The login form will be shown to you (mine is in Brazilian Portuguese, but that doesn't matter). Open the Firebug (use the F12 keyboard shortcut if you can't find the related menu option). You will see something like the screen-shot below:
Just ignore that the form shown has a value for the login field.
In the lower window the Firebug plug-in will show you the source of the HTML. Press CTRL+F and type "autocomplete" as shown in the screen-shot and press the next button. The value of the property will be "off", disabling Firefox for trying to save the login and password.
After that, select the value of the property by left clicking on it: Firebug will offer to change this value. Go ahead and replace "off" with "on".
Now it is just a matter to type your login and password and access the My Oracle Support as you would do normally.
Testing time: logout and go back to the login page.
In the form, double click with the left button in the login field. Firefox will offer to you the login typed previously even though the form from My Oracle Support has the autocomplete=off again.
Finally, select the suggested login and Firefox will fill in both form fields for you. Yes, it is that simple.
I'm a Siebel CRM certified professional and I use My Oracle Support some couple of times during a week.
That said, it would be required that I type my login and password every time that I want to go in the website. Well, that is not very fun because even if you want your browser will not remember those values.
I strong disagree with such website configuration: if I want to keep my credentials saved within the browser, that's my problem, not Oracle's. A simple "remember me" check box would be far more polite.
In the meantime, Oracle's website is still HTML with steroids at the end of your HTTP request. Even if they disable the browser login reminder it is still possible to enable it. And that's the trick I'm posting here.
The restriction applied by Oracle is an HTML tag called autocomplete. What it does is tell to the browser if it can or cannot save values from form fields and automatically fill them in again when you come back. If the autocomplete=off, the web browser will not even try to save those values for you.
Nowadays several browsers have tools to access the HTML of the HTTP response and enable the user to change it in memory. Mozilla Firefox, my preferable web browser, has such tools.
There are some bookmarklets that would, theoretically, change those configurations automatically, but the ones that I tried didn't work. But it is still possible to change them manually.
First, install the Firebug plug-in into Firefox.
Then, after restarting Firefox, go to the My Oracle Support website login page and click the "sign-in" button.
The login form will be shown to you (mine is in Brazilian Portuguese, but that doesn't matter). Open the Firebug (use the F12 keyboard shortcut if you can't find the related menu option). You will see something like the screen-shot below:
Just ignore that the form shown has a value for the login field.
In the lower window the Firebug plug-in will show you the source of the HTML. Press CTRL+F and type "autocomplete" as shown in the screen-shot and press the next button. The value of the property will be "off", disabling Firefox for trying to save the login and password.
After that, select the value of the property by left clicking on it: Firebug will offer to change this value. Go ahead and replace "off" with "on".
Testing time: logout and go back to the login page.
In the form, double click with the left button in the login field. Firefox will offer to you the login typed previously even though the form from My Oracle Support has the autocomplete=off again.
Finally, select the suggested login and Firefox will fill in both form fields for you. Yes, it is that simple.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Get Siebel Tools 8.1 working with Windows 7
Alright boys and girls... all you know that Microsoft is always innovating: they keep creating new annoyances for each new MS Windows version they release. Today is the day to be annoyed by Windows 7 default file system permissions.
Some couple of days ago I got my old notebook replaced by a shinny new one. The downside is that I had to reinstall and reconfigure a lot of stuff, including Siebel Tools.
I know Siebel Tools 8.1 does not officially supports Windows 7, but there is no way I'll be able to go back to Windows XP (unfortunately in this case).
After running the Siebel Tools setup program as administrator, I got a non-working Siebel Tools: I could not even find out what was going on because I didn't have any permission to create log files under \Log directory.
After fixing that, it was also necessary to change permissions to the sse_data.dbf file since my user got no write rights on it. Obviously I got some permissions issue (maybe because I executed the setup program as Administrator?) even my user being part of the group Administrators of my notebook. I tried the not so fancy solution trying to give me full permissions for all files/directories under the Tools directory.
I didn't work... don't ask my why. Looks like the permission dialog does not work as expected. I tried to grab permissions several times, even tried to put my user as owner of all objects... no results.
