312 Tivoli Business Systems Manager Version 2.1: End-to-End Business Impact Management
9.7.1 Extending the NetView Web console
Starting with NetView Version 7.1, the NetView Web console is meant to be the
main interface to NetView. The native console should be used only for
administrative purposes such as modifying maps and NetView working options.
IBM Tivoli Business Systems Manager also launches the NetView Web console
on demand in order to show NetView-related topology information, diagnostic
tools, and object properties. Unfortunately, to initate a bulk upload to IBM Tivoli
Business Systems Manager, you have to start the native NetView GUI. We will
now show how to extend the menus of the NetView Web console to make the
bulk upload menu available in the console, as well.
The NetView Web console offers limited extension capabilities. You can extend
the menus and execute commands as long as the output can be displayed in a
Web browser window. The supplied Web console functions and menus are
defined in two files:
? /usr/OV/www/webapps/netview/warf/Actions.xml
This file contains all the actions and functions provided by the Web console in
a compressed format.
? /usr/OV/www/webapps/netview/warf/Templates/WebConsole
This file conatins the menu definitions for the actions and functions provided
by the Web console.
You can modify these two files, but in the event of a NetView update or patch
apply, the update may overwrite them. To prevent this, you can supply your own
action definition file and your own menu file, which will not be overwritten. We will
provide the extensions in separate definition files.
Note the warf subdirectory in the file path: NetView Web console definition files'
role and behavior are similar to NetView Application Registration Files (arf), so
they are called Web Application Registration Files (warf) and are located in the
path's warf subdirectory. The main difference between warf files and arf-type
registration files is the format. Unlike standard NetView registration files and their
descriptive C-style format, the warf files use XML as their description language.
Each distinctive function of the NetView Web console consists of two definitions:
? An action definition, which you must store under
/usr/OV/www/webapps/netview/warf. The action definition defines what you
want executed when selected.
? A menu definition that you must store under
/ust/OV/www/webapps/netview/warf/Templates/WebConsole. This definition
specifies the position of your new menu under the menu tree.