14.2 Monitoring Security

Oracle Web Services Manager provides extensive features to enable you tOracle Web Services Managero monitor the operational health of the components (gateways and agents) that you set up to secure your web services.

This section surveys the monitoring capabilities with these topics:

Section 14.2.1, "The Oracle Web Services Manager Monitor"
Section 14.2.2, "Execution Metrics"
Section 14.2.3, "Security Statistics"
Section 14.2.4, "Service Statistics"
Section 14.2.5, "Alarms"
Section 14.2.6, "Role Management"

14.2.1 The Oracle Web Services Manager Monitor

The Oracle Web Services Manager Monitor collectsOracle Web Services Manager operational status and other service execution metrics from various sources.An Oracle Web Services Manager gateway sends metrics to the Monitor for each Web service managed by the gateway. Agents send metrics to the Monitor from the point where they are embedded, whether on the client side or the server side. The Monitor collects these metrics and makes them available to the administrator so that the performance and security of the system can be actively managed.

To access the monitor:

Point your browser to the Web Services Manager Control Console and log in using your single sign-on user name and password.

The Web Services Manager Control Console is accessed with a URL of the form:

http://<hostname>:port_number/ccore

For example:

http://itapps.globalcompany.com:8888/ccore
Click Operational Management in the left navigation panel of the Console to access the Monitor.

14.2.2 Execution Metrics

You can view Oracle Web Services Managerexecution metrics in the Snapshot menu under Operational Management.

Oracle WSM Monitor provides these broad measurements of the managed services:

Snapshot - The snapshot provides a visual dashboard-style display of security statistics, including:
- the average failure rates for policy and service execution steps for a gateway or agent, for a selected service and across services
- the average latency for policy and service execution steps for a gateway or agent, for a selected service and across services
- failure rates for authentication and authorization steps of a policy for a selected service and across services
Comparisons of performance metrics against SLA (Service Level Agreement) conformance limits that you can configure
Execution details for a selected component and service
Message logs for service requests and responses. For failures, you can drill down to view error messages.
Flows, which are groups of Web service invocations within a specific context, such as a chain of back-end application services that fulfill an order-processing request

14.2.3 Security Statistics

Oracle WSM Monitor provides Access Control statistics showing the distribution of access over all service execution attempts, and the distribution of granted requests, authentication failures, and authorization failures across all access attempts.

You can view these statistics by clicking Security Statistics under Operational Management.

14.2.4 Service Statistics

Oracle WSM Monitor provides these statistics about the managed services:

Latency Variance - Displays a graph showing minimum and maximum latency metrics, by individual service or across all services.
Traffic Analysis - Displays the number of bytes and the messages per service, by individual service or across all services.

You can view these statistics by clicking Service Statistics under Operational Management.

14.2.5 Alarms

Oracle Web Services ManagerOracle WSM Monitor lets you Oracle Web Services Managercreate alarms that are used in processing the collected metrics. You create an alarm rule to define what constitutes the alarm; for example, you could create an alarm if average latency drops below a certain level. You then create a rule action to be executed when the rule is triggered. For example, a typical action could be an alert that is sent to key personnel.

You can view and manage alarms by clicking Alarms under Operational Management.

You can search for alarms by a combination of criteria including component, alarm type, time range, and severity.

14.2.6 Role Management

To control access to Oracle WSM features and Oracle Web Services Managerpermissions for Oracle WSM operations, you can map user groups defined in your environment to Oracle WSM administrative roles. Typical roles include Domain Administrator (responsible for the day-to-day operations and management of an Oracle WSM site), Component Administrator (responsible for managing services associated with a specific gateway or agent), Service Administrator (responsible for a specific service), and Service Support (able to view a specific service), among others.

Users logging in to Oracle WSM Web Services Manager Control are restricted in the operations they are able to perform based on their roles. Certain roles are also able to delegate administrator functions to other users.

Access control tools are available under the Administration menu.