I was able to open Tools but take a look of what I got after trying to "Edit Web Layout" of a applet:
Not cool. Probably more permissions issues. This is what I got in the respective log file:
2021 2013-03-25 17:07:28 0000-00-00 00:00:00 -0300 00000000 001 003f 0001 09 siebdev 9796 4412 C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools\log\siebdev.log 8.1.1.6 [21233] ENU
ObjMgrLog Error 1 0000000251502644:0 2013-03-25 17:07:28 (filetransport.cpp (495)) SBL-GEN-10116: Error acquiring file lock
ObjMgrBusServiceLog Error 1 0000000251502644:0 2013-03-25 17:07:28 (eaixmlprtsvc.cpp (348)) SBL-EAI-04261: Error getting XML from file 'standard.xml'.
ObjMgrLog Error 1 0000000251502644:0 2013-03-25 17:08:45 (filetransport.cpp (495)) SBL-GEN-10116: Error acquiring file lock
ObjMgrBusServiceLog Error 1 0000000251502644:0 2013-03-25 17:08:45 (eaixmlprtsvc.cpp (348)) SBL-EAI-04261: Error getting XML from file 'C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools\bin\expression_builder.xml'.
ObjMgrBusServiceLog Error 1 0000000251502644:0 2013-03-25 17:08:45 (ebservice.cpp (3326)) SBL-DEV-61159: No valid Expression Builder could be found for the field Name on business component Repository Applet.
As always, going down to a terminal give me some more powerful options.
First I used the program Takeown from Microsoft itself: it just put everything under my user as proprietary by using it's recursive argument.
takeown /f C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools /r
After that, I went to a Windows Powershell prompt and did the following:
$newACL = Get-Acl C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools
Get-ChildItem C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools -Recurse -Force | Set-Acl -AclObject $newACL
If you know a bit of Powershell you will notice that I got a "ACL model" from the Tools directory itself: at least this directory I could put my desired permissions, the problem was to replicate this configuration for it's children objects. That's why I used it's ACL to replicate the configuration with the Get-ChildItem and Set-Acl cmdlets.
That's it: Siebel Tools was back to work. Of course I probably gave much more permissions to the folders than it was necessary, but anyway, life is too short to go looking for all necessary permissions on a not-available-for-users document from Oracle telling me what is required or not.
Some couple of days ago I got my old notebook replaced by a shinny new one. The downside is that I had to reinstall and reconfigure a lot of stuff, including Siebel Tools.
I know Siebel Tools 8.1 does not officially supports Windows 7, but there is no way I'll be able to go back to Windows XP (unfortunately in this case).
After running the Siebel Tools setup program as administrator, I got a non-working Siebel Tools: I could not even find out what was going on because I didn't have any permission to create log files under \Log directory.
After fixing that, it was also necessary to change permissions to the sse_data.dbf file since my user got no write rights on it. Obviously I got some permissions issue (maybe because I executed the setup program as Administrator?) even my user being part of the group Administrators of my notebook. I tried the not so fancy solution trying to give me full permissions for all files/directories under the Tools directory.
I didn't work... don't ask my why. Looks like the permission dialog does not work as expected. I tried to grab permissions several times, even tried to put my user as owner of all objects... no results.
I was able to open Tools but take a look of what I got after trying to "Edit Web Layout" of a applet:
Not cool. Probably more permissions issues. This is what I got in the respective log file:
2021 2013-03-25 17:07:28 0000-00-00 00:00:00 -0300 00000000 001 003f 0001 09 siebdev 9796 4412 C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools\log\siebdev.log 8.1.1.6 [21233] ENU
ObjMgrLog Error 1 0000000251502644:0 2013-03-25 17:07:28 (filetransport.cpp (495)) SBL-GEN-10116: Error acquiring file lock
ObjMgrBusServiceLog Error 1 0000000251502644:0 2013-03-25 17:07:28 (eaixmlprtsvc.cpp (348)) SBL-EAI-04261: Error getting XML from file 'standard.xml'.
ObjMgrLog Error 1 0000000251502644:0 2013-03-25 17:08:45 (filetransport.cpp (495)) SBL-GEN-10116: Error acquiring file lock
ObjMgrBusServiceLog Error 1 0000000251502644:0 2013-03-25 17:08:45 (eaixmlprtsvc.cpp (348)) SBL-EAI-04261: Error getting XML from file 'C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools\bin\expression_builder.xml'.
ObjMgrBusServiceLog Error 1 0000000251502644:0 2013-03-25 17:08:45 (ebservice.cpp (3326)) SBL-DEV-61159: No valid Expression Builder could be found for the field Name on business component Repository Applet.
