Mapping multiple Siebel BC's to a single OPA entity

Question

My colleague referred me to this forum, so glad to know there's support for such niched technology.
Wondering if anyone has tried mapping multiple BC's to the same OPA entity using IO?  This is not possible via BO Mapping due to user-key constraint on Entity Name.  However, thought this may be achievable w/ IO Mapping by defining IO Component user property.
The goal is to create multiple instances of an OPA entity based on different Siebel components.  Initial attempts resulted in the last IC processed overwriting previous entity instances collected.  Not sure if I missed additional development steps but wanted to verify w/ everyone before seeking alternative solution.
Thanks for sharing any advise or ideas.
Kevin

Answer 1

Hi Kevin, welcome to the forums.
With IO mappings you can map different Integration Components (ICs) into the same OPA entity under certain conditions.
The most typcial case of this is when you want to map the attributes of a child (ic) into the same entity that its parent is mapped to. The most important thing here is that there must be only one child otherwise it will not be clear which child to use to populate the attributes.
You can do this by specifying the following User Properities on the Integration Component that you want to merge with its parent
name: OPAEntity  value: the OPA Entity that the Integration component should be mapped to
name: OPAParent value: the OPA Entity that will by the parent of the above property. If the entity specified in "OPA Entity" is global this property is not necessary
See "Integrtion Object User Properties" in Oracle Policy Automation Connector for Siebel Developer's Guide
Example
We have a mapping for the Employee Business object as an IO mapping (I'll use the "Employee Interface" IO). This Integration object has a subcomponent "Personal Address". We want to map both the Employee and Personal Address components to the global entity.
Because Employee is the top level component of the IO, it will be mapped to global by default.
To map Personal Address component to attributes int the global enity, I only need to set the User Property "OPAEntity" to "global". Attributes will be mapped automatically if name matches can be found, otherwise I can specify the attributes using the OPAAttribute property.
Note: this only works when there is one (or none) Personal Addresses for the Employee, if an attempt to load an employee with more than one Personal Address is made, the attributes of Personal Address is unknown.
Hope this helps
Cheers
Frank