Listener applications

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A Listener is an application written for a specific Network Manager database. The purpose of a Listener is to "listen" and respond to record events that occur in the associated database.

Record events in the database include updates to existing records, additions of new records, and deletions of existing records. A Listener application can process these record events in order to:

  • Update an external database
  • Send email to an appropriate administrator or end user based on the event type
  • Integrate with a variety of third-party products or applications

Users of the Perl API can also make use of the mail modules (for example, Mail::Mailer) to email database record events. Listener applications, through the RIV::OQL module, can send a stream of data into HTML, CGI scripts, and XML data.

Note: Communication with external databases — such as, Oracle® or Sybase® — can be done using the Perl DBI module.

In the record received from the Listener there is a tag for Action Type that defines the action performed. For example, a record returned with an action type of 2 indicates that the listener had picked up a record deletion. The actions are summarized in the table below.

Table 1. Listener actions
Tag Action
0 Insert
1 Update
2 Delete
Note: The listener must be associated with a subject. For example, to listen to events the subject must be ITNM/EVENT/NOTIFY.