As always, going down to a terminal give me some more powerful options.
First I used the program Takeown from Microsoft itself: it just put everything under my user as proprietary by using it's recursive argument.
takeown /f C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools /r
After that, I went to a Windows Powershell prompt and did the following:
$newACL = Get-Acl C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools
Get-ChildItem C:\Siebel\8.1\Tools -Recurse -Force | Set-Acl -AclObject $newACL
If you know a bit of Powershell you will notice that I got a "ACL model" from the Tools directory itself: at least this directory I could put my desired permissions, the problem was to replicate this configuration for it's children objects. That's why I used it's ACL to replicate the configuration with the Get-ChildItem and Set-Acl cmdlets.
That's it: Siebel Tools was back to work. Of course I probably gave much more permissions to the folders than it was necessary, but anyway, life is too short to go looking for all necessary permissions on a not-available-for-users document from Oracle telling me what is required or not.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Improving bulk inserts on SQLite
One of these days I decided that I needed to have a way to transport data from Siebel SQLAnywhere local database to anything that I could review information without having to install any Siebel application for it. My choice to go was SQLite and Perl to extract the data.
SQLite is far more "transportable" than SQL Anywhere, specially if you don't need all the fancy features it has when compared with SQLite.
First I checked if SQL::Translator wouldn't do the job, but it seems SQL Anywhere syntax is not supported by now. Then, after playing around with Perl DBI, DBD::ODBC (yes, Siebel local databases still uses ODBC, don't ask me why) and DBD::SQLite, I got something working that could check all SIEBEL schema tables DDL, create the tables into SQLite database and populate those tables with data. After all I got something like a "data dumper".
Unfortunately, performance was not that good. Specifically talking about the computer that I used for that (a old notebook with encrypted HD), the I/O was a performance hog: perl interpreter was not getting even 20% of all processor power available but the insert steps where really slow.
First thing when doing bulk inserts with DBI is to be sure to use binding parameters, which in fact was already applied:
With my homework done, I went to another basic step: check the storage back-end.
The thing is, the notebook was "plagued" with disk encryption: this means that everything in that HD that needs to be read/write must pass through the trouble to be encrypted/decrypted. While quite secure, doing I/O in these conditions are really bad for bulk inserts.
I decided then to go with a RAM disk: such solutions are uncommon in Microsoft realm, but after some configuration I got some good improvement. The problem is, the notebook didn't have enough RAM to have a RAM disk size that could hold the complete database file and keep everything else running... I ended exhausting all RAM memory available.
Next steps where taking a look about features of SQLite that could help on that... and the little database didn't let me down. Here is a quick list of the features that needed to be turned on:
One observation: COMMIT control in SQLite is really weird. I finished by using a combination to disabling Autocommit during database connecting and disabling it again after each COMMIT executed.
SQLite is far more "transportable" than SQL Anywhere, specially if you don't need all the fancy features it has when compared with SQLite.
First I checked if SQL::Translator wouldn't do the job, but it seems SQL Anywhere syntax is not supported by now. Then, after playing around with Perl DBI, DBD::ODBC (yes, Siebel local databases still uses ODBC, don't ask me why) and DBD::SQLite, I got something working that could check all SIEBEL schema tables DDL, create the tables into SQLite database and populate those tables with data. After all I got something like a "data dumper".
Unfortunately, performance was not that good. Specifically talking about the computer that I used for that (a old notebook with encrypted HD), the I/O was a performance hog: perl interpreter was not getting even 20% of all processor power available but the insert steps where really slow.
First thing when doing bulk inserts with DBI is to be sure to use binding parameters, which in fact was already applied:
my $dest_insert =
'INSERT INTO '
. $table . ' ('
. join( ', ', @quoted_columns )
. ') VALUES('
. join( ', ', ( map { '?' } @quoted_columns ) ) . ')';
my $insert_sth = $sqlite_dbh->prepare($dest_insert);
$select_sth->execute();
while ( my $row = $select_sth->fetchrow_arrayref() ) {
for ( my $i = 0 ; $i < scalar(@columns) ; $i++ ) {
$insert_sth->bind_param( ( $i + 1 ),
$row->[$i], $columns[$i]->sql_type() );
}
$insert_sth->execute();
# and code goes on
}
With my homework done, I went to another basic step: check the storage back-end.
