Open UI Video Series - Available functions in Init Method in PM

In this video, we will walk through the list of available functions in Presentation Model's Init method. We will look at AddMethod, AddProperty,AttachEventHandler, AttachPreProxyExecuteBinding,AttachPostProxyExecuteBinding functions.

Open UI Video Series - Using Browser Console

In this video, we will understand how to use browser console to debug scripts, observe objects, properties, functions, call functions and see output. 

Open UI Video Series - Structure of Custom PM/PR file

In this video, we will walk through how a custom PM/PR file looks like. What does each line of code mean. We will understand how to extend a class.

Open UI Video Series - Some Basic Selectors

In these videos, we will learn some basic selectors for writing CSS and JQuery code. We will learn how to select an element by using its id, class, attributes, combination of selectors, child selectors, siblings selectors.

Open UI Video Series - Conditionally Hide or Show fields (Bookshelf example explained)

In this video, we will walk through the bookshelf example where we conditionally show or hide fields based on another field value in a form applet. Here we will use PM Init method and PR ShowUI methods.

RESTful Web Services in Siebel IP16

Since reading the data sheet for Siebel IP16, a lot of us are curious about what is RESTful services. Well, till now Siebel did not provide support to REST web services. But what is REST and how different it is from SOAP?

SOAP is a protocol. It actually exposes logic as a service. It uses XML only to communicate data. SOAP is more secure than REST.

REST stands for Representational State Transfer. It exposes data as a service.

You can directly perform CRUD (Create, read, update, delete) operations directly on objects. It can use XML, JSON or other mime types. 

Consider this example. If you want to show Contacts in an external portal, you create a SOAP Web Service. In the web service, we call a Siebel Business Service or Workflow and query contact information. You are actually exposing a business service (logic) to external system. 

Using, REST, you call the Data object directly. While reading through Siebel Application Integration for Oracle Fusion Middleware Guide, I found a sample URI for REST. This uses Oracle Web Logic Server to communicate to Siebel App Server. 

http://myserver.mycompany.com:port/oracle-crm/api/rest/siebel/siebel.JNDI_ra_name/

Account_EMR/searchexpr=[IntCompName.IntCompFieldName] LIKE 'A*'

If you look at the above URI, you are requesting the URI with the search spec and the object (Account_EMR) to search directly. 

You are not calling a service, but data directly. This makes REST lightweight. Ideally, if you are exposing your data in a mobile app, REST will fit this perfectly than SOAP. If you look at Salesforce application, it uses REST services. Even the URL contains the object name and Id in the similar format. 

Coming back to Siebel, if you are wondering how to call REST services, REST services are called using HTTP requests. A request can be GET,PUT,POST,DELETE. A HTTP request can be called from Java, Javascript etc. You can find a lot of examples on internet about how to call HTTP request. 

Siebel RESTful API promises a lot. 

• It is going to support Business Component CRUD operations without the need to create IO at all. 
• It is going to support Business Service calls. 
• It also supports repository metadata CRUD operations. (That means you can edit a applet layout from another application)

This means Siebel is going to get more AWESOME. You can reflect whatever data you have in Siebel in a JAVA app, Android, iOS or Micorsoft app. 

I am eagerly waiting for REST API guide to come out. First use case would be asynchronous loading of an applet in a view using REST!! Will that be possible, lets see.

Understanding Siebel Open UI OOPS

Siebel Proxy Objects, PM and PR

Siebel SRF has all the information about the UI objects like current view, applets, applet controls, toolbars, menus etc. In Siebel Open UI framework, a mirror of these UI objects are created as JavaScript objects using JS files. Siebel has built these objects to store object data and behavior.

Everytime a view loads, the vanilla scripts run a command to create current view object and create child applet objects etc.

Let us take this analogy. Consider we are building a shooting video game. We want to build a game where some shooters are shown in UI, they do actions like shoot, run etc., each shooter has life points, bullets count etc. In object oriented approach, we create an object called shooter. This would be our prototype. Whenever we need a shooter, we create a new shooter like this

Shooter test = new Shooter();

We assign some logic to our scripts so that the objects behave in certain order and remember some data.

Similar to this, Siebel Open UI framework is object oriented. We have scripts like applet.js, view.js, appletcontrol.js etc. These files are our prototypes. Along with our objects, we have a Presentation Model and Physical Renderer files like viewpm.js, viewpr.js, pmodel.js, phyrenderer.js etc. Presentation model is the brain of the object. It stores the objects data and logical actions. Physical render is the body. How the object should look in UI and what action in UI should trigger which logical action in PM. PM and PR are linked.

For an applet, PM knows what controls are available in an applet. PM sends this information to PR. PR is the file that draws the controls in UI. If a user clicks on a button, PR listens to the click event and it invokes a logical event in PM. For example, it communicates a physical click on button to PM to make a logical event like NewRecord.

Now, we understand that each object has PM and PR. If we want to extend or override a functionality or behavior, we need to extend the vanilla PM/PR files and build our logic.

We use OOPS concepts like Inheritance (we write a custom PM/PR that inherits vanilla PM/PR thus acquiring all the Properties and functions), Polymorphism (we have the same method in different applets but each behave differently, we override behavior), encapsulation (capsulate the data and code together in one unit, we have one PM object that has Properties and Methods)