Administering relationships

You can start and stop relationships from either System Monitor or the InterChange Server Component Management view of System Manager.

This section covers the following topics:

"Viewing relationship states"

Starting and stopping relationships

Viewing relationship states

You can view the state of a relationship either by logging on to System Monitor and opening a view that contains relationship status or by using the InterChange Server Component Management view of System Manager. To log on to System Monitor, follow the instructions in Steps for logging on to System Monitor. To use the InterChange Server Component Management view of System Manager, follow the instructions in Steps for connecting to an InterChange Server instance..

The state of a relationship is represented differently, depending on which tool you are using.

Steps for viewing relationship states in System Monitor

Perform the following steps to view the state of relationships using System Monitor:

  1. With the System Overview view displayed, click the Maps and Relationships link under Views in the left pane of the Web page. The Map Status and Relationship Status monitors appear (see Figure 11) in the body of the Web page.

The default view and monitor are set to System Overview. These defaults can be changed to suit your monitoring needs. See Setting up views to monitor the system for instructions.

Steps for viewing relationship states in System Manager

Perform the following steps to view the state of relationships using System Manager:

  1. Connect to the InterChange Server instance that contains the relationship you want to view. See Steps for connecting to an InterChange Server instance for instructions on connecting to an InterChange Server instance.
  2. Expand the InterChange Server instance, then expand the Relationships folder, then expand either the Dynamic or Static folder. The relationships appear under either the expanded Dynamic folder or the expanded Static folder, and have different colored lights to indicate their different states (see Figure 30).

    Figure 30. Relationships folder in the InterChange Server Component Management view of System Manager

    The figure shows a view of the relationships listing on the InterChange Server Component management screen. This lists the available relationships in a tree heirarchical display.

Table 17 lists the relationship states represented by the display color and describes what actions can be performed during that state.

Table 17. Relationship States

Relationship state/Display color Description
Active (green) Relationship is ready to run and available for use in the IBM WebSphere InterChange Server system. To use Relationship Manager on a relationship, the relationship must be in the active state.
Inactive (red) Relationship is not ready to run or available for use in the IBM WebSphere InterChange Server system. This state is entered when the relationship is stopped, where all current jobs in queue are completed and no new jobs are accepted. To modify a relationship definition, it must be in this state.
Unknown (grey) Relationship does not have a compatible run time schema. To create a compatible run time schema, from the Relationship Designer, save the relationship with the Create run time schema option selected. The state changes to Inactive, at which point the relationship can then be started.

Starting and stopping relationships

Relationships are used to establish associations between business object attributes that cannot easily be mapped. The tool used for creating relationships is Relationship Designer. For more information about Relationship Designer, see the Map Development Guide.

When you expand the Relationships folder in the InterChange Server Component Management view of System Manager, two subfolders appear: Dynamic and Static.

This section describes the following topics:

"Relationship activation"

Steps for starting and stopping relationships

Relationship table caching

Relationship activation

For a relationship to be executable, it must be activated. However, you cannot modify a relationship when it is active. Therefore, you must stop the relationship, make the change to the relationship, and then restart the relationship. See Appendix B, Requirements for restarting IBM WebSphere Business Integration system components to find out what changes require relationships to be restarted.

Steps for starting and stopping relationships

Depending on which tool you are using, you start and stop relationships in different ways.

Steps for starting and stopping relationships using System Monitor

Perform the following steps to start and stop relationships using System Monitor:

  1. From the System View window (see Figure 11), select Maps and Relationships from the View drop-down menu. The Map Status and Relationship Status monitors appear.
  2. Click the checkbox for the relationship you want to start or stop.
  3. Click the Start or Stop button to perform the appropriate action.

Steps for starting and stopping relationships using System Manager

Perform the following steps to start and stop relationships using System Manager:

From the expanded Dynamic or Static folder in the InterChange Server Component Management view of System Manager (see Figure 30), right-click the name of a relationship, then select Start <relationship_name> or Stop <relationship_name>.

Relationship table caching

As part of the design process of a static relationship, a developer can indicate whether the relationship's tables are to be cached in memory. A static relationship is one whose data does not change frequently. If the developer has indicated that the static relationship's tables can be cached, you can control whether to enable caching from System Manager. System Manager lists all static relationships in the folder labelled Static under the Relationships folder.

Note:
For information on how to design a static relationship so that its tables to be cached in memory, see the Map Development Guide.

Steps for enabling caching

Perform the following steps to enable relationship table caching for a static relationship:

  1. Expand the Relationships folder in System Manager.
  2. Expand the Static folder in the object browser to locate the static relationship whose tables you want to be cached.
  3. Right-click the static relationship to determine its current cached state. If the Cached option appears with no check mark to the left, caching for that relationship is currently disabled. Choose Cached from the context menu to enable caching.

When the Cached option appears with a check mark to the left, InterChange Server reads the relationship tables into memory the next time the run time data is accessed.

Steps for disabling caching

Perform the following steps to disable relationship table caching for a static relationship:

  1. Expand the Relationships folder in System Manager.
  2. Expand the Static folder in the object browser to locate the static relationship whose tables you do not want to be cached.
  3. Right-click the static relationship to determine its current cached state. If the Cached option appears with a check mark to the left, caching for that relationship is currently enabled. Choose Cached from the context menu to disable caching.

When the Cached option appears with no check mark to the left, InterChange Server reads run time data from the tables in the relationship database.

Steps for reloading the cached tables

Perform the following steps to have InterChange Server reread the relationship's tables into memory with the Reload feature:

  1. Expand the Relationships folder in System Manager.
  2. Expand the Static folder in the object browser to locate the static relationship whose tables you want to be reloaded.
  3. Right-click the static relationship to determine its current cached state. If the Cached option appears with a check mark to the left, caching for that relationship is currently enabled. Therefore, the Reload option is enabled.
  4. Choose Reload from the context menu to reload the static relationship's tables.

When you choose this option, InterChange Server reloads the cached relationship tables by rereading the tables from the relationship database into memory. This option is useful when the static relationship's tables are updated directly in the database through SQL statements. To get the more current version of the tables into cache, choose the Reload option.

Steps for tracing cached tables

Perform the following step to have InterChange Server log a trace message each time it loads and unloads relationship tables in memory:

  1. Set the RELATIONSHIP.CACHING configuration parameter to five (5) in the TRACING section of the InterchangeSystem.cfg file:
    RELATIONSHIP.CACHING=5
    

InterChange Server routes these messages to the trace file (if one is configured). By default, InterChange Server does not generate trace messages when it loads and unloads the relationship tables. Trace levels less than five (0-4) do not produce messages either.

Copyright IBM Corp. 1997, 2004