The thing is, the notebook was "plagued" with disk encryption: this means that everything in that HD that needs to be read/write must pass through the trouble to be encrypted/decrypted. While quite secure, doing I/O in these conditions are really bad for bulk inserts.
I decided then to go with a RAM disk: such solutions are uncommon in Microsoft realm, but after some configuration I got some good improvement. The problem is, the notebook didn't have enough RAM to have a RAM disk size that could hold the complete database file and keep everything else running... I ended exhausting all RAM memory available.
Next steps where taking a look about features of SQLite that could help on that... and the little database didn't let me down. Here is a quick list of the features that needed to be turned on:
- cache_size pragma
- synchronous pragma
- Autocommit (disabled at SQLite connection): SQLite oficial documentation and DBD::SQLite POD
- Create INSERT batches and COMMIT control
One observation: COMMIT control in SQLite is really weird. I finished by using a combination to disabling Autocommit during database connecting and disabling it again after each COMMIT executed.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Accessing Siebel with COM
Introduction
Siebel has a set different technologies to integrate with other systems, including online and batch interfaces.Those different technologies have different advantages and drawbacks, and their application depend heavily on the nature of the task to be executed and the environment available.
One of those interfaces available for usage is the COM interface.
COM is an abbreviation for "Component Object Model" developed by Microsoft as a framework for developing modular software components and to support integration services (exposing functionality and data transfers).
COM is available for Siebel in Microsoft Windows environments only (since COM is a Microsoft exclusively technology) in three different "flavors":
- Automation server
- Data server
- Data control
Usually using Siebel COM Data Control is preferable to use since it is faster to load and execute and can multiplex connections to a Siebel Enterprise, but DataServer still have it's specific uses:
- Provides CRUD operations in the Siebel Client local database.
- Avoid object restrictions in the Siebel Repository by using a local modified SRF.
- Avoid security restrictions applied to the Siebel Enterprise, like firewalls and authentication.
Through COM usage, any language that supports it can connect to Siebel and have access to it's internal objects, more specifically the Business Layer when talking about Siebel COM Data Control or Data Server. Some examples include VBA, Windows Powershell and Perl.
The best document to start reading about Siebel COM is the 1402536.1 "Master Notes For COM and JDB(Java Data Bean) Interface Issues": it has references to other documents about Siebel COM. The bookshelf "Siebel Object Interfaces Reference" is another must read resource.
Getting to know the API requires checking the proper documentation available. When they are not available, you can consider yourself lucky if you have Microsoft Office installed, since you can check the API documentation from the DLL itself by using the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications editor and checking the references loaded:
Requirements
You must have the Siebel Client installed in a Microsoft Windows 32 bits OS. This includes Windows 7, although Oracle claims it does not supports Siebel 8.1 in such OS.
Even after installing the Siebel, sometimes the required DLL's are not registered correctly (see DLL Hell for details on that). Below is a quick reference for the DLL's that you need to have:
| Siebel Interface | Programmatic Id | DLL/TLB |
|---|---|---|
| Siebel COM Data Server | SiebelDataServer.AplicationObject | sobjsrv.ltb |
| Siebel Data Control | SiebelDataControl.SiebelDataControl.1 | sstchca.dll |
Advantages
It is easy to setup if you are in a Microsoft Windows environment. Generally speaking, if you have a Siebel Client installed, you already got everything you need to use Siebel COM.If you consider VBA, you can even get data into your Excel spreadsheet, which is a huge advantage if all you need is make data available to end users. Sometimes, it is probably easier than creating customized reports and making them available for them.
Siebel COM is also useful to provide quick data fixes, retrieve information which would be much more complicated if done from the Data Layer or even "upserting" small amounts of data.
In some specific scenarios, you could provide additional functionality to Siebel Mobile users by connecting to the local database or even doing data changes by using a modified local SRF which would not be possible due restrictions in the "regular" SRF (that could be a dangerous thing to do, but it is possible).
Caveats
As simple as it looks like, COM does have it's caveats. Siebel and in fact even .NET, while still supporting it, are replacing it with other technologies.
For example, Powershell uses the .NET support to COM by using of an interop assembly, which is a special .NET Framework assembly that connects complex COM components to the .NET Framework. Sometimes a COM component doesn't have it's interop counterpart available, so when you try to instantiate it all you got is a connection to the interop assembly and not the COM component itself, resulting in not having the proper access to the properties and methods from the component (to solve this, use the "-strict" parameter with New-Object cmdlet).
