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The VisiBroker Location Service collaborates intimately with the Smart Agent (also known as osagent) to provide a facility for locating CORBA object instances and Services belonging to the same ORB Domain. All the VisiBroker Clients, Servers and Services from the same ORB Domain use the same Smart Agent port number. The Location Service Browser described in this article can be used to manage the Smart Agents, Services and Server Objects. This article assumes that you already know the fundamental concept of VisiBroker ORB Domain and it's relationship with the Smart Agent. To have a more in-depth understanding on this topic, please read the chapter on "Using the Smart Agent" inside the VisiBroker Developer's Guide in VisiBroker 8.5 documentation.

Adding a new ORB Domain

To manage a VisiBroker ORB Domain using VBConsole, you must first know the Smart Agent port number associated with this ORB Domain, and then add it to VBConsole in a few simple steps.

In the Navigation Pane, popup the context menu under the “Smart Agent Domains” icon and select “New Smart Agent port…”. The following “New Smart Agent Port” dialog box will appear.

Enter the ORB Domain’s Smart Agent port number (e.g. 41225 in this case), and you are now ready to manage all the VisiBroker Services belonging to this ORB Domain. Note that VBConsole will remember this new ORB Domain and will load it automatically in the Navigation Pane for subsequent VBConsole sessions until it is deleted.

VBConsole will attempt to locate and display the VisiBroker Services that are already running in this ORB Domain. For example, if VisiBroker Services (such as Smart Agent, Naming Service, Implementation Repository, Interface Repository, GateKeeper, Notification Service, etc) are running in this ORB Domain, the Services’ names and icons will be displayed in the Navigation Pane. The detailed information for each Service is displayed in the Content Pane.

Smart Agents Configuration View

To manage the Smart Agent (osagent) instances that are running in the ORB Domain, you simply need to click on the “SmartAgent Port:XXX” icon in the Navigation Pane. The Location Service Browser will be displayed in the Content Pane.

To view the configuration of these Smart Agent instances, click the “Smart Agents view” button in the Content Pane. You can refresh this view by clicking the same button again.

The field names displayed in the “Smart Agents” view table are explained below:

• Host Name: Host name of the machine which the osagent runs in.
• Host IP Address: IP address of the machine which the osagent runs in.
• PID: Process Id of the osagent process.
• Version: Version information of the osagent.
• Log: Location of the osagent debug logging directory.
• Address File: Location of the Agent Address File.
• Local Address File: Location of the Agent Local Address File.

Note that currently, the “Path” field is not used, and the “Command Line” field is hard coded to “osagent”.

The information displayed here can help you in analyzing the osagents' configuration and communication when debugging some Location Service related production issues.

Smart Agents Statistic View

To view the statistics of the Smart Agent instances, click the “Smart Agents statistic view” button in the Content Pane. You can refresh this view by clicking the same button again.

The field names displayed in the “Statistic” view table are explained below:

• Host Name: Host name of the machine which the osagent runs in.
• Host IP Address: IP address of the machine which the osagent runs in.
• File Descriptor: Number of file descriptor currently used by the osagent process.
• Thread: Number of thread created in the osagent process.
• Virtual memory: Virtual memory (in Kilobytes) consumption of the osagent process.
• Memory Usage: Resident memory (in Kilobytes) consumption of the osagent process.

Note that currently, both the “CPU” and “CPU Time” fields are not used.

The information displayed here can help you monitor the resource consumption of the osagent processes.

Registered Objects View

To view the list of CORBA Server Object instances currently registered with the Smart Agents, click the “List of objects registered with Smart Agents” button in the Content Pane. You can refresh this view by clicking the same button again.

The field names displayed in the “Registered Objects” view table are explained below:

• Object Type: Repository Id of the interface exposed by the Object instance.
• Object Name: Instance Name of the Object instance.
• Host Name: Host name of the machine which the Object instance is running.
• Host IP Address: IP address of the machine which the Object instance is running.
• IIOP Port: The IIOP port number on the host that is associated with the Object instance.
• Activable: Whether the Object instance has been registered (true) with an Object Activation Daemon (OAD), or has been started by some other means (false).

You can perform other operations from this view. For example, you can ping an Object instance by selecting the “Ping CORBA Object…” context menu item. You can also view its IOR details by selecting the “IOR Details…” context menu item. The following screen shot is an example of the “IOR Details” dialog box of a Naming Service instance.

The information displayed here can help you in monitoring and analyzing the Services and Server Object instances.

Registered POAs View

To view the list of POAs currently registered with the Smart Agents, click the “List of POAs registered with Smart Agents” button in the Content Pane. You can refresh this view by clicking the same button again.

The field names displayed in the “Registered POAs” view table are explained below:

• POA Name: Name of the POA instance.
• Host Name: Host name of the machine which the POA instance is running.
• Host IP Address: IP address of the machine which the POA instance is running.
• IIOP Port: The IIOP port number on the host that is associated with the POA instance.

