IBM® Tivoli Enterprise Console BAROC data migration

Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus provides integration with Tivoli Enterprise Console.

The Tivoli Enterprise Console product is a rules-based event management application that integrates system, network, database, and application management to help ensure the optimal availability of the IT services of an organization.

In Tivoli Enterprise Console, an event is an object that is created based on data that is obtained from a source that is monitored by an event adapter. Each event is identified by a class name, which the event adapter defines. Class names are used to label events, but each event contains additional information that helps define and locate a potential problem. Event classes can be subclassed to facilitate the further breakdown of information so that more detailed rules can be applied to the information. An adapter formats event information into attributes that contain a name and value, and sends this information to the event server for further processing.

An adapter uses various files for its operations. One of these files is the Basic recorder of objects in C (BAROC) file, which describes the classes of events that the adapter supports, to the event server. The event server must load this file before it can understand events received from the adapter. A BAROC file has a .baroc extension.

In Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus, the ObjectServer stores and processes events in a 'flat' normalized representation, which is not compatible with the class hierarchy and extended attribute format that is adopted for Tivoli Enterprise Console events.

To support the migration of Tivoli Enterprise Console event data, Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus provides a BAROC tool for converting the data. The ObjectServer schema also provides the following objects to support Tivoli Enterprise Console data migration:
  • A master.class_membership table is used to store details of all Tivoli Enterprise Console classes with the class ID, name and parent ID. The BAROC tool populates this table.
  • An ExtendedAttr column of data type VARCHAR(4096) within the alerts.status table, stores multiple name-value pairs in one column, in a format compatible with Tivoli Enterprise Console event strings.
  • SQL and probe rule functions:
    • An instance_of sql function : Returns true if class is a subclass of parent_class or they are equal, using the hierarchy defined in the master.class_membership table.
    • An nvp_exists() sql function: Verifies whether a name-value pair exists.
    • An nvp_get() sql function: Retrieves the value of a specific name-value pair.
    • An nvp_set() sql function: Adds or replaces keys from a name-value pair string and returns the new name-value pair string.
    • An nvp_add() probe rule function: Adds or replaces variables and their values to a name-value pair list or creates a name-value pair list of all variables.
    • An nvp_remove() probe rule function: Removes keys from a name-value pair string and returns the new name-value pair string.