IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Developing monitor models

What are monitor models?

A monitor model describes metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) (collectively called business measures), their dependencies on incoming events, conditions warranting business actions (business situations), and outbound events that report these conditions and might trigger business actions.

Specifically, the monitor model describes how to perform these steps:

• Gather information from events that will be stored in a data warehouse for reporting.
• Group events about the same monitored entity.
• Structure this information (for example, to allow dimensional analysis).
• Combine this information (for example, to identify trends).
• Visualize this information using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) diagrams.

• Identify business situations in near real time, and trigger resulting actions by sending out events.

The monitor model defines the steps in enough detail that they can be executed in a runtime environment for business monitoring, such as Business Monitor.

The key to having a successful set of business measures is deciding on the few vital measures that are linked to your success. First, determine your business goals and the business measures with which you can compare your current performance with these goals. These business measures might include financial data, time-related data, throughput measures, or other performance indicators. Next, determine the business events that contain the information required to calculate the business measures. They can come from business applications, process engines, or other systems. These events often include order entry notifications, delivery notifications, and events reporting warehouse inventory transactions. Then create a monitor model that includes subscriptions to the events. Add instructions to the monitor model to describe how to calculate the business measures from event data. Based on this model, Business Monitor then provides the required information both in real time and historically.

In Business Monitor, monitor models are represented as Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents that specify how values should be extracted from events at run time and collected, combined, and stored for representation on a dashboard. The monitor model is a top-level container that contains five parts: the monitor details model (monitoring contexts, metrics, triggers, and so on), the KPI model (KPI contexts and KPIs with their events and triggers), the dimensional model (cubes, dimensions, and measures), the visual model (diagrams associated with monitoring contexts and KPI contexts for display in the dashboard), and the event model (references to event definitions for all inbound and outbound events).

This section briefly explains the following parts of the monitor model container:

• What can be monitored
  A monitoring-enabled application generates a series of events that are sent to Business Monitor in XML format. As long as the available events contain the needed data, a monitor model can be created to describe how to monitor the application.
• How monitoring works
  Monitor models contain monitoring contexts, which define the set of information to be collected at run time. A monitoring context is created for each real-world object that is monitored.
• Monitor details models
  A monitor model consists of several parts describing different aspects: the monitor details model, the KPI model, the dimensional model, the visual model, and the event model. The monitor details model is a container for monitoring contexts and their associated metrics, keys, counters, stopwatches, triggers, and events. The monitor details model holds most of the monitor model information.
• Global process monitor model
  

  You can use the global process monitor model to monitor processes running in IBM BPM.

• KPI models
  The key performance indicator (KPI) model is the part of the monitor model that contains the KPI contexts, which in turn contain KPIs and their associated triggers and events. KPI contexts can process inbound events, evaluate recurring wait-time triggers, and send outbound events.
• Dimensional models
  The dimensional model is the part of the monitor model that contains the cubes used for dimensional analysis. The cubes in turn contain measures and dimensions.

  If you are planning to use Cognos for dimensional analysis in the dashboards, define a dimensional model.

• Visual models
  The visual model is the part of the monitor model that contains visualizations. Each visualization contains a reference to a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) diagram that can be displayed in the Business Monitor dashboards. In addition, each visualization can include a set of actions describing how and when the diagram will be modified based on the values of metrics and KPIs.
• Event models
  The event model is the part of the monitor model that refers to all of the event definitions used in the monitor model. The event model refers to each event definition that you use as an inbound or outbound event type in the monitor details model or KPI model. It also refers to any schemas used to describe the structure of individual event parts.
• Expression support
  The Monitor Model editor uses eight XML Schema datatypes as the foundation of its type model. It uses a subset of the XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0 to create expressions.
• Monitor XML schema definition (monitor.xsd)
  Monitor models for Business Monitor are in an XML format that is defined by the monitor.xsd schema definition.