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RapidInsight for Netcool (RI4NC) Getting Started Guide
RapidInsight for Netcool Overview
RapidInsight is an integration and automation solution for operations management, and typically used to integrate data from disparate management systems and present to users through a simple, unified, consistent web based user interface.
In today's organizations, managing the IT infrastructure is a complex undertaking. Most organizations use number of tools for different management disciplines and for different technologies, yet the need to manage the infrastructure holistically is apparent. RapidInsight provides capabilities to consolidate data from disparate systems and make it available to users through simple, consistent easy to use web based interface to faciliate management processes.
RapidInsight is built upon standard web technologies therefore easily customizable and extensible without requiring proprietary know-how.
IBM Tivoli/Netcool Omnibus is an event management solution widely used by service providers and large enterprises. RapidInsight integrates with Netcool Omnibus and makes events from Netcool Omnibus server available through standard interfaces.
The latest reincarnation of RapidInsight for Netcool is a complete rewrite. Some of the design principles guiding the development of this release include:
- user requirements vary significantly. There is no one "perfect design", hence the solution has to be flexible and open to accommodate different needs.
- client side plugins are painful. Java applets and activex are strictly out. Flash is easier to maintain but not ideal as it still requires a plugin.
- scalability and performance are crucial and challenging. Many Netcool implementations have tens of thousands (even 100K+) active events. The solution should be able to handle high number of events both on the server and client. Scalability and performance on the client side (browser) is particularly challenging.
- No new/proprietary languages. Don't create new languages or frameworks (done this before). There are number of available open source options out there for pretty much everything. They may not do exactly what we want but often come close enough. A developer who is familiar with common web technologies (application servers, databases, search, javascript, etc.) should be able to learn how to use/enhance the solution with ease.
- Search is the killer feature. users need to be able to find the events they are interested in easily.
- Implementation should be straight forward with ideally no external dependencies. Despite the required flexibility and hence toolkit like capabilities, the solution should also have smarts defaults to get it up and running easily.
- The UI should not try to replicate the desktop client (as we've done in previously) and should focus on taking advantage of the native capabilities of the browser instead.
RapidInsight for Netcool provides an innovative web based interface to work with Netcool events:
- an active (read/write) interface (AJAX) without no activex or java applets
- the interface is designed to work with high volume of events with ease
- easy to use google search like interface that enables users to create and save queries to filter events by point and click, without requiring programming knowledge.
- data from the server side is exposed over web api (XML/JSON), enabling development of alternative/additional user interfaces easily.
- same interface is used to access historical events as well as active events
- can be used to access historical events as well as active events, since events are not stored in memory.
