Web Application Statistics Monitoring with BAM

WSO2 BAM is a monitoring tool, which performs the task of  aggregating, analyzing and presenting information about business activities. Thereby, BAM can be used with AS in order to effectively monitor the statistics of web applications in AS.

To use BAM with AS, you must first configure the AS settings that allow web application data from AS to be published in BAM. Also, each web application in AS, which you want to monitor in BAM should be individually configured to allow data publishing in BAM. In BAM, the bam_webapp_statistics default toolbox is dedicated for monitoring the web applications.

Configuring web application statistics monitoring with BAM

Perform the following steps to ensure that you have the necessary configurations for monitoring web application statistics with BAM:

Step 1: Start the Application Server

To start the application server for web application monitoring with BAM:

1. Do the following changes to the given files before you start AS.

   1. Go to {AS_HOME}/repository/conf/ folder and open carbon.xml.
      Look for <offset>0</offset> and change it to 1.
   2. Go to {AS_HOME}/repository/conf/etc/  folder and open  bam.xml .
      Look for <WebappDataPublishing>disable</WebappDataPublishing>  and enable it.
2. Start the Application Server. For more information, see Starting the server.

Step 2: Start the Business Activity Monitor

To start BAM and to setup databases for statistics data:

1. Start BAM. For more information, see Starting the server.
2. If you need to change the database that stores statistic data, do the following; 
   
   1. Create a database.
   2. Configure the database in  {BAM_HOME}/repository/conf/datasources/master-datasources.xml  as  WSO2BAM_DATASOURCE .

Step 3: Configure the Application Server (AS)

To configure the AS for publishing statistics in BAM:

1. Log into the AS management console. 

   Webapp data publishing settings need to be configured separately for the tenants.

2. On the Configure tab, click Webapp Data Publishing.

3. Select the Enable webapp stats option.
    
4. Leave the Stream Name, Version, Nick Name, Description as it is.
   If you need to change the latter fields, you will have to make some more changes in the tool box and hive script. 
5. Enter the Receiver URL.
   This refers to the Thrift URL. This is normally tcp://{host}:7611. If you need to use SSL for this the URL will be tcps://{host}:7711. If you change the offset of the BAM server to 1, both ports will be incremented by 1 (7612, 7712)
6. Enter the Cassandra Username. 
7. Enter the Cassandra Password.
8. Click Update to successfully configure the AS for Data publishing to BAM.

Step 4: Configuring the web application that need monitoring

Use either one of the following approaches to configure the web application before deploying. These steps ensures that each web application in AS is individually configured for data publishing in BAM.

1. Enable monitoring via the UI
2. Enable monitoring via the web.xml

Enable monitoring via the UI

1. On the Main tab, under the Applications menu, click List.
2. Click the Context link of the respective web application.
   The selected application dashboard will appear. 
    
3. Click Activate, to enable BAM statistics.
   

Enable monitoring via the web.xml

Add the following context params to the application web.xml

<context-param>
	<param-name>enable.statistics</param-name>
	<param-value>true</param-value>
</context-param>

Step 5: Configure the Business Activity Monitor  (BAM)

1. Log into the BAM management console.

2. On the Main menu, under BAM Toolbox, click Add.

3. Select the  ToolBox From URL option.

4. Enter the URL of the WebApps_Stats_Monitoring toolbox.

5. Click Install.
   Refresh after a few seconds to see if the toolbox is installed.

Step 6: Invoke the web application that has enabled statistics monitoring

1. Access the AS management console.

2. Main menu, under the Applications caption, click List.

3. Click the respective web application context link.
   The application dashboard will appear.

4. Click the web applications services link (e.g.,  /jaxrs_basic/services ).

Step 7: Schedule or execute the webapp statistics

1. Access the BAM management console.
2. On the Main menu, under  Analytics, click List.
   The webapp statistics will be displayed.

3. Execute the webapp statistics or schedule its running sequence.

Viewing the web application statistics

1. On the Main menu, click Dashboard.

2. Login to the dashboard using "admin" as the username and password.

3. Select the Server, Tenant and Web App  to view web application  statistics via the BAM Dashboard.