APM UI - Customizing with Agent Builder data - "the Basics"

The IBM SmartCloud Application Performance Management UI (APM UI) provides a fast and simple interface into data provided by IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM).  It can be rendered on anything from a web browser to a smart phone.  As expected, it also provides customization capabilities.  In this post, we'll walk through end-to-end the process of introducing data/metrics from a custom ITM Agent Builder agent into the APM UI.

You're encouraged to take a look at this presentation by Cheng Quan Li of IBM Development which provides a nice overview of Dashboard Customization in APM UI.

Additionally, the documentation for APM UI customization (v.7.6.0.1 was the current version at the time of writing) can be found here.

For the purposes of this customization "basics", we're going to keep things very simple.  No fancy charts or graphs - we will simply display tabular data.  Our intent is to get comfortable with the process of customizing APM UI.  In later articles we may dig deeper into making your presentation more flashy.

We have a custom-built ITM Agent Builder agent (GBS Supermarket) for this exercise.  The data coming from this agent represents the check-out lanes at a typical supermarket.  Each lane has a name as well as performance data such as how many customers are waiting in line and the average customer wait time.

Here's what our agent looks like within the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server (TEPS):


Click the title to read more.

Launchpad - Unable to find supported browser

Recently while trying to install Netcool Omnibus 7.4 on CentOS 6.4, I ran into this problem:

I launched the Omnibus launchpad.sh script only to be told that the browser I was using was not supported:

"An error occurred while starting the launchpad. This error typically occurs when the launchpad is unable to find a supported browser. Check your product's documentation for a list of supported browsers."

But, the HTML file (noBrowser.html) was actually displayed by Firefox.  It turns out that the version of Launchpad only supports older versions of Firefox, namely ESR10.

There is a very simple fix to this issue:

1) Download an ESR10 version of Firefox, for example:

# cd /tmp

# wget https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/10.0.2/linux-x86_64/en-US/firefox-10.0.2.tar.bz2

2) Extract it:

# cd /tmp
# tar -jxf firefox-10.0.2.tar.bz2

3) Tell Launchpad to use it

# export BROWSER=/tmp/firefox/firefox

4) Relaunch launchpad.sh

# /tmp/omni-install/launchpad.sh

and now it works:

What is new in TCR 3.1?

As you know, IBM released a new version of Tivoli Common Reporting as part of Jazz for Service Management 1.1 offering.   This article discusses some of the new features of Tivoli Common Reporting 3.1 release.   Read on to learn more.

Cognos 10 Business Intelligence

TCR 3.1 comes with a major version upgrade to Cognos Business Intelligence. It comes with Cognos 10.2 as opposed to Cognos 8.4 in TCR 2.1.1. This major version upgrade brings lot of newer functionality to reporting. Some of them are,

New Report Design Tools

Cognos 10 BI bundles  the new Workspace Advanced design tool that is much more powerful than Query Studio but less complex than Report Studio.

This tool can be used to build quick reports, end-user analytics and even for "reasonably complex" professional looking reports. However, to include advanced reporting features such as prompts, formulas, etc, you will have to rely on Report Studio.   Good news is that report designs can be opened both in Report Studio and Workspace Advanced without loss of information. So when you need the advanced features you can "insert" them in Report Studio and come back to Workspace advanced and continue the design.

Active Reports for offline interactive reports

Active Reports are HTML only reports that can be used for offline-viewing and interactive reports. With Active Reports, the output file will be in mutli-part HTML format (.mht) with the data is self-contained in the .mht file.

Mobile Support

Cognos 10 includes improved support mobile devices specifically iPad, Android and Blackberry.   There is a IBM Cognos mobile app available for iPad as well. The app can connect to your TCR server (over wireless network of course) and run the reports.   Dan Krissel of IBM showed a great example of this app back in Pulse.

64 Bit Java based reporting engine with JDBC Support

The default C++ based 32-bit Cognos engine doesn't support JDBC drivers.  Cognos 10 now also includes a 64-bit Java based engine (in addition to the 32-bit one) that supports JDBC.  Remember that the Java based engine is still new and you need to specifically enable this engine to use its features.

More powerful multi-datasource Workspace designer

You can easily design a dashboard (NOTE: this is different from reports)  by dragging-dropping elements such as charts, tables from various reports into a single workspace.  These data sources can be fetched from different Cognos packages.  E.g. You can fetch information from ITM OS agents reports, Netcool Omnibus reports and TBSM reports and present them in a single workspace. Very powerful and works great.

Event Studio for event-driven report delivery

The Event Studio tool is now bundled as part of TCR.  Even though this tool was available in older Cognos as well, it was not shipped with TCR 2.1.1. Using this tool, you can specify rules for report delivery.

WebSphere 8.5

TCR 3.1 ships with WebSphere 8.5 that provides tons of new features including support for Java 7, new serviceability tools and better mobile support.  For in-depth look at new features, please take a link below.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/1206_alcott/1206_alcott.html

Jazz for Service Management Integration

TCR 3.1 is also one of the very first products that features Jazz for Service Management 1.1 integration.  This integration brings several features for interaction. We will discuss about Jazz for Service Management in a separate article, but some of the benefits of this offering are listed below.

