What's new?

Siebel 5.1.2

• If the SIEBEL_VANILLA_SCHEMA platform variable is not defined for the Project configuration in the CAST Management Studio, then a warning is displayed in the analysis log, which will also block the analysis. See Siebel 5.1 - Application management for more information.
• Bug fixing. See Siebel 5.1 - Bug Fix List.

Siebel 5.1.1

Bug fixing only. See Siebel 5.1 - Bug Fix List.

Siebel 5.1.0

• The new version provides:
  • Offline extraction: In the CAST Delivery Manager Tool, a new functionality has been added to allow the reuse of an existing Siebel extraction.
  • Many manual steps for the post analysis configuration have been removed and are now automated: in the content enrichment, except the SQL tool "Siebel Vanilla Import", all other tools that were previously required are now hidden in the SDK.

  • The violations originating from Vanilla are now excluded and not considered in the Project results: if the violations are detected only in the Vanilla results, they will not be reported in the Project results.

  • For application on-boarding, when creating the package for a new extraction on Oracle or DB2 server, it is now possible to select the used applications in the package wizard. This will mean that the AIA will not need to enter the name of customized applications in various different locations

Function Point, Quality and Sizing support

This extension provides the following support:

• Function Points (transactions): a green tick indicates that OMG Function Point counting and Transaction Risk Index are supported
• Quality and Sizing: a green tick indicates that CAST can measure size and that a minimum set of Quality Rules exist

Function Points (transactions)	Quality and Sizing

CAST AIP compatibility

CAST AIP release	Siebel 5.1.1	Notes
8.3.x		This combination is "supported by reference" - i.e. they have been confirmed as working by end users.
8.2.x
8.1.1		These releases of CAST AIP are now end of life and are no longer officially supported.
8.1.0
8.0.3
8.0.2
8.0.1
8.0.0
7.3.10
7.3.9
7.3.8
7.3.7
7.3.6

Supported DBMS servers

For CAST schemas

DBMS	Supported
CSS
Oracle
Microsoft SQL Server

For Siebel applications

The extension supports Siebel applications installed on the following DBMS:

DBMS	Supported
Oracle Server
DB2 UDB

Supported Versions of Siebel

This extension provides support for the following Siebel versions:

Siebel version	Supported	Comments
7.5
7.7
7.8
8.0
8.1.x.x
15.x (8.1.1.15/8.2.2.15, IP 2015)		New functionalities or syntax introduced in these versions are NOT supported, but this does not affect the results.
16.x (IP 2016)

Prerequisites to using the Siebel extension

Vanilla repository availability

Please ensure that the Vanilla repository is online and available before starting.

Hardware/Software

On Siebel server hosting the Oracle or DB2 repository (for Vanilla and Project)

• The server can be any OS.
  • However Unix/Linux OS may require some .ksh script if you want to run the extractor on the server machine itself. 
• The version of the Oracle / DB2 server must match a version supported by the JDBC driver embedded in the CASTDBExtractor. This is different and wider than the supported versions for a participating database. Note that versions supported by CAST AIP for a participating databases can be found in the official CAST AIP documentation (e.g. for CAST AIP 8.1.x: http://doc.castsoftware.com/display/DOC81/Oracle+Server and http://doc.castsoftware.com/display/DOC81/IBM+DB2).
• Make sure that the Siebel schema statistics are up-to-date (if not up-to-date, some queries in the extractor may not finish in reasonable times (especially the first one)):
  
  • If not up-to-date for Oracle, update it with the following SQL statement (requires some privileges : GRANT execute ON dbms_stats TO XXX)

Execute dbms_stats.gather_schema_stats(ownname => 'MY_SIEBEL_SCHEMA', estimate_percent => dbms_stats.auto_sample_size, method_opt => 'for all columns size auto', cascade => true); 

• • If not up-to-date for DB2, check if DB2 automatic runstats and DB2 real time statistics are enabled. If not, ask the DBA to run "db2 reorgchk update statistics on table all" or the like.
• Identify the USER that will be used for extraction (in the CAST Delivery Manager Tool):
  • On Oracle, the required privileges for the USER used to perform the extraction are: GRANT SELECT on all S_**** tables. 
  • On DB2 UDB, the minimum roles and permissions for an extract is as follow : READ access on all S_**** tables, connect to database permission.

