Sample Common Base Event instance

The XML document shown below is an example of a Common Base Event (CBE) instance generated by a WAS application.

<CommonBaseEvent  creationTime="2004-09-18T04:03:28.484Z"
      globalInstanceId="myhost:1095479647062:1899"
      msg="WSVR0024I: Server server1 stopped"
      severity="10"
      version="1.0.1">

  ... several extendedDataElements for WAS internal use only ...

<sourceComponentId   component="com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ServerCollaborator"
        componentIdType="Unknown"
        executionEnvironment="Windows 2000[x86]#5.0"
        instanceId="myhost\myhost\server1"
        location="myhost"
        locationType="Hostname"
        processId="1095479647062"
        subComponent="Unknown"
        threadId="Alarm : 0"
        componentType="http://www.ibm.com/namespaces/autonomic/WebSphereApplicationServer"/>
  
  <msgDataElement msgLocale="en_US">
    <msgCatalogTokens value="server1"/>
    <msgId>WSVR0024I< /msgId>
    <msgCatalogId>WSVR0024I< /msgCatalogId>
    <msgCatalog>com.ibm.ws.runtime.runtime< /msgCatalog>
  </msgDataElement>
  
  <situation categoryName="ReportSituation">
    <situationType xsi:type="ReportSituation" reasoningScope="EXTERNAL" reportCategory="LOG"/>
  </situation>

</CommonBaseEvent>

Note that there are a number of extendedDataElement elements in the actual XML which are used by WebSphere Application Server, but which are not for use by applications as they may change without notice in future releases.

The CommonBaseEvent element defines the CBE instance. This element has a set of attributes that are common for all CBEs. This includes the extensionName attribute that defines the type or class of the CBE instance, the creation time, severity and priority.

Nested within the CommonBaseEvent element are elements giving more detail about the situation. The first of these is the situation element. This is a standardized classification of the situation.

The CommonBaseEvent element also includes the sourceComponentId and the (optional) reporterComponentId elements. The sourceComponentId describes where the situation occurred; the reporterComponentId describes where the situation was detected. If the sourceComponentId and reporterComponentId are the same, the reporterComponentId is omitted.

The attributes of both the sourceComponentId and the reporterComponentId elements are the same. They identify the component’s type, name, operating system and network location. The content of these attributes provides vertical correlation of the stack of IT resources active when the when the CBE was created.

Also included in the CommonBaseEvent element are contextDataElements that describe the context in which the situation occurred. This context correlates CBE instances that were part of the same piece of work. This is called horizontal correlation since an instance of a particular context type correlates events at the same level of abstraction (for example at the business level, or at the application level, or at the middleware level.)

Finally, there are the extended data elements. These contain additional data used to describe to situation. In this example, there is an extended data element added by WAS to describe the J2EE component that generated the CBE instance and some application data.