IBM WebSphere Information Analyzer and Data Quality Assessment

Appendix A. IBM Information Server overview 529

A.2.2 Common services

IBM Information Server is built entirely on a set of shared services that centralize

core tasks across the platform. These include administrative tasks such as

unified service deployment, security, user administration, logging, and reporting.

The common services provides flexible, configurable interconnections among the

many parts of the architecture.

Shared services allow these tasks to be managed and controlled in one place,

regardless of which product module is being used. The common services also

include the metadata services, which provide standard service-oriented access

and analysis of metadata across the platform. In addition, the common services

layer manages how services are deployed from any of the product functions,

allowing cleansing and transformation rules or federated queries to be published

as shared services within an SOA, using a consistent and easy-to-use

mechanism.

The common services layer is deployed on J2EE™-compliant application servers

such as IBM WebSphere Application Server.

IBM Information Server products can access four general categories of service,

such as design, execution, metadata, and unified service deployment, which we

describe in the following sections.

Design services

Design services help developers create function-specific services that can also

be shared. For example, WebSphere Information Analyzer calls a column

analyzer service that was created for enterprise data analysis but can be

integrated with other parts of IBM Information Server because it exhibits common

SOA characteristics.

Attention: Today, common services are consumed exclusively by the various

components of IBM Information Server. These common services are currently

not exposed as public SOA services and, therefore, cannot be invoked by

applications or tools.

530 IBM WebSphere Information Analyzer and Data Quality Assessment

Execution services

Execution services include logging, scheduling, monitoring, reporting, security,

and Web framework. We define those further here:

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Log services help you manage logs across all of the IBM Information Server

suite components. The Web console shown in Figure A-2 on page 530

provides a central place to view logs and resolve problems. Logs are stored in

the common repository, and each IBM Information Server suite component

defines relevant logging categories. You can configure which categories of

logging messages are saved in the repository. Log views are saved queries

that an administrator can create to help with common tasks. For example, you

might want to display all of the errors in DataStage jobs that ran in the past 24

hours. Logging is organized by server components. The Web console

displays default and active configurations for each component.

Figure A-2 Web console for setting up logs

Appendix A. IBM Information Server overview 531

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Scheduling services help plan and track activities such as logging and

reporting, and suite component tasks such data monitoring and trending.

Schedules are maintained using the IBM Information Server console shown in

Figure A-3 on page 531, which helps you to define schedules; to view their

status, history, and forecast; and to purge them from the system.

Figure A-3 Web console scheduling view creation

532 IBM WebSphere Information Analyzer and Data Quality Assessment

򐂰 Reporting services manage run time and administrative aspects of reporting

for IBM Information Server. You can create product-specific reports for

WebSphere DataStage, WebSphere QualityStage, and WebSphere

Information Analyzer, and cross-product reports for logging, monitoring,

scheduling, and security services. All reporting tasks are set up and run from

a single interface—the IBM Information Server Web console. You can retrieve

and view reports and schedule reports to run at a specific time and frequency.

You define reports by choosing from a set of predefined parameters and

templates as shown in Figure A-4. You can specify a history policy that

determines how the report will be archived and when it expires. Reports can

be formatted as HTML, PDF, or Microsoft Word documents.

Figure A-4 Web console logging report creation