Temporary Columns in EIM Tables

EIM tables (Interface tables) act as staging area which holds the data that has to be imported, data exported from the Siebel base tables, data to be deleted and that to be merged.

Every Siebel interface table has 4 types of temporary columns as defined below:

• UNQ column.
• EXS column.
• RID column.
• STA column.

Each of the temporary columns has a naming format as follows: 

" T_<base table without prefix S_>__<temporary column type> "

       Examples: T_ORG_EXT__UNQ, T_ORG_EXT__EXS, T_ORG_EXT__STA, T_ORG_EXT__RID

There are few exceptions for this naming rule.

       Examples: T_ACCNTPOST__STA, T_OPTYPOSTN__RID, T_PRODLNPOSTN__RID

Siebel Interface Tables (EIM Tables)

Interface tables act as staging area which holds the data that has to be imported, data exported from the Siebel base tables, data to be deleted and that to be merged. EIM process operates upon these tables and does the specified operation. Every interface table has columns that get mapped to base tables, few mandatory columns and many temporary columns. The mandatory columns are mainly ROW_ID, IF_ROW_STAT and IF_ROW_BATCH_NUM.

The temporary columns are those that are used by EIM task to manipulate data values at run times. These temporary columns store the ROW IDs of records, status of the record, uniqueness of the records, whether the record already exists in the database. Some temporary columns store the ROW ID values of deleted, merged, exported rows.

An Overview on EIM Functions and its requirements

Siebel EIM can be used to achieve four kinds of functionality in which all the functions deal with the data directly. The functions are :-

• Import new and revised data into Siebel Base Tables.
• Export existing data from Siebel Base Tables.
• Delete existing data from Siebel Base Tables.
• Merge existing data in Siebel Base Tables.

Importing Data

Data importing comes into picture under following business requirements:

• Initial implementation of Siebel application (Loading product data from the legacy database).
• Maintaining the Siebel database in long run (Importing archived data).
• Periodical updating of data into Siebel database from a non Siebel database.

Data Flow in EIM

Siebel EIM is server task that deals with the exchange of data between intermediary tables called interface tables and Siebel base tables.
In Siebel, we should not populate data directly into the base tables. At first, we have to populate data from legacy (an external database or a flat file) into the interface tables (EIM tables) and then from the interface table to its corresponding base table by running the EIM job.

EIM Mandatory Columns

For an EIM process to be successful , we must populate values in a certain set of columns.
The Mandatory Columns in an EIM Process are :

• ROW_ID
• IF_ROW_BATCH_NUM
• IF_ROW_STAT
• IF_ROW_MERGE_ID

In this set of four columns, IF_ROW_MERGE_ID is only mandatory when we are carrying out EIM Merge process. So we can look on to these columns in detail and what data to be populated on these.

An Introduction to EIM

EIM stands for Enterprise Integration Manager. Siebel EIM is a process provided by the Siebel CRM package, in order to import the legacy data, export, delete or merge existing data. It is a SIEBEL Component which is used for Data Migration from legacy as well as other Siebel systems. EIM is much fascinating and challenging as area in Siebel to work on.

Why EIM:

Siebel has very unique and complicated Database structure which already has relationship defined between 'n' number of tables and hence it is not recommended to insert, delete or update data stored in what is known as Base Tables in Siebel. During migration, lot of things can happen which can lead to data integrity issues. To answer all those concerns Siebel has provided EIM.
For most of base tables in Siebel, an EIM table is also in existence which allows you to play with data and perform thing that you normally wouldn’t want to perform on base tables. So, you can import-export data to and from EIM tables.

EIM is mainly used :

• To Import bulk amounts of data from external sources to base table.
• To Delete bulk amounts of data.
• To Update bulk amounts of data.