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What's New in OPMN?

This chapter describes the new features of OPMN in Oracle Application Server. OPMN allows you to manage Oracle Application Server components.

This chapter includes the following topics:

• Additional Oracle Application Server Component Management

• New Commands

• Start Order Dependencies

• Event Scripts

• Improved Monitoring

• Operating System-Level Statistics

• Changes to opmn.xml

• DCM

1.1 Additional Oracle Application Server Component Management

In 10g (9.0.4), OPMN allows you to manage additional Oracle Application Server components when compared to Oracle9i Application Server (Oracle9iAS) Release 2 (9.0.2 and 9.0.3).

Table 1-1 shows the additional Oracle Application Server components managed by OPMN in 10g (9.0.4):

Table 1-1 Oracle Application Server Component Management  

	OPMN Management
Oracle Application Server Component	Release 2 (9.0.2 and 9.0.3)	10g (9.0.4)
Oracle HTTP Server	YES	YES
OC4J	YES	YES
Distributed Configuration Management (DCM) daemon (server)		YES
OracleAS Log Loader		YES
Oracle Internet Directory		YES
OracleAS Port Tunnel		YES
OracleAS Web Cache		YES
OracleAS Discoverer		YES
OracleAS Wireless		YES
OracleAS Reports Services		YES
OracleAS ProcessConnect		YES

OPMN explicitly manages the listed10g (9.0.4) components. OPMN also manages other Oracle Application Server components implicitly; the constituent parts of the implicit Oracle Application Server components are managed by OPMN as part of one or more other Oracle Application Server components. For example, Oracle Application Server Portal while not explicitly managed by OPMN is implicitly managed because it is operational using OC4J and Oracle HTTP Server.

The following components are implicitly managed by OPMN:

• Oracle Business Components for Java (BC4J)

• Oracle Application Server Forms Services

• Oracle Application Server Single Sign-On

• Oracle HTTP Server Adapter of Oracle Application Server InterConnect

• Oracle Distributed Authoring and Versioning (OraDAV)

• Oracle Personalization Server

• Oracle Application Server Portal

• Oracle Application Server SOAP

• Oracle Syndication Server

• Oracle Application Server UDDI Registry Server

• Oracle Ultra Search

• Oracle Application Server TopLink

1.2 New Commands

opmnctl is the recommended command-line tool for starting and stopping Oracle Application Server components. opmnctl is the centralized way to control and monitor Oracle Application Server components from the command line. You can use opmnctl to execute control and monitoring commands across multiple Oracle Application Server instances simultaneously.

For Oracle9iAS Release 2 (9.0.2 and 9.0.3), command-line start and stop was accomplished using dcmctl and a number of component-specific tools, such as webcachectl and oidctl.

In Oracle Application Server 10g (9.0.4), opmnctl is the supported tool for starting and stopping all components in an Oracle Application Server instance, with the exception of the Oracle Application Server Metadata Repository and the Oracle Enterprise Manager Application Server Control (Application Server Control). opmnctl also allows you to perform operations on a specified Oracle Application Server instance on the application server farm, all instances in the farm, and all instances in a cluster using an optional parameter called scope. You can also use the scope option to control an individual Oracle Application Server process.

See Also: Oracle Application Server 10g Administrator's Guide Chapter 2, "OPMN: Overview" Chapter 3, "Using OPMN"

1.3 Start Order Dependencies

Some Oracle Application Server components and services require that other components and services are up and running before starting. OPMN is configured at installation with default start order dependencies, which allows you to start all of the components in an instance in the proper order with a single command. Refer to the Oracle Application Server 10g Administrator's Guide for more information on Oracle Application Server dependencies.

OPMN is configured with a set of dependencies but you can configure additional dependencies according to the environment

See Also: Chapter 2, "OPMN: Overview"

1.4 Event Scripts

You can configure OPMN to execute your own custom event scripts whenever a particular component starts, stops, or crashes. You can select from one or more of the following event types:

• pre-start: OPMN runs the pre-start script after any configured dependency checks have been performed and passed, and before the Oracle Application Server component starts. For example, the pre-start script can be used for site-specific initialization of external components.

