Administration Tools

Your WLE or BEA TUXEDO system gives you a choice of several methods for performing the same set of administrative tasks. Whether you are more comfortable using a graphical user interface or entering commands at a shell prompt, you will be able to find a comfortable method of doing your job as the administrator of a domain. This chapter describes the menu of administration tools.

This chapter discusses the following topics:

• Configuration and Run-time Administration

• BEA Administration Console

• Command-line Interface

• AdminAPI

Configuration and Run-time Administration

At the highest level, the job of an administrator can be viewed as two broadly defined tasks:

• Configuration-the most important (and complicated) part of setting up your system before booting your application

• Run-time administration-the set of tasks that are performed on an application that has been booted

The WLE and BEA TUXEDO systems offer three tools for both of these tasks:

• BEA Administration Console

• Command-line interface

  Note: You can enter administration commands either at a shell prompt on any supported UNIX platform, or from an MS-DOS command line on a Windows NT platform.

• AdminAPI

This chapter describes how these tools can be used to configure an application and to administer a running system.

Tools for Configuration

Because the WLE and BEA TUXEDO systems offer great flexibility and many options to application designers and programmers, no two applications are alike. An application, for example, may be small and simple (a single client and server running on one machine) or complex enough to handle transactions among thousands of clients and servers. For this reason, for every WLE application being managed, an administrator must provide a file that defines and governs the components of that application.

The components are as follows:

domain

The collection of servers, services, interfaces, machines, and associated resource managers defined by a single UBBCONFIG (ASCII) or TUXCONFIG (binary) configuration file; a collection of programs that perform a function. A domain represents an administrative set of functionality.

server

A software program (or the hardware on which it runs) in which WLE interfaces or BEA TUXEDO services offered to your users are stored.

client

A software program that requests services from servers (and sometimes resides on nonserver hardware).

queue

A set of requests that are submitted to servers in a particular order (which may be determined by the administrator).

service

A program that takes client requests as input and performs a particular function in response.

interface

In a WLE system, a set of operations and attributes. An interface is defined by an application programmer using the Object Management Group Interface Definition Language (OMG IDL). The definition contains operations and attributes that can be used to manipulate a CORBA object.

server group

A set of interfaces or a logical grouping of servers.

These components (and others, when appropriate) are defined, or configured, in an ASCII file that is referred to, in the WLE and BEA TUXEDO documentation, as UBBCONFIG. The UBBCONFIG file may, in fact, be given any file name. When compiled into a binary file, the file is referred to as TUXCONFIG. During the groundwork (or setup) phase of administration, the administrator's goal is to create a TUXCONFIG file. You have a choice of the following three tools:

Tools for Run-time Administration

With your WLE or BEA TUXEDO system installed, your client or server application installed, and your TUXCONFIG file loaded, you are ready to boot your application. As soon as your application is launched, you must start monitoring its activities and watching for problems-both actual and potential.

When problems occur, you must identify and solve them. If performance is degraded, you may want to do load balancing or prioritize your interfaces or services. If trouble develops on a MASTER machine, you may want to replace it with a designated BACKUP machine. For more information about designating the MASTER machine, see "Identifying the Master Machine" on page 3-12.

As the processing and resource usage requirements of your application evolve, you may need to add machines, servers, clients, interfaces, services, and so on, to your existing system.

The job of run-time administration encompasses many tasks, from starting and stopping the application, to monitoring activity, troubleshooting problems, and dynamically reconfiguring the application. Again, you have a choice of three tools for performing these tasks: the BEA Administration Console, the command-line interface, and the AdminAPI.

BEA Administration Console

The BEA Administration Console is a graphical user interface that enables you to perform most administration tasks for WLE and BEA TUXEDO applications. Figure 2-1 shows a sample Administration Console screen.

Figure 2-1 Sample BEA Administration Console Screen

The BEA Administration Console is implemented as a Java applet. You can run the applet on platforms that support a Java-enabled Web browser, such as Netscape 3.01 or higher, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher.

For the BEA Administration Console startup procedure, see the Installation Guide.

For more information about how to use the BEA Administration Console, see the online help.

Command-line Interface

You can use the following commands to administer the WLE or BEA TUXEDO system. This document provides procedures for administrative tasks that are based on the command-line interface. For details about individual commands, see the BEA TUXEDO Reference Manual.

• tmboot-Activates the application that is referenced in the specified configuration file. Depending on the options used, the entire application or parts of the application are started.

• tmloadcf-Parses the UBBCONFIG file and loads the binary TUXCONFIG configuration file.

• tmunloadcf-Unloads the TUXCONFIG configuration file.

• tmconfig-Dynamically updates and retrieves information about the configuration for a running system.

• dmadmin-Updates the compiled DMCONFIG (binary domain configuration file) while the system is running.

• tmadmin-Produces information about configuration parameters. Once invoked, you can enter many administrative commands that duplicate the functions of other commands. For example, the tmadmin shutdown command is identical to the tmshutdown command.

• tmshutdown-Shuts down a set of specified WLE or BEA TUXEDO servers, or removes a set of WLE interfaces or BEA TUXEDO services listed in a configuration file.

AdminAPI

The AdminAPI is an application programming interface (API) for directly accessing and manipulating system settings in the BEA TUXEDO Management Information Bases (MIBs). The advantage of the AdminAPI is that it can be used to automate administrative tasks, such as monitoring log files and dynamically reconfiguring an application, thus eliminating the need for human intervention. This advantage can be crucially important in mission-critical, real-time applications.

For details about the MIBs, see ACL_MIB(5), APPQ_MIB(5), EVENT_MIB(5), MIB(5), TM_MIB(5), and WS_MIB(5) in the BEA TUXEDO Reference Manual.

Note: The BEA TUXEDO Reference Manual includes, in the TM_MIB(5) section, reference material about the T_INTERFACE MIB class, T_IFQUEUE MIB class, and T_FACTORY MIB class. Those MIB classes were added for WLE.

An online version of the BEA TUXEDO Reference Manual is available on the Online Documentation CD. On the CD, click the Reference button from the main menu. Next, click the hyperlink "BEA TUXEDO Manuals." On the BEA TUXEDO home page, click the hyperlink "Reference Manual: Section 5."

Also see the descriptions of the T_DOMAIN MIB class, T_MACHINE MIB class, T_SERVER MIB class, T_TRANSACTION MIB class, and T_ROUTING MIB class. Those MIB classes were enhanced for WLE.