Run Time Monitoring – log files, alerts, console

(Chapter 23, section 1)

Through monitoring we want to learn what is [relevant about what is] happening. And we want to know what is happening because we may have to respond with immediate action or longer term correction in order to ensure the runtime behavior that is required, desired and committed to.

Monitoring takes place in various dimensions. Events are observed live, at real time or operational level and at an aggregated, tactical level. Monitoring is done by automated facilities and by human actors. And monitoring is done at varying degrees of functionality – from business level focused on business processes to technical level with focus on non-functional aspects such as performance and availability.

This section discusses some of the mechanisms at our disposal in SOA Suite and Fusion Middleware to monitor and analyze the proceedings at runtime. We will look at log files: how to find them, search through them to and interpret them. We will discuss how to enrich them with our own logging details. We will look at automated monitoring using SLA Alerts and BAM Alerts. And we once again visit the Enterprise Manager FMW Control that provides a lot of insight in the internal runtime activities.

This figure shows some the topics discussed in this section and how they apply to a SOA Composite.