SOAP example - The CT_GET method

IBM provides some useful SOAP methods with ITM monitoring Web services. The provided methods allow you to dynamically query information and control the ITM monitoring environment.

Let's start with a straightforward example where we are going to query some monitoring information using the CT_GET method. The CT_GET method enables you to receive a group of XML objects or individual XML objects from any ITM monitoring agent. You can use this to obtain real time data from the ITM infrastructure.

ITM also provides a SOAP client to issue the SOAP requests. The client can be either a command line utility (not supported on z/OS though) or executed through Internet Explorer. To start the client in IE you would type in a URL, such as in the following example:

http://localhost:1920///cms/soap/kshhsoap.htm

Once you get the client screen back (as I show in the example), you can select a method (such as CT_GET), and pass the additional needed parameters (such as the hub, and the information you want to get).

In the example, we are requesting information from the NT_System table from the Windows OS monitoring agent. On the right of the screen we see the information fields coming back from the agent.

Once you understand it, the SOAP interface is straight forward, and has some useful capabilities. Note that this same SOAP interface is being exploited by such IBM tools as System Automation to interface with ITM monitoring.

I will show some additional examples in subsequent posts.