• pre-stop: OPMN runs the pre-stop script before stopping a designated Oracle Application Server component. For example, the pre-stop script can be used for collecting Java Virtual Machine stack traces prior to stopping OC4J processes.

• post-crash: OPMN runs the post-crash script after the Oracle Application Server component has terminated unexpectedly. For example, a user could learn of component crashes by supplying a script or program to be executed at post-crash events which sends a notification to the administrator's pager."

  See Also: Chapter 2, "OPMN: Overview"

1.5 Improved Monitoring

For Oracle9iAS Release 2 (9.0.2 and 9.0.3), OPMN provided several undocumented commands for obtaining information from OPMN about the Oracle Application Server components and processes it managed. However, the obtained information did not provide enough detail about the OPMN processes. Additionally, the obtained information was not in an standard format.

In Oracle Application Server 10g (9.0.4), OPMN has consolidated all the Release 2 (9.0.2 and 9.0.3) commands into a single command that provides more flexibility and returns information in a choice of standard formats.

The following are some examples of the process level information that can be obtained from OPMN:

• status information about multiple Oracle Application Server instances with a single command

• information on CPU and memory utilization

• what ports are in use by a process (for those Oracle Application Server components that can report them)

• operating system-level process identifiers (pid)

• the Oracle Application Server component to which a process belongs

• whether a process is up, down, or initializing

  See Also: Chapter 2, "OPMN: Overview"

1.6 Operating System-Level Statistics

The Application Server Control reports CPU and memory utilization information for all of Oracle Application Server.

For Oracle9iAS Release 2 (9.0.2 and 9.03), Oracle Enterprise Manager obtained CPU and memory utilization statistics by identifying running components at the operating system level. The internal operating interfaces for obtaining such utilization statistics vary greatly from one operating system to another. Additionally, there was no easy and efficient way to do this within Java environment.

In Oracle Application Server 10g (9.0.4), OPMN tracks CPU and memory statistics and stores the information for all Oracle Application Server components directly launched by OPMN. Application Server Control obtains this information from OPMN by sending requests. OPMN obtains the operating system level process statistics in a very efficient manner thereby improving the time it takes to load Application Server Control pages.

1.7 Changes to opmn.xml

The opmn.xml file in Oracle Application Server 10g (9.0.4) has changed when compared to the previous Oracle9iAS Release 2 (9.0.2 and 9.0.3) versions.

For Oracle9iAS Release 2 (9.0.2 and 9.0.3), the opmn.xml file contained XML element names specific to each Oracle Application Server component; an Oracle HTTP Server element encloses the Oracle HTTP Server configuration, and an OC4J element encloses the OC4J configuration. Because of this requirement, Oracle9iAS Release 2 (9.0.2 and 9.0.3) opmn.xml lacked flexibility. Adding management of new Oracle9iAS components required changes to the XML schema and changes to the configuration processing code to look for the new elements.

In Oracle Application Server 10g (9.0.4), all component-specific element names have been removed. In addition, all component specific management code has been moved into Process Management (PM) modules which get loaded by OPMN at startup according to what has been specified in the modules section of opmn.xml.

Each level has a specific set of configurations. In addition, there are several configuration elements that are accepted at more than one level to provide the flexibility of applying a configuration across an entire Oracle Application Server component or just part of a component.

1.8 DCM

DCM manages the configuration of opmn.xml and manages configurations among application server instances that are associated with a common Infrastructure (members of an Oracle Application Server farm). It enables Oracle Application Server cluster-wide deployment so you can deploy an application to an entire cluster, or make a single host or instance configuration change applicable across all instances in a cluster. The Application Server Control uses DCM to make configuration changes and to propagate configuration changes and deployed applications across the cluster.

All command line process control should be through the OPMN opmnctl command. The DCM dcmctl command should be used only for configuration related operations and application deployment.

See Also: Oracle Application Server 10g Administrator's Guide