Monitoring a Web Service

Contents

Overview

This topic explains how to monitor the ComInfoService example Web Service using the real-time monitoring tools provided with the Enterprise Gateway. It assumes that you have already performed the steps in the following topics:

  1. Starting the Enterprise Gateway
  2. Registering a Web Service

Enabling Monitoring

You must first enable traffic monitoring and real-time monitoring in the Policy Studio. To enable these settings, perform the following steps:

  1. In the Policy Studio tree, select the Settings node, and select the Traffic Monitor tab at the bottom.
  2. On the Traffic Monitor tab, ensure Enable Traffic Monitor is selected.
  3. Select the Metrics tab at the bottom, and ensure Enable real time monitoring is selected.
  4. Click the Deploy icon in the Policy Studio toolbar to deploy these settings to the Enterprise Gateway. Alternatively, press F6.

Important Note:
Traffic monitoring is required for the purposes of this demo. However, enabling traffic monitoring may have a negative impact on performance. If you wish to maximize performance, do not enable these settings. For more details, see Configuring Traffic Monitoring.

Viewing Real-time Monitoring

You can view a range of monitoring statistics in the Real-time monitoring console (for example, status, audit messages, remote hosts, and Web Services). To launch the Real-time monitoring console from Service Manager, in the toolbar at the top right, click the Real-time Monitoring icon.

The following example shows the number of messages that have been passed by the Enterprise Gateway to the Web Service:

Real-time Monitoring

Real-time Monitoring

In Service Manager, each time you click the WSDL link in the Web Services window, the message sent to the example Web Service through the Enterprise Gateway is displayed in the Real-time monitoring console. Similarly, in Service Explorer, each time you send a test message to the example Web Service through the Enterprise Gateway, the message is displayed in the Real-time monitoring console.

Viewing Message Monitoring

When monitoring is enabled, the Real-time monitoring console displays summary information for each message. Click the Refresh button to display the latest information. The following example shows the details displayed for messages sent to the ComInfoService through the Enterprise Gateway:

Message Monitoring

Message Monitoring

Viewing Message Content

The Real-time monitoring console also displays the message path and the contents of each request message and response message. For example, to view the message path and the content of the response message sent by the ComInfoService through the Enterprise Gateway, perform the following steps:

  1. In the Latest HTTP Messages list, select the message whose contents you wish to view. This displays the message path for the selected message:

    Message Path

    Message Path

  2. The outbound message from the Enterprise Gateway is second in the list on the right of the message path. Click the View button for the Response message to view its contents.
  3. Alternatively, click the Download button for the Response message to download its contents and save them to a file.

Detecting Malformed Messages

Messages with malformed content are blocked by the Enterprise Gateway and displayed in the Real-time monitoring console. To detect a malformed message sent to the ComInfoService and blocked by the Enterprise Gateway, perform the following steps:

  1. In Service Explorer, on the Request tab, change the operation name from ns1:getInfo to ns1:getDetails.
  2. Click the triangular green send button to send the message to the virtualized Web Service through the Enterprise Gateway. The Response tab displays an HTTP 500 error and a MessageBlocked SOAP fault.
  3. In the Real-time monitoring console, on the Status tab, the message is displayed as blocked.

    Message Blocked

    Message Blocked

  4. Click the Audit and Alert Messages tab to view the audit message for the blocked message.

Monitoring a Remote Host

The Remote hosts tab enables you to monitor statistics such as the response time of the Web Service host, and the number of bytes sent and received. To monitor a remote host, perform the following steps:

  1. Click the Remote hosts tab.
  2. In the list of Configured remote hosts, select the host to display its statistics, for example:

Remote Host Statistics

Remote Host Statistics

Using Service Monitor

This tutorial explains how to monitor the example Web Service using the real-time monitoring tools provided with the Enterprise Gateway. Service Monitor is a separately installed component that enables you to monitor Web Services and to generate reports on the traffic history of multiple Enterprise Gateways. For details on using Service Monitor, see the following topics:

Securing the Web Service

When you have performed the steps required to monitor the example Web Service, the next steps are to secure the Web Service using Policy Studio. For details, see Securing a Web Service.