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Technical Brief
A quick overview of what MetaConsole is and
does...
Design Goals
Architecture
Consoles and Devices
The design goals for MetaConsole were as follows:
- Allow
for a client to be developed only once, yet be shared among
dissimilar consoles
- Share
and reuse significant portions of the implementation (code)
for different environments (consoles) and different devices
- Enable
support for new device types to be added quickly
- Support
SNMP and non-SNMP devices
- Support
multiple languages
- Support
multiple platforms
- Provide
licensing protection for each console's client
Long-term goals for future development include:
- A
toolkit to add client support for new device types
- Support
for new consoles and new protocols as they become available
MetaConsole consists of two major components:
- MetaConsole
Clients, which integrate with the various consoles
All clients use the same Server Interface Library for XML-based
communication with the MetaConsole Server. Each client contains
its own user interface code, although significant code re-use
is possible here.
- MetaConsole
Server, which communicates with both the MetaConsole
clients and the devices or services to be managed
For each managed entity, there is a Service Provider that
understands the manageable behavior of the entity. When
the MetaConsole Server receives a request (in the form of
an XML document) from a client, it invokes the appropriate
Service Provider to package the request for the managed
entity. The response from the managed entity is translated
into an XML document and returned to the client.
The MetaConsole Server supports multiple clients simultaneously.
MetaConsole is developed extensively in Java, with user interface
components developed using HTML, Java, and JavaScript. It
is therefore portable to any Java environment; the user interface
can be presented through a custom application or a standard
web browser.
XML is used for several reasons, including:
- Verification
is automatic, through the use of a DTD that defines the
legality of the XML document received by either party (client
or server).
- Display
of resulting documents is easy using XML style sheets (XSL).
This is particularly useful for display in web browsers
without necessitating custom code or plug-ins.
- XML
makes an excellent choice for representing device and service
data in a canonical form.
- Several
parsers available for XML make reading and writing these
documents fairly simple.
MetaConsole supports the following consoles:
- Web
browsers and custom Java applications
- Microsoft
Management Console
- HP
OpenView
- Tivoli
NetView
- CA
Unicenter
Client support is in place or under development for the following
devices and services:
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