This chapter explains how to:
start and shutdown Business Transaction Management components
shutdown and restart members of a monitor group without losing observations
log in to and out of the Management Console
access the online help
Business Transaction Management components start automatically when the application server in which they are installed starts. Because the central servers and monitor are deployed applications, you can also start them manually using your application server's management facilities. Observers, however, are installed into your business applications and start along with those applications.
If all of the components of your system are shut down, the best order in which to start them is from the center out, that is:
Central servers
Monitors
Observers
However, you can start them in any order and achieve a fully functioning system after all the components have recognized each other and configured themselves.
Note:
If the observers, and therefore your business applications, are running, but the monitors are not, the observers' outgoing queue will eventually fill up. At that point, either observation messages will be dropped from the queue or your business applications will stall. The default behavior is for observation messages to be dropped from the queue, which ensures that the performance of your business applications is not degraded. This behavior is configurable by way of the Observer Communication policy. However, this is an advanced option and you should leave it at its default setting unless you are instructed by the Oracle support team to edit it. If you require the ability to shut down monitors without the risk of dropping observations, you should replicate your monitors as described in Chapter 7, "Installing Monitors."Business Transaction Management components shut down when the application server in which they are installed shuts down. Because the central servers and monitor are deployed applications, you can also shut them down them using your application server's management facilities. Observers, however, are installed into your business applications and shut down along with those applications.
If you want to shut down all of the components of your system, the best order to shut them down is from the outside to the center, that is:
Observers
Monitors
Central servers
However, you can shut down and then restart individual components without harming the system. After all the components have recognized each other and reconfigured themselves, you should once again have a fully functioning system.
The note in Starting Business Transaction Management Components that describes a possible loss of observations, however, also applies in this case.
This section explains how to shut down individual monitor replicates in a monitor group without losing in-flight data. It also explains how to properly restart the monitor replicates.
Disable the monitor's associated pool member in the load balancer's socket virtual server.
Wait for all in-flight data to clear from the monitor.
You can check the status of in-flight data as follows:
Display the monitor's status page in either of the following ways:
In the Business Transaction Management Console's Navigator, choose Administration > Monitors, select the monitor in the main area, and click the Status tab.
Or, access the following URL in a web browser, where host:port are the host name and port number where the monitor is running:
http://host:port/btmmonitor/agent/agent?status
Scroll to the Nano Observation Queue section.
All in-flight data has cleared from the monitor if both of the following equations are true:
perf.SimpleMeasurementsProcessed = perf.SimpleMeasurementsQueued Perf.RequestsQueued = Perf.ResponsesQueued + Perf.QueueSize
Use your application server's administration tools to shut down the monitor deployment.
You administer and access the facilities of Business Transaction Management using a web-based interface called the Business Transaction Management Console (sometimes referred to in this document simply as the Management Console).
In order to access the Management Console, the Main server (btmMain.ear) must be running. To log in to the Management Console, open a URL of the following form in a web browser:
http://hostname:port/btmui
Replace hostname:port with the name of the machine on which you installed the Main server, and the port number on which it is accessible.
The web browser will display a log-in page. Log in using the appropriate credentials, which are described in Mapping Users to Business Transaction Management Application Roles.
To log out of the Management Console, click the Log out link in the upper-right corner of the page.
You can access Business Transaction Management online help by clicking the Help menu in the Management Console and choosing Help, or by clicking the Help button from within a tool dialog box. Once the online help opens, use the navigation facilities on the left to locate the appropriate help topic.