Probes
In the Administration Console
An operations web console that allows batch jobs to be scheduled, run manually and monitored. The console also provides for viewing and modification of business and user applicable system configuration., probes can be viewed and managed in the Probes screen.
Probes provide functional monitoring of a job’s health. A probe In the Administration Console architecture, a mechanism which allows for the execution of predefined queries and for the comparison of the results of those queries against pre-configured targets. Probes can be reviewed and managed via the Admin Console. is a mechanism that allows the execution of predefined queries and the comparison of the query results against preconfigured targets. Each probe is very specific to the functionality of the job it is monitoring, for example indicating whether inputs have been received as frequently as expected or the percentage of rejections is within an acceptable tolerance.
There are three types of probe:
Alert
An alert probe warns operators when expected targets have not been met or are in danger of not being met. For example, an alert probe can detect whether:
- A job was executed punctually.
- An extract daemon A computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the control of an interactive user. has produced a file.
- A load daemon has processed an inbound file.
- A job has executed as expected.
For Alert probes you can configure email recipients to receive notifications.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)
An SLA probe gathers statistics on a daily basis about all jobs that have SLA Service Level Agreement. A contract or a part of a contract that defines the services a service provider will provide and the required level or standard for those services. dependencies. For example, an SLA probe can detect:
- Whether a file was produced by a third party Of software; a reusable component developed to be either freely distributed or sold by an entity other than the original vendor of the development platform. (if no file was produced, the SLA is breached).
- The number of configuration errors in a file produced by a third party (if the errors exceed a configurable value, the SLA is breached).
System
A system probe monitors the overall health of the batch server, for example, a system probe can detect any exception that causes a job to fail.
Standard alert, SLA, and system probes for CMP Converged Monetisation Platform. The MDS Global product that supports customer care and billing for digital service providers. batch jobs are predetermined with Business Operations and configured prior to deployment. A CMP batch job can have as many probes as required by Business Operations.
Probes are identified by a name, which often includes the stage of a process and what the probe is testing for. For example a probe named Completed checks whether a daemon or job for a particular stage has completed successfully, and a probe named Transmission checks whether a file has been successfully transmitted. Examples of probe names include:
-
System Activity Batch Complete.
-
General Ledger Extract Complete.
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Comms Email Verification Normal.
Probes can check any stage and status of a process. Processes in CMP typically either:
- Produce an outbound file for a third party.
- Or, the reverse process - receive an inbound file from a third party and load the data from an inbound file into CMP.
Some processes in CMP, for example Purging, act only on CMP tables and do not involve files from external sources.
So processes can involve a number of stages, such as:
- Batch - A batch job acts only on CMP tables.
- Extract - Data is extracted from CMP tables to create outbound files, for example during the Invoice Analytics, Credit Reference or Bill Print jobs.
- Load - Data from inbound files is loaded into CMP tables, for example during the Recurring Payment Rejections, Managed Numbers or SIM Subscriber Identity Module. A smart card (electronic chip) inside a mobile phone that communicates with the network and carries an identification number unique to the owner. The SIM can also store personal data. Profiles jobs.
- Transform - Data is transformed to and from JSON JavaScript Object Notation. JSON is a lightweight format for storing and transporting data, often used when data is sent from a server to a web page. files, according to the CMP JSON schema A specification for JSON based format for defining the structure of JSON data., for example during the Rated Usage and Ledger jobs.
- Transmission - Files are sent to third parties, such as during the Communications process.
- Verification - Confirmation that files have been sent or received.
- Acknowledgement - This includes outbound acknowledgement of an inbound file, confirming CMP has processed a file from a third party or inbound acknowledgement of an outbound file, for example a third party or adaptor informing CMP whether it was able to transform and transmit a file.
A probe can have the following statuses:
- Severe
- Warning
- Success
- Not Run.
In addition to the characteristics above, each probe can be viewed individually to see its:
- Definition - a description of what the probe does.
- Version - all probes that are initialised must have at least one version (see below).
- History - a history of all probes is kept for reporting purposes. The history of a probe includes its execution date, whether it's pending distribution and the result and status of the probe.
- Notes - Notes are made by the creators of probes and probe versions to help the future understanding of other operators.
- Recipients - alert probes can have recipients that are notified by email when a probe has a Warning or Severe status.
In order to initialise a probe, you must create a probe version. A probe version sets the conditions at which the probe status becomes Severe or Warning. This can include, for example:
- The number of job executions
- The number of files received
- The number of files transmitted
- The number of errors in inbound files.
MDS Global ships probe versions as part of the SQL deployment.
SLA Probe statistics are aggregated and viewed at month and year level in Administration Console. SLA information can be exported from Administration Console for reporting purposes.