Siebel Tools - Check In - Check Out an Introduction.

Check In - Check Out are the very common terms that Siebel Developers hear. A rather simple but a very important feature for development. Without this feature their would be an absolute chaos during development. I will try to explain Check In - Check Out (CICO) with the help of simple Analaogy:

Imagine a room full of documents. You are allowed to make a copy of document take it home and work on it. What If everybody was allowed to go in at any time into the room and modify any document they want? The answer is again Absolute Chaos. Imagine working really hard on the document and to see next day that what you have taken home is invalid because somebody took a copy and made some changes to and you have to do the rework.

Based on above analogy we can map 'Room' as 'Siebel Server Repository', Documents as 'Siebel Objects', Home as 'Local Environment'

So, the only way to control this is to have a some sort of mechanism to prevent you from taking that document while somebody else is working on it. Siebel Check In - Check Out process is precisely that chaos saving mechanism.

We all know that siebel is based on Client - Server Architecture and the same architechture is followed in case of siebel tools. You have siebel server repository and you siebel client dbf or local database where you perform you development.

Check In - Check Out in siebel refers to the process of getting a copy of siebel objects in the your local environment, work on it and then update it back to the server after you are done.

There are various terms in siebel that you need to understand the check in - check out process

Check Out : Process of getting a copy from Server Repository to your local database and also locking he object on server so that nobody else can modify it.
Check In : Process of putting the object from local environment back to server and also release the lock so that others can work on it
Get : Process of getting copy from Server Repository to your local database without locking the object.
Full Get : Process to update you local tools repository will the latest objects from Siebel Server Repository. Unlike Get you don't select a particular object to update but all the projects

You can check out a single object or a whole project. If you check out a whole project then all the objects that are part of that project will be locked with your Id and nobody else will be able to work on them. So, It is not a good idea. General practice is just to check out a single object.

Now, I will explain the steps to perform each operation mentioned above

Check - Out :

1. Query for the object that you want to check out.
2. Right Click and Choose Check Out. (You can also press F10 or choose Tools Menu ==> Check Out)
Tip:The option of check out single object will only be available if your tools.cfg as parameter EnableObjectCOCI set to true.
3. Again Click on Check Out in the new window that appears.

Check In :

1. Click Tools (Menu) ==> Check In (You can also press CTRL + F10)
A new window will appear. It will show the objects that have check out by your id
2. Select the Object that you want to check in and click Check In

Get :

1. Query for the object that you want to Get.
2. Right Click and Choose Check Out. (You can also press F10 or choose Tools Menu ==> Check Out)
Tip:The option of check out single object will only be available if your tools.cfg as parameter EnableObjectCOCI set to true.
3. Again Click on Get in the new window that appears.

Full Get :

1. Click Tools (Menu) ==> Check Out
2. Select 'All Projects' Radio button in the new window that appears
3. Click Get.


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