Configuring for discovery of placeholders

You can configure TADDM to create placeholders for undiscovered dependencies in your infrastructure.

Placeholder is an object that is a part of your infrastructure but is not represented in TADDM with the default settings. The reasons why it is not represented might be that one side of the connection is not discovered, no sensor supports such type of the object, or no custom server template is created for it.

Placeholders are of SSoftwareServer class. They have hierarchyDomain and hierarchyType attributes set. The following table specifies the values of the attributes:

Table 1. The `hierarchyDomain` and `hierarchyType` attributes values.
Connection side	`hierachyDomain` attribute value	`hierarchyType` attribute value
Local	`app.placeholder.client.local`	Name of the command which originates the connection, for example `Java`
Remote	`app.placeholder.server.remote`	`Unknown`

By using these values, you can filter unwanted relations in the traversal configuration of business applications. For details, see Traversal configuration.

When a placeholder is created, and then the equivalent App Server is created by a sensor, or a custom server template, the PlaceholderCleanupAgent merges the placeholder with the discovered App Server.

Note: You can create placeholders in TADDM 7.3.0.2, but it is limited. Therefore, it is advised to use placeholders in TADDM 7.3.0.3, and later. Migration of placeholders created in FP2 to FP3 is not supported.

Enabling creation of placeholders

To enable the creation of placeholders, add the following property to the collation.properties file:

com.ibm.cdb.topomgr.topobuilder.agents.ConnectionDependencyAgent2dependencyPlaceholders=true

The default value is false.

When you set this property to true for the first time, you must restart TADDM to enable extended attributes for LogicalConnection and SoftwareServer classes. These extended attributes are necessary for proper functioning of this feature.

In case, above property is set to true then there is no need to set the below properties in collation.properties explicitly, rather their default coded values will be used.

com.ibm.taddm.dependencyPlaceholders.create.localClient.to.remoteServer=true

The default value is true.

com.ibm.taddm.dependencyPlaceholders.create.remoteClient.to.localServer=false

The default value is false.

Note: Placeholders behaviour can be changed by setting these properties in collation.properties.

Important: When you enable the creation of placeholders, your business applications might grow significantly and the building process might be longer. To prevent it, you can filter unwanted relations in the traversal configuration of business applications.

Viewing placeholders

You can view the placeholders in the Inventory Summary pane after you set the filter to Placeholders. Placeholders for undiscovered dependencies are in the Software Servers tab.

Creating custom server templates

You can use placeholders to create custom server templates in the following ways:

By using information about placeholders that is generated by the bizappscli tool. For details, see Actions for analyzing the content of business applications.
By using the command line information that is displayed on the Runtime tab in the Details pane for placeholders of type app.placeholder.*.local.

For more information about custom server templates, see Creating and managing custom server templates.