Component identification for problem determination

This topic describes types of problem determination events.

A business application is made up of multiple components. A component can be made up of several internal subcomponents. Consistent application of these concepts is critical for effective problem determination of a business application; all of the parts of the application must use the same concepts and assumptions when creating and formatting events. Use the following definitions and examples when creating Common Base Events for problem determination.

Business application

A business application is the business logic and business data used to address a set of specific business requirements. A business application consists of several components of multiple types, combined in a unique manner by an enterprise, to provide the functions and resources that are needed to address those requirements. The primary creator and manager of a business application is the enterprise, and each enterprise or company creates unique business applications. Examples of business applications are the Payroll Application for the ACME Corporation and the Inventory Application for Spacely Sprockets.

Components

A business application is created and managed by the enterprise as a set of components. Components are deployable assets, which are developed either by the enterprise or a vendor, and managed by the enterprise. A component might be created by the enterprise, typically for use within a specific business application. For example, the ACME Corporation might create a set of enterprise beans to represent the business logic required by their Payroll Application. A component might also be an asset that is produced by a vendor and acquired by an enterprise. Examples of these components are hardware products, such as IBM eServers or Sun Solaris systems, or software products, such as IBM WebSphere Application Server, Oracle Database Servers.

Subcomponents

A specific component, depending on its complexity, might consist of several subcomponents. For example, the IBM WebSphere Application Server consists of many subcomponents, such as the enterprise bean container and the servlet engine. Subcomponent information is typically used only by the creator of the component to service the component, and as such are not separately deployable or manageable resources in the enterprise. The enterprise might deploy a change or update to a subcomponent, but only upon guidance from the component vendor and as part of the vendor’s component. For example, a software fix for the enterprise bean container of the IBM WebSphere Application Server is packaged and deployed as a software update to the IBM WebSphere Application Server. Replacement of the processor in an IBM eServer™ is deployed as a physical part, but only as a part of the original deployed component, the IBM eServer.