IBM Availability Monitoring Toolkit
An Eclipse plug-in for finding the availability of various services used by enterprise applications.
Date Posted: May 19, 2005
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Update: July 8, 2005
Version 1.0.1 can dynamically locate configuration file from installed location; also contains new menu item (Tools) and new time-out feature.
What is IBM Availability Monitoring Toolkit?
The IBM® Availability Monitoring Toolkit helps developers determine, in an ad hoc manner, the status of various services. Enterprise applications interact with several services such as authentication, persistency, and asynchronous operations. This includes database servers; naming and directory servers; application servers; and message-oriented middleware. These systems can exist in multiple environments such as development, testing, and staging. During development, absence of one or more of these services will affect the application's behavior.
This plug-in is capable of identifying the availability only. It does not detect performance or any other aspect of monitoring. No additional configuration or installation is required on the systems being monitored.
How does it work?
The IBM Availability Monitoring Toolkit was developed using Eclipse API, SAX parsing, and Java™ Sockets. Configuration of this tool is externalized in an XML file. Depending on the project needs, systems and environments can be added to the configuration file. Initially, the users must configure three attributes per system: the name of the system, the default port number used by the service, and a list of environments hosting the system. Environment entries will have the IP address or host name of the system, as well as an optional port number for overriding the default port number specified at the system level. The host name parameter is optional; it is used only when no IP address is specified for the environment. Because many systems are used by the application, the configuration file will have a corresponding number of <system> entries.
The distribution pack for Eclipse 2.x based IDEs (such as WebSphere® Studio) uses Xerces library from the Eclipse installation in order to parse the configuration files in XML format. The distribution pack for Eclipse 3.x based IDEs (such as Rational® Application Developer) uses the XML parser from J2SE. Based on the configuration, the user interface of this tool is dynamically generated. Users will have the option of selecting the system(s) they want to monitor. Java sockets are used to find the status of the systems to be monitored. In case of network problems or if the system is down, the tool displays an error message: "System is not reachable." When service is not listening on the expected port, the tool displays the error message, "Service is down." When the IP address cannot be resolved on the network, an error message of "Unknown host" is displayed.
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| | About the technology author(s):
Ahamed Jalaldeen is a technical leader working in IBM Global Services India Pvt Ltd. He is an M.C.A. graduate from Bharathidasan University, Tamil Nadu. Mr. Jalaldeen joined the company in October 2002 and has about seven years of industry experience. In addition to customer projects, Mr. Jalaldeen is involved in process and productivity improvement, which includes developing tools and applications with Eclipse technology, Rational ClearQuest, and Web services. About ten such submissions were accepted by ICM (Intellectual Capital Management) and published under various categories, such as project management, product platform, and testing tools.
Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both.
IBM, WebSphere, and Rational are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.
Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
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