Another drawback for using COM is that you cannot use it with systems that are not Microsoft based: you cannot use it from Linux, for example (but you can use a Microsoft Windows workstation to connect to a Siebel Enterprise based on Linux).
Other issues are related to scalability and speed: some resources even suggest that when necessary only to query Siebel to use direct queries to the database instead using the AOM for speed. Scaling COM with Siebel should involve using more AOM instances to connect, probably doing that with a load balance (refer to document 478270.1 "Use of Native Load Balancing With Java Data Beans Interface and COM Data Control Interface" for more information about that).
Since COM uses DLL's, there is still a present issue regarding 32 and 64 bits support: when writing this article Siebel still does not support usage of COM in 64 bits systems, as show in document 1393381.1 "Can COM Interface Be Used in a 64 Bit Environment in 64 Bit Mode?". As it seems, it is just a matter of time that you won't be able to use COM anymore when we stop to use computers with 32 bits support. Maybe Oracle will update those DLL's, but I would not bet on that.
There are more issues related to COM. You can check more examples at Wikipedia webpage about COM.
Examples
There are several examples available in the internet to use Siebel COM with VBA and even Perl. I'll restrict to show an example with Windows Powershell since I could not find any when writing this article.set-strictmode -version 2.0Let's comment some details about this code.
$siebelApp = New-Object -ComObject "SiebelDataControl.SiebelDataControl.1" -Strict
$gateway = "siebdev"
$server = "siebdev"
$langCode = "ENU"
$enterprise = "SIEBEL"
$aom = "eFoobarObjMgr_enu"
$connAddress = "host=""siebel://$gateway/$enterprise/$aom"" Lang=""$langCode"""
$user = "foo"
$password = "bar"
try {
if ($siebelApp -is 'System.__ComObject') {
$siebelApp.EnableExceptions($true)
Write-Host "connecting to" $connAddress
[void] $siebelApp.Login($connAddress, $user, $password)
if ( $siebelApp.GetLastErrCode() -ne 0 ) {
write-host "Not possÃvel to connect to" $connAddress
throw $siebelApp.GetLastErrText()
} else {
write-host "Connected to server $server"
try {
$bo = $siebelApp.GetBusObject("Contact")
$bcContact = $bo.GetBusComp("Contact")
[void] $bcContact.ClearToQuery
[void] $bcContact.SetViewMode(3)
[void] $bcContact.ActivateField("First Name")
[void] $bcContact.ActivateField("Last Name")
[void] $bcContact.ExecuteQuery(257)
if ($bcContact.FirstRecord()) {
do {
$string = "First Name =" + $bcContact.GetFieldValue("First Name") + ", Last Name = " + $bcContact.GetFieldValue("Last Name")
Write-Host $string
} while ($bcContact.NextRecord())
} else {
Write-Warning "It was not possible to find any contact"
}
} catch {
Write-Host $error[0].exception -ForegroundColor red
} finally {
remove-variable -name bcContact
remove-variable -name bo
[void] $siebelApp.Logoff()
}
}
} else {
throw "It was not possible to connect to Siebel"
}
} catch {
Write-Host $error[0].exception -ForegroundColor red
} finally {
write-host "Releasing resources" -foregroundcolor green
remove-variable -name bcContac
remove-variable -name bo
remove-variable -name siebelApp
}
First thing is the "-strict" option when creating the COM object: this is necessary to raise an exception if, for any reason, the COM object cannot be instantiated.
It is also a good idea to check to if the object created is really a COM object, since this will avoid calling methods from an invalid object: -is 'System.__ComObject' does that.
Another good idea is to turn on automatic exception from the Siebel Data Control: EnableExceptions method will do just that.
You will notice that some methods invocation have a "[void]" prefixed to them: this is useful because those methods returns something but usually you won't want those thing to go to standard output (as Powershell does by default). Also, automatic exceptions are turned on, so don't worry too much about checking methods returns.
Unfortunately, Siebel COM will not give you constants for free. That's why you will need to use the numeric value of them as done in ExecuteQuery() method or create those constant yourself.
Everything else should be straightforward if you have already programmed with eScript. I tried to make some effort by using try/catch/finally to check for exceptions, trying to logoff automatically and release the objects created with remove-variable cmdlet, but during my test by turning on trace with Trace method did not showed any different by using such schemes (to release objects), at least in this example.
