Creating a Discovery Library store

A Discovery Library store is a directory or folder on a computer in the data center, and it represents the common location for all Discovery Library Adapters (DLAs) to write the XML files that contain resource information. XML data files to be bulk loaded into a TADDM system are placed in the Discovery Library store. To use the bulk loader program, you must create a Discovery Library store.

A DLA is a software program that extracts data from a source application such as IBM® Tivoli® Monitoring or IBM Tivoli Business Service Manager.

Each DLA writes XML files that contain resource information in a particular XML format called the Identity Markup Language (IdML). Any XML file that is written in the IdML format is commonly referred to as a book. To see the Tivoli collection of books that can load the TADDM database with data from other Tivoli products, see http://www.ibm.com/software/brandcatalog/ismlibrary/.

DLAs are specific to a particular product because each product has a distinct method of accessing the resources from the environment. The configuration and installation of a DLA is different for every application. A typical DLA is installed on a system that has access to the data of a particular application. For example, the DLA for IBM Tivoli Monitoring is installed on a computer that has access to the IBM Tivoli Monitoring enterprise management system database. All DLAs are run using the command-line interface and can be scheduled to run using any type of scheduling program in your environment (for example, cron).

You can create a DLA to extract information from existing products or databases in your environment.

For more information about how to create a DLA and about the IdML specification, or for additional details about the Discovery Library store, see the TADDM Discovery Library Adapter Developer's Guide.

Typically, the Discovery Library store is located on the TADDM server. If you do not set up the Discovery Library store on the TADDM server, you must ensure that the TADDM bulk load program that runs on the TADDM server can access the Discovery Library store. Other applications can run on the same computer that hosts the Discovery Library store.

To create the Discovery Library store, complete the following steps:

  1. Create a directory to store the XML files on a computer, with a distinct directory name (for example, c:\IBM\DLFS). Optionally, you can create subdirectories in the main Discovery Library store for each DLA that is used.
  2. Set up a File Transfer Protocol Server (FTP) with at least one user ID. The user ID must have the following permissions: write, rename, and read access to the directory that stores the Discovery Library XML files. If you are not using FTP to transfer the XML files to the Discovery Library store, ensure that the tool you use and the user ID used to run the tool have write permissions to the Discovery Library store directory.
  3. Ensure that the various Discovery Library Adapters have access to the name of the system (host name) that hosts the Discovery Library store. Most Discovery Library Adapters copy XML files to the Discovery Library store.
  4. Ensure that the various Discovery Library Adapters have the user ID and password to connect to the FTP server.
  5. If the DLA does not use FTP, copy your XML files (books) that you want the bulk loader program to access into that shared directory. The shared directory must be accessible by the bulk loader program.

    The book writers and the administrator are not responsible for getting the books into the Discovery Library store. For example, set up a cron job to send the produced IdML books to the Discovery Library store using FTP.

If you are creating a Discovery Library store and want to set up a TADDM database to contain DLA books, a local drive on the domain server can be the networked Discovery Library store. This directory must be defined in the $COLLATION_HOME/etc/bulkload.properties file on the domain server where the data is loaded. If you have multiple domain servers, configure the correct bulk loader program to access the corresponding shared directory. The bulk loader does not delete XML files from the Discovery Library store. You must maintain the files in the Discovery Library store. Ensure that there is enough disk space on the server for the files in the directory. If new XML files are added to the directory frequently, you must regularly clean up the directory.

If you have a synchronization server deployment, you must choose from the following options:
  • If the resources that are referenced in a book are contained in the scope definitions that are defined on one domain server, load that book into the respective domain server.
  • If the resources that are referenced in a book are not contained in the scope definitions that are defined on one domain server, load all of the books into the synchronization server.