Upgrade Guide for DB2 UDB for z/OS > Database and UI Upgrade Planning >

About the Party Model

Upgrades: Release 6.2.1 only.

Environments: All environments.

Release 7.x introduces a party table (S_PARTY), in which all persons and organizational units are held. Accounts, Organizations, Internal Divisions, Contacts, Employees, Positions, and Households are all considered parties and can be referenced from this table.

Most of the tables that formerly contained this data still exist and are still used, but they are now extension tables to the S_PARTY base table. Data is loaded into the business components through an implicit join.

Additionally, Release 7.x uses a single-person table and a single-organization unit table. For example, Employees and Contacts are now combined in the same table (S_CONTACT). Similarly, internal and external Organization Units are now combined in the same table (S_ORG_EXT).

The S_PARTY table is the primary table in the Party or Single-Person model and is the base table for all Party business components.

Several extension tables support the Party Model:

• S_USER stores Siebel User information.
• S_EMP_PER stores attributes for Brand-Owner Employees and Partner Users who are considered agents of the Brand-Owner.
• S_BU stores Organization information.
• S_CONTACT
• S_ORG_EXT
• S_POSTN

Each non-person party directly or indirectly has person members, such as employees or contacts.

The Party model makes several tables obsolete:

• S_EMPLOYEE. Its functionality is merged into S_CONTACT.
• S_ORG_INT. Its functionality is merged into S_ORG_EXT.
• S_EMP_POSTN has been replaced by S_PARTY_PER.
• S_EMPLOYEE_ATT
• S_ORG_INT_ATT
• S_POSTN_RPT_REL

Figure 4 depicts the Party changes to the data model that occur during upgrades from Release 6.2.1 to Release 7.x.

Figure 4. Party Model

How the Party Model Is Implemented During Upgrade

When you upgrade to Release 7.x, the upgrade process implements the Party model as follows:

Data Migration

• Migrates data from S_EMPLOYEE to S_CONTACT, S_USER, S_EMP_PER for standard Siebel columns
• Migrates data from S_ORG_INT to S_ORG_EXT, S_BU for standard Siebel columns
• Creates S_PARTY records for each previous contact, position, employee, account, division

Business Component Definitions

• Updates business component definitions to reference S_PARTY as the Primary Table (for example Employee, Contact, Position, and Account business components)
• Changes standard and custom joins on S_EMPLOYEE to S_CONTACT, S_USER, S_EMP_PER
• Changes standard and custom joins on S_ORG_INT to S_ORG_EXT
• Sets implicit joins for custom fields created on business components that have been retargeted to S_PARTY. For example, if a custom field, Alternate Phone, existed on the Contact business component, the upgrade would initiate the following actions:
  • Retargets Contact business component to S_PARTY
  • Defines join to S_CONTACT from S_PARTY on the Contact business component
  • Sets implicit join for the Alternate Phone field

Additional Planning Considerations

With Access Control comes two new visibility mode types, catalog visibility and group visibility. For certain standard Siebel Business application configurations, the view mode and picklist mode have catalog visibility and only show data if the catalogs, categories, and access groups are defined.

During upgrade, you must decide whether you will move to the Access Control model, which requires careful planning and preparation of access groups, catalogs, and categories.

If you want to continue using the Multi-Org model, you must modify changes to the default view and picklist configuration as part of the upgrade.

For more details on the data model as it relates to the Party model, see Siebel Data Model Reference. For more information on Access Control and Security, see Security Guide for Siebel Business Applications.