Chapter 10                      RTView Data Sources

RTView provides a variety of data sources that can be used to populate dashboards, generate reports and drive alerts. For ease of use and improved performance, RTView has been optimized to reduce the impact of data acquisition, federate information to interested clients and provide options specific to each data source.

RTView comes standard with XML, other data sources can be licensed individually. To find out which data sources are available in your installation, select Help>About RTView in either the Display Builder or the Display Viewer Application. For information on licensing additional data sources, including custom data sources, contact SL Sales at 800.548.6881 or 415.927.8400.

Data sources supported by RTView can be event-driven in real-time (XML, JMS, JMX™ [notifications], StreamBase®, TIBCO Rendezvous® and TIBCO Hawk®), or persistent and require queries (SQL, OLAP, OSIsoft® PI, IBM WebSphere® MQ and TIBCO® Enterprise Message Service™). RTView features a unique Attach to Data dialog for each data source to facilitate the acquisition of available data and the rapid configuration of dashboards, reports and alerts.

Some RTView data sources, including OSIsoft® PI and IBM WebSphere® MQ, are exclusive to monitoring, while others provide write-back facilities – known as commands. RTView commands allow applications to be built that can, for example, write to a database, send a JMS message, or call a JMX™ MBean operation.

The Data Sources section of the documentation provides the following sections with detailed information specific to each data source.

Note: This is an overview of all the information provided and some of sections described below do not apply to all data sources.

System Requirements and Setup

This section will help you determine system requirements and setup necessary for your particular data source. You must also review the main “System Requirements” section of this documentation.

Attach to Data

For each data source there is a different way to select the appropriate data to input to dashboard objects, alerts, analytic functions and reports. In the Display Builder, a unique dialog is provided for each data source that allows you to discover available data, as well as subscribe to or query a particular data value.

Define Command

Some data sources allow write-back facilities, known as commands. With commands it is possible to configure RTView to write to a data source based on user interaction or activation of alerts.

Substitutions

Many data sources have standard built-in substitutions that allow for the parameterization of described data values, which can be realized at run-time. This allows you to build open-ended dashboards in which data attachments and commands depend on values defined by user interaction. In this way, a single dashboard template can be reused to show data and execute commands from a number of different sources.

Application Options

In this section you will learn how to describe the connection, as well as other default attributes, of your particular data source. Options available via command line arguments are described in the section titled Command Line Options.

Deployment

This section contains details about the deployment process specific to your data source. Please begin in the main “Deployment” section of this documentation for information on available options, the pros and cons of each, and how to choose and implement the optimal deployment.

Examples

Sections titled Quick Start, Demos, Simulators, or Sample Application will assist you in understanding how to best utilize RTView with your particular data source.

The Data Sources section contains the following:

§        “IBM WebSphere MQ Data Source” on page 513

§        “JMS Data Source” on page 522

§        “JMX Data Source” on page 559

§        “Apache log4j Data Source” on page 587

§        “OLAP Data Source” on page 594

§        “Round Robin Database Data Source” on page 613

§        “RTVAgent Data Source” on page 621

§        “RTVPipe Data Source” on page 629

§        “SNMP Data Source” on page 637

§        “Splunk Data Source” on page 644

§        “SQL Data Source” on page 653

§        “StreamBase Data Source” on page 684

§        “TIBCO EMS Administration Data Source” on page 702

§        “TIBCO Hawk Data Source” on page 720

§        “TIBCO Rendezvous Data Source” on page 763

§        “WMI Data Source” on page 796

§        “XML Data Source” on page 806