You monitor service components within WebSphere Process Server to
assess performance, to troubleshoot problems, and evaluate the overall processing
progress of service components that make up the applications
deployed on your system.
Service components are the integral functions incorporated into WebSphere® Process
Server, with which you can easily create and deploy applications on your system
that mirror the processes employed in your enterprise. Effectively monitoring
those service components is, therefore, essential to managing the tasks which
the process server is intended to accomplish. There are three main reasons
you need to monitor service components on the process server:
- Problem determination
- You can diagnose particular errors by using the logging and tracing facilities
provided by WebSphere Application Server,
which underlies WebSphere Process Server.
For example, if a particular application is not producing the expected results,
you can set up a logger to monitor the processing of the service components
that comprise that application. You can have the log output published to a
file, which you can then examine to pinpoint the cause of the problem. Troubleshooting
is a task that is of importance to system administrators and others concerned
with the maintenance of system hardware and software.
- Performance tuning
- You can monitor certain performance statistics that most process server-specific
service components produce. Use this information to maintain and tune your
system health, and ensure that your applications are tuned optimally and efficiently.
You can also spot situations where one or more of your services are performing
at a poor level, which may indicate that other problems are present in your
system. Like problem determination, performance tuning is a task typically
performed by information technology specialists.
- Assessing the processing of service components
- Problem determination and performance tuning are tasks you perform on
a short-term basis, to solve a particular issue or problem. You can also set
up the process server to continually monitor the service components incorporated
into the applications deployed on your system. This type of service component
monitoring is of importance to those who are responsible for designing, implementing,
and ensuring that the processes achieve their design goals, and may be accomplished
persons who are not necessarily specialists in information technology.