Bulk Symbolic Strings Creation

Siebel is like an ocean, everyday i learn something new. We all have worked with Symbolic Strings. "Symbolic Strings" are key while configuring Multilingual environment. But at times most of us land up creating "String Override" instead of creating "String References". Same scenario happened with me before i realized it was too late for me to go back and create Symbolic Strings for each applet titles and display Columns. It can be very tidious task to create symbolic strings manually and assigning them to respective columns when the list is huge.

Siebel again came to resuce and after some analysis i found there is a utility in siebel which could be used to generate Symbolic Strings in bulk. Yes Siebel can do it for you.

"strconv.bat" is the Magic Wand here. This batch files is located in the siebel installables folder under Bin. This file basically works in two steps:

1 - It creates list of items which needs to be regrouped for Symbolic string generation for a specified Object type like Applet, List Column or Control.This is export operation.

2- Next step is import operation. In this it creates Symbolic Strings for above exported items in tools and adds references to the symbolic strings on the original exported items.

This batch file is self explanatory and lists the syntax and paramters required to run.Before we start any operation, Following parameters are required to be changed in this batch file.(Before you start take a backup of this batch file...:) )

REM * Parameters used on both export and import

set TOOLS_INSTALL=C:\Program Files\Siebel\8.0\Tools\BIN

set CONFIG_FILE=C:\Program Files\Siebel\8.0\Tools\BIN\ENU\tools.cfg

set TEST_LOCATION=D:\SS

set REPOSITORY=Siebel Repository

set LANG=ENU

set SPLIT_FILE=false

REM * Parameters used on conversion export

set MATCH_MIN=1

set EXCLUDE_NULL=true

set USE_FULL_MATCH=true

set USE_EXACT_MATCH=false

set SKIP_INACTIVE=true

REM * Parameters used on conversion file split

set FILE_SIZE=1000

REM * Parameters used on conversion import

set PROJECT=Test Project

set SKIP_UPDATE_PARENTS=true

set LOG_ERROR_RECORDS=true

set UNLOCK_PROJECTS=false

set DELETE_LOCALES=true

set CHECK_TRANSLATE_FLAG=true

If the number of items for conversion is very large then SPLIT_FILE feature could be used to split files based on FILE_SIZE number. Once parameters are set this file is ready to run. Lets consider we want to generate Symbolic Strings for Applet in siebel Repository. Go to command propmpt and run this batch file with following options:

strconv "Applet" export

This will generate two files in log folder:

Applet_export.log

Applet_conversion.txt

Verify the log file whether records are exported correctly. Once the export is done successfully. Run following import command:

strconv "Applet" import

This will generate two files in log folder:

Applet_import.log

Applet_import.log.txt

Once this operation is completed log in to Siebel tools to verify whether Symbolic strings are generated and Override strings have been removed. The crux of this batch file is "consoleapp.exe" which basically performs import and export operation which is also located under Bin folder. I hope this helps you in generation of Symbolic strings in bulk.