On Workstation used for extraction (where the CAST Delivery Manager Tool is deployed)

• Windows or Linux (Unix/Linux OS may require some additional .ksh scripts). 
• JRE 1.7 (ideally 64 bit version to allow for a JVM large heap size).
• Minimum 1.2 GB RAM memory free, more if available.
• DMT/extractor location:
  • Ideally, install the DMT/extractor on the RDBMS server (Oracle or DB2) itself.
  • Alternatively on a machine with:
    
    • very good bandwidth (1 GB/s) to the Oracle / DB2 server (some remote extractions fail due to poor VPN bandwidth)
    • connectivity to the Oracle / DB2 server (required ports open)
• 4 GB free disk space (for temporary files before compression)
• 250 MB free disk space (to store the two extraction archives) included in above requirement.

On Workstation used for analysis

• Windows (uses AIP). See Supported Platforms for supported OS versions
• 2 GB RAM memory free (for analysis/snapshot)
• Connectivity to the Oracle or CSS server hosting the CAST schemas (port open)
• If CAST schemas are on Oracle and Oracle client must be installed (see Supported Platforms)
• 5-10 GB free disk space (to store the source code, once expanded by the Deploy phase ("Set as current version" action in the CAST Management Studio))

• Disable anti-virus software. Check that no anti-virus is running on the workstation or disable real-time scan for the work folders (delivery & deploy folders + temp folders). Failure to do so will multiply the injection runtime ("Set as current version" action in the CAST Management Studio

On CSS server used for analysis

Disk space requirements

Disk space depends on the Siebel version implemented by the customer:

Disk speed requirements

Siebel analysis incurs heavy disk usage. Disk I/O throughput (not necessarily speed) is possibly the most important factor to determine the analysis time. So far we have tested three environments with the tool iometer, following this how-to. The rough results are these:

• DELL laptop, 1 disk 7500rpm. Iometer reports around 3 MB/s. Analysis times +20 hours.
• HP desktop, 2 disks 10000rpm. Iometer reports around 5 MB/s in one of the disks. Analysis time 10 hours (sources in one disk, oracle datafiles in another disk).
• DELL workstation, 4 disks 10000rpm in a RAID5 configuration. Iometer reports around 150MB/s. Analysis time 4 hours (since this is a very performant disk configuration, CPU time is possibly part of the bottleneck. This means it would be hard to further reduce analysis time, unless switching to other costlier technology, like SSD drive.).

Tables required to grant access to the Siebel repository

The following database tables are accessed during the Siebel extraction process: SIEBEL_TABLES.txt.

Documentation of Siebel Quality Rules and Metrics

Documentation of all CAST Metrics and Quality Rules specific to the extension is delivered via a compiled HTML Help file (CHM). Please ensure that once the CHM has been downloaded you right-click on the CHM file in Windows Explorer and choose Properties > Unblock. This will ensure that the CHM is readable on your own PC.

Know issues in this release

The following section lists all Known Issues in this release of the extension

Unable to establish a connection while performing the database repository extraction

Situation

When attempting to extract the Siebel database repositories (Vanilla or Project), when using:

• The CAST Delivery Manager Tool (DMT) launched via a JNLP file (i.e. when the DMT has been downloaded from the CAST AIC Portal)
• The CAST Delivery Manager Tool (DMT) launched via the CAST Management Studio
• The standalone CAST Database Extractor using the Siebel-Extract-CLI.bat batch file

Symptoms

The following error is logged, stopping the extraction process:

Unable to establish a connection to: jdbc:oracle:thin:@<ip>:1521:<instance> => The Network Adapter could not establish the connection

Workaround

The workaround to this issue involves manually adding a specific Java runtime option (-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true) and then attempting to rerun the database extraction:

CAST Delivery Manager Tool (DMT) launched via a JNLP file

If you are using the CAST Delivery Manager Tool (DMT) launched via a JNLP file (i.e. when the DMT has been downloaded from the CAST AIC Portal) to perform the database extraction, then it is not possible to use this workaround. If you are confronted by this issue, please consider running the database extraction either:

• using the DMT launched via the CAST Management Studio (and applying the workround listed below)

• or using the standalone CAST Database Extractor with the Siebel-Extract-CLI.bat batch file (and applying the workround listed below)

CAST Delivery Manager Tool (DMT) launched via the CAST Management Studio

If you are using the CAST Delivery Manager Tool (DMT) launched via the CAST Management Studio to perform the database extraction, you must add the specific Java option to the shortcut that runs the CAST Management Studio executable on your workstation:

• Add the option to the Target field, immediately after CAST-MS.exe" : -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true

Standalone CAST Database Extractor using the Siebel-Extract-CLI.bat batch file

If you are using the standalone CAST Database Extractor with the Siebel-Extract-CLI.bat batch file to perform the database extraction, you must add the specific Java option to the batch file at line 163, immediately after %JAVA_EXE%: