RMF3 DDS (Data Portal) access of XML feeds programatically
Graham Harris
programmatically, and am having a bit of a tough time getting anywhere.
I should state that I have already successfully setup multiple data feeds
from our RMF3 Data Portal going into an Excel spreadsheet, and messed with
it in that manner, and that works just great, but I don't really want to use
this as a presentation vehicle going forward, as I envisage the maintenance
overhead potentially becoming substantial, and I dont really want to get
into having to create a pile of VBA to try to get it to auto-maintain
itself!! Plus, Excel doesn't cope very well with some of the XML feeds when
they aren't in a regular tabular format.
What I ideally want to end up with is a self-contained Web Browser
solution (i.e. client-side only - no "servers" involved, other than the Data
Portal data source), which I can then use to present semi-customised views
of useful RMF metrics in ways that make sense (which in many cases has to
have a degree of intelligence behind it - e.g. glueing multiple "CPC" views
of CECs together to get a 1-page CPU overview of a multi-CEC, multi-sysplex
environment - which is kinda what I've already done in Excel, but I don't
feel its an ideal way to go)
I anticipate this should be technically possible with Javascript, which
would be preferable for me as I have dealt with quite a lot of that already,
but if other coding solutions are the answer, I am happy to sit down & learn
whatever's necessary.
If anyone is able to point me in the right direction to get me started with
accessing the DDS data feeds programmatically, I would be most grateful.
Thanks.
Graham Harris
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to list...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO
Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
Shane
> I would like to access RMF3 DDS Data Portal (GPMSERVE) XML feeds
> programmatically, and am having a bit of a tough time getting anywhere.
Since you mentioned XML, I presume you are talking about the CIM server.
I had a look at the DDS data prior to CIM and it was *ugly* to get the
data out to a little endian ASCII client.
Once CIM was announced I gave it away, hoping to find the opportunity to
use that at some point. Never came to pass.
I did have a look at the time and I'm pretty sure I managed to find some
python bindings. I would be surprised if there weren't bindings for
other languages as well.
Shane ...
Scott Chapman
CMG '07 as a late breaking paper. It seems that it's not in the
proceedings, at least I can't find it searching the CMG archives, which
is kind of annoying--presumably something to do with being a late
breaking paper. It was published in the Journal in 2008, if you happen
to have those back issues, but again I don't see them in electronic
form on cmg.org.
My technique is, as you are thinking about, JavaScript running in the
browser, periodically (shortly after the RMF interval) pulling the XML
from the DDS. We actually have 4 separate sysplexes, so I can pull
data from all 4 sysplexes and present it on one consolidated screen.
And integrate it with historical data as well. Not too difficult, and even
easier if you can be allowed access to one of the common JS libraries.
The negative is having to make multiple requests per interval per
sysplex per user. For a few users the overhead is trivial, but I
wouldn't expect my solution to scale to scores or hundreds of users.
And over a slow network link it's not ideal. I'm currently thinking about
writing a newer version that would use a started task (probably
written in Java so it could run on a zAAP) that would do the RMF DDS
queries and emit a single consolidated XML stream.
In short, your idea is quite doable. If you're interested in the paper,
send me a message of list and I'll get it to you.