Note that the “Activable” field (always false) is not used in this View.

The information displayed here can help you monitor and analyze the Services and POA instances.

Location Service Browser is more than just osfind with a GUI

You may have noticed that you some of the information displayed in Location Service Browser can also be displayed using the “osfind” command line tool such as the following:

osfind: Found 2 agents at port 41225
        HOST: sin-tssol10x86x64
        HOST: sin-tsrhel55x64.microfocus.com
osfind: Found 1 OADs in your domain
        HOST: sin-tsrhel55x64.microfocus.com
osfind: There are no Object Implementations registered with OADs.
osfind: Following are the list of Implementations started manually.
        HOST: sin-tsrhel55x64.microfocus.com
          REPOSITORY ID: IDL:omg.org/CosNaming/ExtendedNamingContextFactory:1.0
            OBJECT NAME: NameService
          REPOSITORY ID: *
            POA NAME: /CLUSTER_POANameService
            POA NAME: /CONTEXT_POANameService
          REPOSITORY ID: RMI:com.inprise.j2ee.jndi.serial.RemoteProviderExt:0000000000000000
            OBJECT NAME: serial_provider_defaultname
          REPOSITORY ID: IDL:inprise.com/gatekeeper/AliasManager:1.0
            OBJECT NAME: GIOPProxy
          REPOSITORY ID: IDL:visigenic.com/Activation/OAD:1.0
            OBJECT NAME: 10.16.12.220
          REPOSITORY ID: IDL:inprise.com/ServerManager/Container:1.0
            OBJECT NAME: GateKeeper-
            OBJECT NAME: NameService
          REPOSITORY ID: IDL:omg.org/CosNamingExt/ClusterManager:1.0
            OBJECT NAME: NameService
        HOST: sin-tssol10x86x64
          REPOSITORY ID: *
            POA NAME: /$vn
          REPOSITORY ID: IDL:omg.org/CosEventChannelAdmin/EventChannel:1.0
            OBJECT NAME: default_channel
          REPOSITORY ID: IDL:omg.org/CORBA/Repository:1.0
          REPOSITORY ID: IDL:inprise.com/ServerManager/Container:1.0
            OBJECT NAME: VisiNotifyChannelFactory
            OBJECT NAME: InterfaceRepository
          REPOSITORY ID: IDL:omg.org/CosEventChannelAdmin/EventChannelFactory:1.0
            OBJECT NAME: VisiNotifyChannelFactory

However, the Location Service Browser is more than just an osfind with a GUI. It retrieves, organizes and displays information that is not available in osfind, such as process Id, memory usage, file descriptor usage, IIOP port number, configuration and log file locations, IOR details. You can use it to ping the Server Objects too. All these information can also be obtained if you are familiar with the osagent setup or if you know OS specific monitoring tools/commands. But here, the VBConsole does it for you.

Configuring Smart Agent

The Smart Agent can be configured using the “VisiBroker Properties File Editor” Tool which is integrated with the VBConsole. It is helpful to inexperienced users who are not familiar with the exact property names, their possible values and the configuration file format. This Tool can be launched under the “Tools” pull-down menu. Alternatively, you can directly edit the Smart Agent properties and the configuration files using any text editor.

The first step to configure the Smart Agent is to open an existing or create a new properties file under the “File” pull-down menu. Next, select the required Smart Agent configuration wizards under the “Wizard” pull-down menu. There are four wizards available to help you configure the Smart Agent.

1. Smart Agent Configuration Wizard

Menu location: Wizard -> Smart Agent -> Smart Agent Configuration Wizard

This Wizard helps you configure the following properties:

• vbroker.agent.port
• vbroker.agent.addrFile
• vbroker.agent.localFile

2. Subnet Configuration Wizard

Menu location: Wizard -> Smart Agent -> Subnet Configuration Wizard

This Wizard helps you edit the content of the Agent Address File specified by the “vbroker.agent.addrFile” property.

3. Multi Homed Host Configuration Wizard

Menu location: Wizard -> Smart Agent -> Multi Homed Host Configuration Wizard

This Wizard helps you edit the content of the Agent Local Address File specified by the “vbroker.agent.localFile” property.

4. Debug Log Configuration Wizard

Menu location: Wizard -> Debug/Log -> Smart Agent

This Wizard helps you configure the following logging related properties:

• vbroker.agent.logLevel
• vbroker.agent.logDir
• vbroker.agent.logSize

After you have configured the Smart Agent properties using the Wizards, you can still fine tune the properties by modifying or adding more advanced properties currently not handled by the Wizards using the integrated text editor. The following screen shot shows the “VisiBroker Properties File Editor” Tool editing the “osagent.properties” file.

Finally, save the properties file. You can configure the Smart Agent to load the properties file when it starts up by setting the “-OSApropStorage” property as shown in the following command:

osagent -OSApropStorage osagent.properties

In summary, the Location Service Browser can simplify your job of managing the Smart Agents, Services and Server Objects that are running in your ORB Domain from a single GUI.

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