• OSLC Specification compliant - Now application data can be consumed in a standard based way rather than having to rely on application specific API calls/database queries.
• Easier integration with other Tivoli and non-Tivoli products.
• Linked data - meaning data can be fetched from the source instead of storing it in intermediate repository.   This eliminates problems such as data being out-of-date.

There are tons of other features including UI changes that I didn't mention here. Let us know if you have any questions related to all this features, we will be happy to help. 

Video: Creating Omnibus Event List Report using Cognos Workspace Advanced

One of the new features in Tivoli Common Reporting 3.1 is the Cognos Workspace Advanced design tool.    The following video shows how to create a simple Netcool Omnibus Event List report using the Cognos Workspace Advanced tool. 

Sorry. No audio included.  It was prepared as part of another presentation. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukTQOV72PT4

Feel free to check out other videos in our Gulf Breeze Youtube channel as well.

IBM Data Studio Overview

If you install the latest version of DB2 (DB2 V10.x), the first thing you will notice is that the old trusted DB2 Control Center interface is not there anymore.   In fact, there are no GUI tools shipped with DB2 installation. So, how do you manage DB2 then?  You will need to download and install a separate component called IBM Data Studio. 

 

First of all, IBM Data Studio is not a brand new product.   Remember, DB2 Control Center usage has been deprecated since 2009. IBM DataStudio has been out there for quite some time and it is based on IBM InfoSphere product line. Here is one of the blogs I came across while researching on this product history.

 

http://www.db2dean.com/Previous/DataStudio.html

 

IBM Data Studio is an Eclipse based product and relying on JDBC for all database communication. It can be downloaded at no charge from IBM website link below. An IBM ID is required. 

 

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/im/data/

 

You simply need to download the latest version.  (Version 3.2 as of this writing).

 

Downloading the IBM Data Studio client should be good enough for most of the common administration needs,  SQL Development, Stored procedure development requirements. Optionally, you can download the Web Console component if you need to monitor the health of the database such as viewing tablespace status, connections, alerts, etc.  

 

Note: The Web Console component is based on IBM's Jazz for Service Management.  You will need only one instance of this to manage all your DB2 databases.  Multiple administrators can share the same Web Console.  

 

In addition to the above links, here is another useful link I came across to learn more about IBM Data Studio.

 

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1201migctrlctrdatastudio/

Update:

Someone asked me about its backward compatibility.  It is fully compatible with DB2 V9.7/9.8 but for older versions, only subset of features are available.  For basic querying, it should be compatible with DB2 V9.1 or later. 

Here is a link that describes the feature set and version compatibility.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27022148

 

Hope you find this helpful.

Installing Cognos Framework Manager on Windows 64-bit?

Usually, Framework Manager installation is straight forward and consists of the following steps.

• Install Framework Manager on Windows
• Install FIPS Package for Framework Manager
• Use Cognos Configuration to connect to TCR infrastructure.

However, if you are installing Framework Manager on 64-bit Windows, there is an issue. The FIPS package for Framework Manager does not work correctly on Windows 64-bit. It installs correctly but causes problems with encryption and you will not be able to successfully connect the Framework Manager to TCR infrastructure. The workaround is to skip the install of FIPS package and directly proceed with Cognos Configuration after the base Framework Manager installation.

Hope this helps.

Extending TSAM using Eclipse

If you have been using Tivoli Service Automation Manager (TSAM) for Cloud provisioning, the usual way for service offering customization is to write Javascript and HTMLs directly on TSAM server.   With TSAM 7.2.2, there is an Eclipse based project available for self service offering customization.   Using this Eclipse project, you can perform Javascript customization right from your Eclipse IDE.  This artcile provides a high-level technical overview of this process.

To setup the Eclipse development environment,  you need to download/setup Eclipse first.  Even thought the latest versions of Eclipse should work, according to documentation, the Eclipse projects were tested with Helios (3.6) version and it is safe to use either Helios or Galileo versions.  Once Eclipse is setup, you simply have to download the project zip from TSAM install images located under TSAMBASE7300/samples/UI directory and import two Eclipse projects viz, custom_web and custom_web_build into Eclipse using Eclipse Import wizard. 

The custom_web project is used to make any javascript changes.  The custom_web_build project contains several ANT tasks that can be used to perform deployment to TSAM Server.   Connection to TSAM server is managed through SSH and you can specify the authentication parameters in build.properties. SSH authentication can use either SSH keys or password.

For testing you can use the quickdeploy ANT task that rebuilds the custom_web.war application as you publish the changes.  You can also backout the changes using undeploy task but that basically removes the custom_web.war from the TSAM server removing all custom changes.   For production deployments, you will have to rebuild the maximo.ear file using buildmaximoear.sh/cmd command.

You can find more information about this TSAM customization in TSAM 7.2.2 Extensibility Guide available at the following location.
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v10r1/topic/com.ibm.tsam_7.2.2.doc/ext/c_sg_extensibility.html

Hope this helps you get started with TSAM customization. If you have any questions, please feel free to post it it in the comments.