Siebel 8.1.1.1 system field bug

This was an interesting find by colleage PW, which will surely affect a lot of developers.

The bug? goto any applet, create a control or column, and try to map it to a system field eg. Id, Created, Created By. You'll find that the field dropdown is now a bounded picklist, and will reject your system field.

I dont remember this feature in 8.1.1 or any prior versions of Siebel, it must be a 8.1.1.1 special. You used to be able to type in any field name you want, and compile the applet with no errors (unless you validated the applet).

If the field didnt exist, all that would happen is the field will appear blank on the UI, which is pretty harmless, so its quite a mystery why Siebel made this bounded.

Here is a simple trick that will allow you to workaround this behaviour, without modifying the tools SRF.

First create your system field in the BC (just supply the name), go back to your applet, map the control/column to your field, which will now appear in the picklist, compile and test your applet, then go back to your BC and delete/inactivate that field.