New Features and Changes

This section describes the new features added and the changes made since the last release.

• The addition of the deleteAll CLI command.

  Use the deleteAll command to delete objects already discovered along with related artifacts such as transactions, properties, registered services, devices, and containers.

  This is useful when initial discovery configuration results in the discovery of too many objects or of objects that are not of interest. Using this command allows you to start over without having to reinstall the system or to manually remove all observed entities and related artifacts. For more information, see deleteAll.

• Changes to Execution Context ID (ECID) information.

  An ECID is a unique identifier for tracking a request into the Oracle technology stack. The association of ECIDs with Business Transaction Management messages allows you to access the Request Instance Diagnostics page where you can view a list of the JVMs through which request steps with the specified ECID executed. You can also use the Message Log Search tool to search for messages with a given ECID. For more information, see Accessing Other Diagnostic Tools.

  This release associates an ECID with both the request and response phase of a message. The ECID value for a request message is specified by the requestECID standard property, and the ECID value for a response message is specified by the responseECID standard property. The two ECID values are not necessarily the same.

• The addition of JDBC summary mode settings in the observer communication policy.

  Very large transactions or high JDBC volume might strain BTM resources when the JDBC probe is enabled and instance logging is turned on. It is also possible that calling one operation can result in a large number of calls to the database. To reduce this overhead and free up resources, you can elect to have Business Transaction Management record a summary of these calls rather than noting each one individually. If you decide to enable JDBC summary but also want to investigate individual calls, you can use data base management tools to do so.

  When JDBC summary is enabled, BTM records all JDBC operations individually, but when logging message content, the information is sent in one abridged summary observation per caller, which includes payload information only for the number of slowest SQL statements and faults you specified in the observer communication policy settings. The main idea behind the JDBC summary option is to make BTM performance more efficient while, at the same time, allowing you to get information about slow or faulty operations.

  For more information, see the JDBC Summary entry and Modeling JDBC Calls.

• The introduction of standard properties.

  Standard properties are defined for each phase of a message: request, response, and fault.

  Some standard properties relate to JDBC summary mode; others hold ECID values. For more information on their definition and use, see Standard Properties.

• The ability to target specific observers with configurations.

  New functionality gives you greater flexibility in configuring observers. In prior releases, you could apply only a single Observer Communication policy to any one monitor. The monitor then generated a single observer configuration from this policy and distributed it to all of its associated observers. With this new functionality, you can apply multiple Observer Communication policies to a single monitor and then target each of these policies at a different observer or set of observers. For more information, see Targeting Observers.

• The JMS probe has been significantly improved:

  • JMS Resource services and Message Listener services are now modeled separately.

  • Service operations are now request-response instead of one-way.

  • Cross server dependencies are now tracked.

    Note:

    We highly recommend that you upgrade all observers that monitor JMS traffic. See the Business Transaction Management Installation Guide for information on how to upgrade your observers.

• New options have been added to the Model Configuration section of the Observer Communication Policy. For more information, see the Model Configuration entry.

• The following new elements and attributes provide new options for modeling web applications implemented by Java servlets:

  • adfOptions element – Partition operations based on property values contained in the ADF UI request parameter oracle.adf.view.rich.monitoring.UserActivityInfo.

  • paramGroup element – Partition operations by multiple request parameters.

  • pathPattern attribute – Use free-form patterns to exclude URLs from monitoring.

  • pathLength attribute – Exclude URLs from monitoring that exceed a specified length.

  For more information, see Request Monitoring and Operation Modeling for the WEB_APP Probe.

• These new probes have been added to provide monitoring for more types of components:

  • SOA_WORKFLOW – Monitors Oracle SOA Human Workflow components and notifications.

  • SOA_DIRECT – Monitors direct binding calls between SOA composites and between SOA and Oracle Service Bus.

  For a complete and up-to-date list of the types of services and components that Business Transaction Management can discover and monitor, refer to the Business Transaction Management Certification Matrix. You can locate this document by searching for “BTM certification” at http://support.oracle.com.

• New preconfigured Observer Communication policies.

  Several preconfigured Observer Communication policies have been added to the default system. These policies are preconfigured for monitoring particular types of applications. For more information, see Preconfigured Observer Communication Policies.