Creating Data Views

A powerful feature of IxoraRMS is the ability to define custom data views (charts, tables, properties...) based on data from one or multiple entities. This section of the documentation assumes a good knowledge of the "Concepts" in IxoraRMS.

Data views are artifacts that are assigned to a node in the monitoring session tree. To create one, select the desired node in the monitoring tree, select the "Views" tab and right click to bring out the context menu.

  • Use XML Editor - this requires a very good familiarity with the XML syntax of data view definitions.
  • Use Wizard... - this is the most straightforward option as it hides most of the complexity from users.
  • Import From XML... - this is used when importing a data view definition from somewhere else.

In this document, we focus on the first two options. To learn more about importing artifacts in IxoraRMS, read "Installing Artifacts".

Using the XML editor

The "Use XML Editor..." menu item has a list of sub-menus. Each sub-menu opens the XML editor and adds each own sample of data view definition.

There are three options for creating data views:

There are the same number of sub-menu options as there are types of data views defined in the application. Chose the options that matches the type of data view that you wish to create. The XML editor opens with a sample data view of the specified type.

The editor offers, beside the usual editing actions, three more for inserting resource ids (), reaction definitions () and assigning the edited data view to specific versions of the agent (

). The versioning of the artifacts is a very important feature that allows the creation of slightly different artifacts for different agent versions. For information about the actual data view definition see the "Concepts" and "Data View Types" sections in the documentation.

Using the wizard

This is the easiest way to create data views. The wizard offers the following screens: Data view type, Control/Widget type, Data view definition (2 screens).

Data View Type

The options on this screen are:

  • Homogeneous data view - select this option to create a data view based on regular expressions that requires counters from multiple similar entities (for instance CPU usage for certain processes).
  • Heterogeneous data view - select this option to create a data view that requires counters from different entities (for instance CPU, Memory, Disk...).
  • Multi-host heterogeneous data view - a heterogeneous data view that contains data from entities across multiple hosts.

Control Type

Here you can select the type of widget used to display this data view. The available types of widgets differ based on the selection made on the first wizard screen (the selection of the data view type).

Data View Definition - screen one

Provide here the name, description, author and the assigned agent versions for this data view.

Data View Definition - screen two

This screen defines the query for this data view. The "Entity Regular Expression" text field contains the entity resource selector (see "Concepts"). The "Counter" table is updated when the "Entity Regular Expression" text field is updated. If you do not see any items in this table that means that the definition of the resource selector is incorrect or the selected entities have no counters.

Functions and reactions can also be added at this stage. When done press the "Finish" button. This opens the "Data View Editor" dialog. Make any final adjustments and press "Save" to save the data view definition.