Advanced rendering features can show relationships between elements. These relationships can be enhanced to show dependency relationships that promote state via the dependency tree.
Use Data Integrator to mine and visualize relationships that can be described in a database data source. This can be accomplished by customizing the generated Data Integrator hierarchy file for the adapter instance. Dependencies can be defined by creating an explicit hierarchy structure in the Data Integrator adapter.
Relationship data is supported in Data Integrator using one or more alarm definitions, which mine data properties and correlate them to element properties specified by the Data Integrator adapter.
Relationships can provide situational awareness. They can also direct the Service Configuration Manager (SCM) to dynamically create particular Service Views or Service Models. For more information about SCM, see Using the Service Configuration Manager
in the Operations Center Service Modeling Guide.
To set up the hierarchy file to introduce relationship data into Operations Center via Data Integrator:
Identify elements in the Data Integrator adapter structure from which relationship data is associated.
Make a note of element properties that can be used to uniquely identify an element and how they relate to the “to” element in the relationship.
Identify elements in the Data Integrator structure to which relationship data is associated.
Make a note of element properties that can be used to uniquely identify an element and how they relate to the “from” element in the relationship.
In some cases, the to and from can be the same hierarchy location.
Create an alarm definition that queries the database tables that contain relationship data.
Include properties that can map the from element to the to elements.
Edit the adapter Hierarchy File to customize the entry for the alarm definition.
Add XML syntax to the group element tag for the alarm definition, to indicate how the alarm-oriented data is used to create relationships using from and to elements.
The following provides an overview of each tag (note that all values are case-sensitive):
LinkDef.Count: The number of relationship link definitions found in this specific location in the hierarchy. Multiple relationship definitions are supported with the LinkDef.number syntax, which identifies the link definition instance that is referenced.
LinkDef.number.Source.Path: The location of relationship’s from elements. Only applicable to group hierarchies. There is no need to differentiate generated structures.
LinkDef.number.Source.Property: The from element property to be matched against the Alarm Source property as specified in LinkDef.number.Alarm.Source.Property. These two values must be the same in order to establish a relationship with the source element.
LinkDef.number.Target.Path: The location of relationship’s to elements. This tag is treated exactly the same as LinkDef.number.Source.Path.
LinkDef.number.Target.Property: The to element property to be matched against the Alarm Source property as specified in LinkDef.number.Alarm.Source.Property.
LinkDef.number.Alarm.Source.Property: The alarm property used to link to the relationship’s from element property as specified in LinkDef.number.Source.Property.
LinkDef.number.Alarm.Target.Property: The alarm property used to link to the relationship’s to element property as specified in LinkDef.number.Target.Property.
LinkDef.number.Name: The relationship name. This name displays as a reference in the Operations Center Relationship Browser.