Understanding and Specifying Dotted Names

In the asadmin list and get commands, specify the dotted name of monitorable objects. All child objects are addressed using the dot (.) character as separator, thus these are referred to as dotted names. If a child node is of singleton type, then only the monitoring object type is needed to address the object, otherwise a name of the form type.name is needed to address the object.

For example, http-service is one of the valid monitorable object types and is a singleton. To address a singleton child node representing the http-service of instance server, the dotted name is:

server.http-service

Another example, application, is a valid monitorable object type and is not a singleton. To address a non-singleton child node representing, for example, the application PetStore, the dotted name is:

server.applications.petstore

The dotted names can also address specific attributes in monitorable objects. For example, http-service has a monitorable attribute called bytesreceived-lastsampletime. The following name addresses the bytesreceived attribute:

server.http-service.server.http-listener-1.
  bytesreceived-lastsampletime

The administrator is not expected to know the valid dotted names for asadmin list and get commands. The list command displays available monitorable objects, while the get command used with a wildcard parameter allows the inspection of all available attributes on any monitorable object.

The underlying assumptions for using the list and get commands with dotted names are:

• Any list command that has a dotted name that is not followed by a wildcard (*) gets as its result the current node’s immediate children. For example, list --user adminuser --monitor server lists all immediate children belonging to the server node.

• Any list command that has a dotted name followed by a wildcard of the form .* gets as its result a hierarchical tree of children nodes from the current node. For example, list --user adminuser --monitor server.applications.* lists all children of applications and their subsequent child nodes and so on.

• Any list command that has a dotted name preceded or followed by a wildcard of the form *dottedname or dotted * name or dotted name * gets as its result all nodes and their children matching the regular expression created by the provided matching pattern.

• A get command followed by a .* or a * gets as its result the set of attributes and their values belonging to the current node to be matched.

For more information, read Expected Output for list and get Commands at All Levels.