A Pre-Production Checklist

This chapter contains a checklist of items that should be checked or modified before moving Oracle Communications ASAP to production.

Table A-1 provides a pre-production checklist for WebLogic Server configuration.

Table A-1 Pre-production Checklist – WebLogic Server Configuration

Checklist Item	Description	Reference
Design applications to handle undelivered messages	The Admin database contains the WLStore table, a JDBC table that is populated and managed by WebLogic Server to maintain persistence in their JMS destinations. Oracle recommends that you manually clean these tables during development if you want to start with a fresh environment. Otherwise, old undelivered messages will occupy the queues and may cause problems when trying to debug or test. For production environments, you should design applications to handle undelivered messages. For instance, you can configure an error destination to use if a message fails to be delivered after a configurable number of attempts.	http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13222_01/wls/docs103/admin.html

In production environments, Oracle recommends that you adjust the ASAP.cfg configuration variables listed in Table A-2.

Note: You should also review "ASAP Configuration Parameters" in the ASAP System Administrator's Guide to determine whether configuration parameters other than the ones listed in the table below should be adjusted to suit your ASAP implementation.

Table A-2 Pre-production Checklist – ASAP.cfg

Checklist Item	Description	Reference
Set up database administrative routines. Involves the following parameters: DB_ADMIN_ON DB_ADMIN_TIME DB_ADMIN_PROC DB_ADMIN_PROC_PARAM	Database purging can be performed for the SRP, SARM, and control databases, but is most commonly performed in the SARM as this is where the majority of the work order information is stored. The SRP and SARM databases maintain a history of all work orders received, while the ASAP control database maintains a history of alarms, events, performance, and process information. The purging of the SRP and SARM is usually based on work order age. The purge age is usually determined by the amount of available disk space. Usually, only orders that have been completed for a certain amount of time are purged.	See "Database purging" in the System Administrator's Guide. See also "ASAP Configuration Parameters" in the System Administrator's Guide.
MAX_ORDERS_IN_PROGRESS	This is the maximum number of orders that the SARM allows to be in progress at any given time. This is to limit the memory requirements of the SARM should there be large numbers of orders in progress for long periods of time. If zero, this check is disabled. Default = 40. In production environments, ensure that the MAX_ORDERS_IN_PROGRESS parameter is not set to 0. A setting of 0 specifies no upper limit on memory consumption and can result in significant performance consequences.	See "ASAP Configuration Parameters" in the System Administrator's Guide.
DIAG_LINE_FLUSH	If set, it determines whether the diagnostic file output is flushed to disk at the end of each diagnostic line. If disabled, the diagnostics are only flushed to the diagnostic file if a PROGRAM or SANITY level diagnostic message is written, or if the I/O buffer is flushed by the operating system. You can change the treatment of diagnostic files parameter by setting this configuration parameter or changing the diagnostic line flush flag of the application server by using the diag_line_flush API RPC/Registered Procedure to the particular server. Default = 1. Disable (set to 0) in a production environment as it causes considerable performance overhead in disk activity.	See "ASAP Configuration Parameters" in the System Administrator's Guide.
LANGUAGE_DUMP_ON	Determines whether the language buffer being transmitted or received should be logged as a low level diagnostic in the server's diagnostic log file. The primary use is for debugging such language buffers, and therefore, is generally disabled in production environments.	See "ASAP Configuration Parameters" in the System Administrator's Guide.
WO_AUDIT_LEVEL	Ensure that the audit level is not set to 4. A level of 4 should not be used in production environments as this level of auditing may result in degraded performance.	See "ASAP Configuration Parameters" in the System Administrator's Guide.
MEMORY_LOGGING	Determines whether diagnostic memory management RPCs (mem_usage and mem_stats) are created in the server as well as the degree of memory management diagnostic logging to be performed while the server is running. Ensure that this parameter is set to 0 in production systems, this configuration parameter should not be set as it imposes performance overhead.	See "ASAP Configuration Parameters" in the System Administrator's Guide.

Ensure that production environments observe the log and diagnostic setting recommendations listed in Table A-3.

Table A-3 Pre-production Checklist – Log and Diagnostic Settings

Checklist Item	Description	Reference
Location of log directories	Local versus NFS-Mounted File Systems for Diagnostic Files ASAP diagnostic files on NFS-mounted file systems increase network traffic and slow down disk I/O. For production systems, the log directories should be local, not NFS mounted.	See System Administrator's Guide.
Set up purging of logs and diagnostics	This requires a cron script that clears alarm entries, event logs and process information.	See "Database purging" in the System Administrator's Guide.
Set the diagnostic level	SANITY_LEVEL – Used by the application for high-level diagnostics. This level of diagnostic messages provides user information about the processing of the system. It is used for low level diagnostic messages. A production application has its diagnostic level set at either PROG or SANE in tbl_appl_proc. PROGRAM_LEVEL – This is primarily used to generate error messages when the application is running in a production environment.	See "DIAG_LEVEL abstract data type" in Developer Reference. See also "ASAP security features" in the System Administrator's Guide.