Overall I would give the BMC User World (9 out of 10). As good as the Past RUGs that I remember. But it's been a while for me.
Best Moment: Being there when Rick Cook got his ARSList MVP Award. Beyond AR System 7.1 to Developer Studio • The next version of AR System 7.5 (mid 2008) will have Eclipse to replace the Admin Tool. • Navigator, Object Lists, Form Editors and Workflow Editors will all change and include Undo/ Redo • Future versions of the UI will include features like table fields that re-size to the window size Session Notes: 1) New 7.1 Features (David Easter of BMC) - Licensing simplied and License Usage reports calculated every 45 minutes - Mid-Tier has prefetched forms and has persistent cache stored on disk for use after restart. - Escalations multi-threaded, enables pools of escalations that can run in parallel - Ability to turn off status history, no entries in H tables. - Sneak peek of AR System 7.5 will have Eclipse based Admin Tool, Accessing multiple web views are much easier through a tabbed interface. 2) Using 7.1 Features (Bob Poulos of BMC) - Filter Error Handling is now available to handle some errors during filters. - Service Entry API allows to call workflow without creating an entry in a form - ARServiceEntry() API, takes input, performs logic, gives output - 7.1 executeable is smaller than 7.0 because system forms are stored on disk instead of in the exe - With NextID blocks and disabling Status History a create new entry can be changed from 9 SQL statements to 3 statements. - Mentioned 7.x servers have some kind of reconnect to database setting, may be useful during Oracle FSF event 3) Load Balancing (Kelly Deavers of BMC) - Good presentation, still have questions with netscaler load balancers - Did not include good example of how to setup http and https with ip stickiness without using apache http rewrite to https 4) Supportability of AR System Servers (Bob Wieman of BMC) - Large Query Logging helps find users making big slow queries: see KB 12235 - 7.x has automatic exception logging when threads die: - Startup logging available to see problems for new servers during arstartup: see KB 10033931 - Copy cache logging when server re-caches workflow: see KB 26132 - 7.0 New ARWKLGA – AR Log Work Analysis Tool to see timing of large SQL entries. 5) AR System is the Cornerstone of BMC Software (Doug Mueller of BMC) - This session was mainly to assure customers that the Application Development Platform is getting much more investment - BMC applications (as Atrium CMDB) strive to provide Business Service Management for ITIL processes, but it all relies on AR System - New Version of the platform include new lego type modules including the approval engine and assignment engine. We can expect additional future modules like a tasklist queue - The future is bright for AR System as the tool to build process workflows, but don't re-invent the wheel - Recommends buying applications to support common standard processes and only implement custom applications when implementing requirement outside of standard ITIL processes 6) ITIL v3 (George Spalding of Pink Elephant) - V3 is made to catch up with industry tools and processes for Business Service Management - <soapbox> ITIL certification is needed to add some professionalism to IT </soapbox> - 5 areas of ITIL v3 for implementing Business Services (Goal is creating a service that provides value) o Service Strategy – the business service and value to be provided, service as an asset, ROI o Service Design – plans for the service, service catalog o Service Transition – implementing the design into production and knowledge management o Service Operation – keeping the service working, and event management o Continuous Service Improvement – obvious - Used Amazon.com as a good example of value network for the service " buying a book" - Process provides accountability for services that may have previously been hard to account for - START with Service Operation if that is where you are now - Quote: "Worst helpdesk metric is 1st call resolution." We should change the system that makes all the people call for the same repeatable problems. 7) 7.0 Data Visualization Module (Terry Cline of BMC) - This feature allow calling a field Data Visualization Field (DVF) that runs a program or web page - It allows you to combine text and graphics in a more web application like way. - Events may be sent to the Data Visualization Module and the Parent form can catch events from the DVM - It's a programmatic extension of the View Fields in AR System - Examples in the slides. 8) AR System 7.1 Java API and Plug-in Server (Appajee Papolu of BMC) - There is a new Service API that allows a call to a form without creating an entry == this may be useful in re-writing the ticket deduping - Look in the new JavaDriver Source for good examples of how each call is performed. - The version 7.1 java is recommended for use with 6.3, 7.0 and 7.1 servers -- -Geoff Endresen Amazon.com _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org Platinum Sponsor: www.rmsportal.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
