Application descriptors overview
IBM® Application descriptors provide complete automation of the process of discovering, creating, and maintaining business applications and their composition.
An application descriptor is an application tag that maps a computer system, application server, or module to a business application. By using application descriptors, you can identify a component of a business application at development time. When application descriptors are discovered, they are used to automatically associate components with business applications, thus eliminating manual modeling and maintenance of business application compositions.
An application descriptor is an XML file that is placed in a specified location that specifies computer systems, application servers (containers), or modules, and associates them with business applications. You can map multiple modules at one time or map an entire container (such as an IBM WebSphere® server).
The $COLLATION_HOME/log/services/TopologyBuilder.log and $COLLATION_HOME/log/agents/AppDescriptorAgent.log files contain log messages relevant to the processing of application descriptor files.
You can use the following strategies for creating and deploying application descriptors:
- During deployment
- Application definition during development and deployment is the recommended approach. With this approach, you can capture the most accurate and complete information about the packaging of modules in business applications.
- After deployment
- You can add application descriptors for deployed modules after initial deployment, by creating the descriptors, and then deploying them to the file system on the target computer.
There are two types of application descriptors:
- Base application descriptor
- Contains general information about an application. The base application descriptor is optional.
- Component application descriptor
- Contains information about a specific computer system, application server, or module deployed within a server.
You must assign a unique application name in both the base application descriptor and the component application descriptor. This unique name is used to correlate all discovered application descriptors for a specific application.
- Application descriptors used for business applications are not supported by the script-based or asynchronous discovery sensors. During the script-based or asynchronous discovery, the application descriptors are not discovered.
- Normal grouping patterns are automatically scheduled but application descriptor based grouping patterns are neither automatically scheduled nor auto executed the first time. This is a limitation of the application descriptor based grouping pattern. For more details, refer Scheduling application descriptor based grouping patterns.