Get your feet wet
If you know how to program with anything that supports COM, then you have a good chance to do yourself a favor and stop using EIM for simple things like updating 50 accounts or even doing it by hand. Automation with Siebel COM is a real option, just don't try to take it too much seriously as putting thousand of requests/data over it.Thursday, January 17, 2013
Getting into Siebel with Perl
Inspired in the post made by Jason Brazile (http://jbrazile.blogspot.com.br/2008/03/siebel-com-programming-with-perl.html) I decided to get something more "Perlish" working example.
This is the first working testing that I got, basically the same example given by Jason with some interesting differences:
use strict;
use warnings;
use Siebel::COM::App::DataServer;
use feature 'say';
my $schema = {
'Contact' => [
'Birth Date',
'Created',
'Created By Name',
'Email Address',
'Fax Phone #',
'First Name',
'Id',
'Job Title',
'Last Name',
'Updated',
'Updated By Name',
'Work Phone #'
]
};
my $sa;
eval {
$sa = Siebel::COM::App::DataServer->new(
{
cfg => 'C:/Siebel/8.1/Client_1/BIN/ptb/scomm.cfg',
data_source => 'ServerDataSrcDEV',
user => 'foobar',
password => 'foobar'
}
);
my ( $bo, $bc, $key, $field, $moreResults );
$sa->login();
foreach $key ( keys(%$schema) ) {
$bo = $sa->get_bus_object($key);
$bc = $bo->get_bus_comp($key);
foreach $field ( @{ $schema->{$key} } ) {
$bc->activate_field($field);
}
$bc->clear_query();
$bc->query();
$moreResults = $bc->first_record();
while ($moreResults) {
printf("-----\n");
foreach $field ( @{ $schema->{$key} } ) {
printf( "%40s: %s\n", $field, $bc->get_field_value($field) );
}
$moreResults = $bc->next_record();
}
}
};
if ($@) {
warn $@;
die $sa->get_last_error() if ( defined($sa) );
}
You might be wondering "where is the heck of Win32::OLE?". Well, the beautiful of this script is the usage of the distribution Siebel::COM, freshly available at http://code.google.com/p/siebel-com/, which provides syntax sugar and automatic error checking by using basically only Moose.
Of course there is still a lot to implement, and the code available at the SVN doesn't have yet tests neither POD documentation. But it is a good start and I'm positive that this will be available at CPAN until the end of the month (although implementing mock objects in the tests will be a problem).
This is the first working testing that I got, basically the same example given by Jason with some interesting differences:
use strict;
use warnings;
use Siebel::COM::App::DataServer;
use feature 'say';
my $schema = {
'Contact' => [
'Birth Date',
'Created',
'Created By Name',
'Email Address',
'Fax Phone #',
'First Name',
'Id',
'Job Title',
'Last Name',
'Updated',
'Updated By Name',
'Work Phone #'
]
};
my $sa;
eval {
$sa = Siebel::COM::App::DataServer->new(
{
cfg => 'C:/Siebel/8.1/Client_1/BIN/ptb/scomm.cfg',
data_source => 'ServerDataSrcDEV',
user => 'foobar',
password => 'foobar'
}
);
my ( $bo, $bc, $key, $field, $moreResults );
$sa->login();
foreach $key ( keys(%$schema) ) {
$bo = $sa->get_bus_object($key);
$bc = $bo->get_bus_comp($key);
foreach $field ( @{ $schema->{$key} } ) {
$bc->activate_field($field);
}
$bc->clear_query();
$bc->query();
$moreResults = $bc->first_record();
while ($moreResults) {
printf("-----\n");
foreach $field ( @{ $schema->{$key} } ) {
printf( "%40s: %s\n", $field, $bc->get_field_value($field) );
}
$moreResults = $bc->next_record();
}
}
};
if ($@) {
warn $@;
die $sa->get_last_error() if ( defined($sa) );
}
You might be wondering "where is the heck of Win32::OLE?". Well, the beautiful of this script is the usage of the distribution Siebel::COM, freshly available at http://code.google.com/p/siebel-com/, which provides syntax sugar and automatic error checking by using basically only Moose.
Of course there is still a lot to implement, and the code available at the SVN doesn't have yet tests neither POD documentation. But it is a good start and I'm positive that this will be available at CPAN until the end of the month (although implementing mock objects in the tests will be a problem).
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