This chapter introduces AquaLogic Data Services Platform (ALDSP) administration. It explains the concept of ALDSP-Enabled WebLogic domains and introduces the ALDSP Administration Console components.
The primary audience for this document is WebLogic Server and/or AquaLogic Data Services Platform administrators.
The chapter contains the following sections:
Note: | ALDSP was previously named Liquid Data. Some artifacts of the original name remain in the product, installation path, and components. |
ALDSP is an integration software that unifies data programming by using data services. You can deploy it to WebLogic Server and administer tasks such as dataspace deployment, managing services accounts, controlling user access, and configuring runtime security through the ALDSP console.
Some administrative tasks can be performed through WebLogic console such as starting and stopping the server, configuring connection pools and data sources, logging, and so forth. The WebLogic Platform provides extensive tools and capabilities for configuring and maintaining a large-scale, production-level integration platform.
This section introduces you to the general administration tasks that you can perform using the ALDSP console. It includes the following topics:
For information on WebLogic administration, refer to System Administration for BEA WebLogic Server 9.2.
ALDSP leverages the security model of the WebLogic Platform to ensure data security. WebLogic uses security policies that control access to deployed resources based on user credentials or other factors.
Note: | For information about securing a server see the WebLogic Server 10.0 document“ Securing a Production Environment”. |
ALDSP enables you to apply policies to its data resources at various levels ranging from the dataspace to data elements. In addition, you can secure resources based on data values (called instance-level security). For example, you can secure objects if an element value exceeds a specific threshold.
For details, see Securing ALDSP Resources.
ALDSP can cache query results for data service functions to enhance overall system performance. Caching data alleviates the burden on back-end resource and improves data request response times from the client’s perspective. If you want to cache data service function results, you must explicitly enable results caching in the ALDSP Administration Console.
For more information, see Configuring ALDSP Resources.
Traditionally, enterprises have lacked a universal mechanism for advertising availability of data resources across source types, or for communicating information about those resources. ALDSP provides this capability through dynamically generated metadata.
Data service metadata serves these primary purposes:
Metadata provides information on data services such as their public functions, datatypes, data lineage, and more. It also provides where used information, showing dependencies between data services.
For more information, see Viewing Metadata Using the Service Explorer.
An ALDSP domain is created and deployed on WLS 9.2 and is a collection of resources managed as a single unit. In case of ALDSP, the WebLogic Administration console is used to create users and assign roles for a domain. An ALDSP domain may constitute one or more dataspaces deployed on a WebLogic Server as well as clusters. It is also where you deploy the ALDSP dataspace for your domain.
The WebLogic Administration Console is a web-based interface for configuring and monitoring a WebLogic domain. In cases when the domain has more than one server, one of the servers is designated as the Administration Server for the domain. The Administration Server then serves as the central point of control for an entire domain.
If there is only one server in a domain, then that server is the Administration Server in addition to the other functions it provides. Any other servers in a domain are Managed Servers.
For more information about domains, see Understanding WebLogic Server Domains in Configuring and Managing WebLogic Server.
ALDSP constitutes one or more dataspaces, which have a set of associated resources deployed on a WebLogic domain. To manage an ALDSP dataspace, start the WebLogic Server within the domain where an ALDSP dataspace is deployed, and then use the ALDSP Administration Console for that server to configure and manage ALDSP resources.
A dataspace created in the ALDSP development environment, works with WebLogic domains that have been provisioned for ALDSP. You can use the BEA WebLogic Configuration Wizard to create such domains.
To create a new domain provisioned with ALDSP:
For more information on creating domains, see Creating WebLogic Domains Using the Configuration Wizard in the WebLogic Platform documentation.
If you have an existing WebLogic Server domain and you want to setup ALDSP project within that domain, you can provision the domain for ALDSP, using the Configuration Wizard:
Start Programs BEA Products Tools Configuration Wizard
AL_HOME/samples/domains/portal
).For information on selecting domain setting options see Creating WebLogic Domains Using the Configuration Wizard.
Once a domain is provisioned with ALDSP, you can deploy dataspace to WebLogic Server enabled for ALDSP.
For additional information see Deploying Dataspaces.
ALDSP Administration Console provides different privileges to different user entitlements. ALDSP now has the domain, admin, monitor, and browser entitlements. The domain level user is created by default and can assign entitlements to a user. The user privileges within ALDSP Administration Console depend on the entitlements. For example, the monitor or browser entitlements can only view the configuration in the ALDSP Administration Console, whereas the admin entitlement allows a user to change the configuration.
For more information, see Securing ALDSP Resources.
The ALDSP Administration Console is a web-based user interface to configure and administer ALDSP runtime server or cluster. You can use the ALDSP Administration Console to set security and caching policies for data services and configure ALDSP runtime settings such as thread usage and logging levels. In addition, you can deploy, import, and export dataspaces using the console and view metadata that is required by both developers and administrators.
Note: | For more information, see Viewing Metadata Using the Service Explorer. |
Figure 1-2 shows the main page of the ALDSP Administration Console.
The DSP Console constitutes the Navigation Pane and the Workspace Content area as shown in Figure 1-2. The navigation pane consists of the change center, navigation tree, and the category-based tabs. You can use this pane to access the deployed dataspace, functions, and web services. In addition, you can view and manage data in different categories such as the physical data sources and administrative access control.
Table 1-1 briefly describes the functions of each component in ALDSP Administration Console:
The change center is used to acquire and release a lock for editing the configuration within the console in a transactional manner. For more information, refer to
Change Center and Configuration Locking on page 2-7
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The navigation tree shows the artifacts stored on the server. The artifacts displayed in the workspace content area depend on the category you select from the list of category-based tabs. The navigation tree is rooted to the ALDSP domain. For more information, refer to
Navigation Tree and Category List on page 2-10.
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The category-based tabs or the category list provides specific information about the deployed dataspace, web services, and functions. Each tab in the list provides a set of artifacts for the selected project, data service, or function. For more information, refer to
Navigation Tree and Category List on page 2-10.
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The workspace content area displays the artifacts based on the selection in the navigation tree and the category list. It allows you to configure system administration tasks, import, export, and deploy dataspaces, work with security configurations, manage data caching, and auditing tasks.
For more information, refer to Using the Workspace Content Area on page 2-11. |
The following table provides classpath requirements for servers running ALDSP.
CLASSPATH=
<ALDSP_HOME>/lib/ld-server-core.jar
<WLS_CLASSPATH>
Notes: |
sdo.jar
wlsdo.jar
binxml.jar
xquery.jar
../external/com.bea.common.configfwk.wlinterop_9.2.2.0.jar
../external/com.bea.common.configfwk_1.0.0.0.jar
../external/alsb_client_9.2.jar
../external/jgrapht-jdk1.5.jar
relational-providers.jar
ld-client.jar