Business Activity Monitoring | BAM 12c Series - Introduction

Unlike in BAM 11g, where it the architecture was upgraded from 10g, BAM 12c is a re-engineered product written from ground up. So, we will a lot of changes in this product right from the architecture (although the concepts remain the same). We will see the changes in the product as well as some of the examples and issues that we encounter and how to resolve them in this series. They still evaluating the product, so these might not be the limited list of changes

In Part 1, It will introduce to the new changes in the product. Following are some of the changes that were bought up in the product:

1. Architecture

a. Conceptually everything is same - Data objects, reports etc. But technically the architecture is changed almost more than 80%. It is now designed to support Continuous queries (meaning querying the data using streams) and the architecture is based on mostly this principle.

b. Data objects are classified into 4 types – Simple, Derived, Logical, External.

c. Active Data cache – which was the heart of BAM 11g is now replaced with CQEngine (Continuous Query Engine). All the work done by ADC will be now done by CQE.

d. BAM 11g used to cache the queries and data in ADC components, which is now moved to Oracle Coherence. So, coherence plays a big role in BAM 12c for all the caching.

e. All the reports doesn’t support the active data i.e., we cannot see all the reports in animation like in 11g. Only few components are support active–data. For example, stacked bars doesn’t animate (because they don’t support active data, they don’t refresh themselves). BAM is totally written in ADF. So, this is more a limitation from ADF, and not from BAM.

f. Another big feature that was implemented in BAM 12c is Process Analytics – There were requirements from lots of customers to monitor their processes and data (technically and business-wise) that is flowing through the middleware. In BAM 11g, we used to create data objects and populate the data into it and generate reports. But in BAM 12c, this is automatically done by the BAM product out of the box. We NEED NOT use BAM adapters (OR) sensors to send the data to BAM data objects. Once the process analytics are enabled, the data objects are created automatically and the data will be populated automatically whenever an instance is created. This can be done WITHOUT using BAM adapter/sensors, meaning less work to developers (Ofcourse, the BAM reports have to be created manually).

g. In 11g, reports were directly based on data objects. But in 12c, the reports are based on Business Views which in turn are based on Business Queries, which in turn are based on one of the data objects mentioned above. This seems to be slightly complex, but it is not. This has lots of advantages. We will see this in our next part in this series.

h. No more separate schema for BAM. The BAM schema is now merged with SOAINFRA. So, all the BAM metadata would now be in SOAINFRA schema only.

i. One more change to be highlighted is Folders have now become Projects. So, in order to create a dashboard (and its objects), we have to now create Projects.

2. UI Layer changes

a. In BAM 11g, we had 4 different consoles – Administrator, Architect, Designer and Viewer – that would open in different windows. They are now merged into a single console with 3 different tabs – Home (equivalent to Viewer in 11g), Administrator (Architect and Administrator are combined from 11g) and Designer (Designer in 11g).

b. There are different roles offered by BAM 12c which can be granted to the users to fulfil one of the consoles/tabs mentioned above.

c. The Active Viewer now has a Play button which can launch a dashboard automatically when opened. Once Play is set, it opens whenever the Home tab is clicked.

d. One of the biggest drawback of 11g is support of browsers. BAM 11g used to support only IE 7/8/9. Since, it is now written in Java (i.e., ADF), BAM 12c supports all the browsers and of course on Mobiles.

e. New visualizations – GeoMap, Treemap, Scatter Map, Bubble Map etc.

f. Viewset and CQL monitoring can be done from Administrator.

g. KPIs can now be real-time or based on a schedule.

We will see all these features in our next parts in this series … Stay tuned !!

3. Administration:

a. ICommand is now renamed to BamCommand.