Monitoring clinical applications

Check that clinical applications are correctly connected, and inspect the status of any queues that are holding healthcare messages.

Before you start:

Create a broker, see Creating a broker in the IBM® Integration Bus product documentation.
Complete the relevant tasks in Completing postinstallation steps for IBM Integration Bus Healthcare Pack.
Create a built-in pattern, see Developing healthcare message flow applications by using the patterns supplied in IBM Integration Bus Healthcare Pack.
Deploy the pattern.
Connect to a broker in IBM Integration Explorer; see Managing brokers in the IBM Integration Bus product documentation.

When you have successfully completed all the prerequisite tasks, continue by using the following steps:

In IBM Integration Explorer, click Window > Reset Perspective. This step ensures that the Healthcare Operational Monitoring view is available.
Switch to the Healthcare Operational Monitoring view: Click Window > Show View > Healthcare Operational Monitoring. The Healthcare Operational Monitoring view opens.
Select your broker in the drop-down list. If your broker is not displayed in the list, click Refresh Connections.
To see information about connections to your clinical applications, click the Clinical Application Connections tab.
To see information about your message queues, click the Queue Monitoring tab.
Optional: On the Clinical Application Connections tab and Queue Monitoring tab, you can filter the list of entries. To filter the list of entries, in the Filter field, enter text that you want to search for. Your filter text is searched for in the all the fields of the table and is case sensitive. The list of entries is filtered as you type.

Interpreting the information in the Clinical Application Connections tab

The Clinical Application Connections tab contains a table that shows the state of all inbound and outbound connections to the healthcare flows. An administrator can get a quick overview of the system. A yellow warning triangle in the first column indicates a problem with a connection.

Connections with a warning are shown at the top of the table. You can sort the columns by clicking the headings. When the table is refreshed, the connections with a warning are again displayed at the top of the table. Move your cursor over the column headings for a description of the column.

A warning is displayed if the Open column shows 0 for a source or destination application. This warning means that your application is not connected. Investigate the causes. For example, the application might have stopped, or be offline.

These columns provide information about the state of your queues:

Open: The number of connections currently open on the broker.
Closed: The number of connections that have been closed since the broker started. This number increases as more connections are opened and closed.
Failed: The number of failed connections since the broker started. This number increases as more connections fail.

Interpreting the information in the Queue Monitoring tab

The Queue Monitoring tab contains a table that shows information about the important queues that your pattern is using.

Queues with a warning are shown at the top of the table. You can sort the columns by clicking the headings. When the table is refreshed, queues with a warning are again displayed at the top of the table. Move your cursor over the column headings for a description of the column.

A warning is displayed if the queue depth reaches the high depth limit, which is a percentage of the maximum depth. Identify why the queue is becoming full. For example, the application might have stopped taking messages off the queue.

To change the percentage settings for the Low Depth Limit or High Depth Limit columns, or to change the values for the Max Depth column, edit the queues on the queue manager.

These columns provide information about the state of your queues:

Queue Depth: The number of messages in the queue.
Last Message: The end time of the last 20 second monitoring period during which one or more messages passed through the message flow.
Low Depth Limit: The value at which the number of messages in the queue is considered to be low. When the number of messages falls below this value, a Low Depth event is triggered.

High Depth Limit: The value at which the number of messages in the queue is considered to be high. When the number of messages rises above this value, a High Depth event is triggered.

Max Depth: The maximum number of messages that a queue can contain before it becomes full.

Changing your applications, flows, or queues

If you change your applications, flows, or queues, you might have to update certain properties in IBM Integration Explorer.

Information that the broker uses to monitor your clinical applications is stored in user-defined properties of the message flow. To display these properties, right-click the flow, and then select Properties > User Defined Properties.

If the IP address or port number of a source or destination application changes, update the TCPIPNode property. The value is in the following form:
```
Nodename/IPAddress:Port  
```
For example, SendHL7/localhost:2222
If you create new queues, or rename existing queues, ensure that the queue name starts with the value of the QueuePrefix property. For example, if the QueuePrefix is ibm, the queue name is ibm.NewQueueName
To determine whether the flow holds client or server connections, you must use the following flow naming convention:
- For server TCPIP nodes, the flow name must end in Receiver
- For client TCPIP nodes, the flow name must end in Sender

Last updated : 2015-12-07 16:17:39

Task topic | Version 3.0.0.1 | ha04010