Data item routing

IBM® Intelligent Operations Center processes incoming data items to determine how information is displayed.

Other products and services can be integrated with IBM Intelligent Operations Center through the message bus service. KPIs are monitored by the business monitoring service.

Data items are received by IBM Intelligent Operations Center. The data items can be displayed on a list, and can affect what is displayed in the user interface either on a geospatial map, or on a location map. Data items that do not have corresponding KPI or standard operating procedure routing are displayed according to the information that is received about the data item.

The configuration of the corresponding data source determines how data items are routed when they are received into the system. The Data Sources configuration tool provides the following destination and processing options:
  • IBM Intelligent Operations Center
  • Key performance indicator
  • Standard operating procedure
  • Integration topic
  • Correlation topic

You can create multiple routing expressions that route data items to multiple destinations. However, take care if one of the routing expressions has IBM Intelligent Operations Center as the destination. The other routing expressions are evaluated only if the routing expression that routes the data items to IBM Intelligent Operations Center evaluates to true.

Therefore, if you use the same property to route data items to multiple destinations, where one of the destinations is IBM Intelligent Operations Center, the property must have the same value in each routing expression. Otherwise, if the routing expression that routes the data items to IBM Intelligent Operations Center evaluates to false, then none of the other routing expressions are evaluated. For example, consider the scenario where you define the following routing expressions:
  • If the value of property A equals ABC, route the data items to IBM Intelligent Operations Center.
  • If the value of property A equals DEF, route the data items to KPI processing.
In the previous scenario, data items are never sent to KPI processing. For a data item, if the value of A equals ABC, the data item is imported into IBM Intelligent Operations Center. If the value of A equals DEF, the data item is not imported into IBM Intelligent Operations Center at all and the second expression is not evaluated.

For more information about the Data Sources configuration tool and data routing, see the link at the end of the topic.

Key performance indicator

When you configure a data source, you can route data items to KPI processing by IBM Business Monitor, so that they are incorporated into the calculation of KPI values. The definition of KPIs in a KPI model determines how KPIs are displayed on the status views in the user interface, and also determines how information from data items is processed. For example, if a KPI threshold is exceeded, the data item might be flagged with a higher urgency or severity. An administrator can use the Key Performance Indicators configuration tool to change or extend existing KPI models in IBM Intelligent Operations Center. KPI models are initially created in IBM Business Monitor. For more information about configuring and integrating KPIs, see the links at the end of the topic.

Standard operating procedure

When you configure a data source, you can route data items to a specific standard operating procedure. If a data item matches the routing expression, a new instance of a standard operating procedure is created that is based on the selected standard operating procedure definition. If an instance of the standard operating procedure is already running, the data item is associated with the active standard operating procedure instance. For more information about configuring and viewing standard operating procedures definitions, see the link at the end of the topic.

Integration topic

You can add your own routing destination to the solution. You can create a WebSphere® Application Server integration topic and add it to the solution.

If you update the routing schema file with the custom properties for the data source that you want to route to the integration topic, the routing schema file can be used to generate a set of Java JAXB classes. Applications that are listening to the integration topic can use the routing schema file to convert an incoming XML message to Java classes that the applications can then process.