1 Introduction

This guide explains how to install Business Transaction Management central servers and monitors. It does not provide instructions for installing Business Transaction Management observers or for replicating monitors. For information on those topics, refer to the Business Transaction Management online help.

Oracle distributes the Business Transaction Management central servers and monitors in a zip file. You extract deployment units from the file and use your application server's deployment tools to distribute the Business Transaction Management components. The information provided in this guide can help you install and configure a general purpose Business Transaction Management system suitable for experimenting with the system functions and use cases. The deployment configuration and resources required in a production environment can vary based on a variety of factors, such as anticipated throughput, message size, type and number of applied management policies, and so forth. An Oracle consultant can help you determine the appropriate configuration and resource requirements for your specific needs.

Deployment Environment

Oracle designed Business Transaction Management for use in a distributed application environment, and we expect that you will deploy various Business Transaction Management components onto multiple machines and application servers.

Business Transaction Management Components

At the highest level, Business Transaction Management consists of three types of components:

Central servers – The central servers are application EAR files that you deploy to an application server. There are three central servers. You deploy only one instance of each of these servers, and for performance considerations you should deploy each to a separate application server. You must not deploy any of the central servers to an application server that hosts services or components you intend to monitor. The central servers are:
- Main Server (btmMain.ear) – Contains all the central Business Transaction Management system services and user interface applications, including the sphere. The sphere is the Business Transaction Management component that manages the Business Transaction Management environment. In addition, btmMain.ear contains subdeployments for the web-based user interface and the F5 intermediary.
- Performance Server (btmPerformanceServer.ear) – Contains the service-level management components. Deploy btmPerformanceServer.ear on an application server other than where btmMain.ear or btmTransactionServer.ear are deployed.
- Transaction Server (btmTransactionServer.ear) – Contains the transaction management components. You deploy btmTransactionServer.ear on an application server other than where btmMain.ear or btmPerformanceServer.ear are deployed.
Observers – Observers are sets of libraries that you install into the application server that hosts the business applications you want to monitor. The observers monitor messages and calls between the components of your applications. Observers are capable of monitoring many types of components, and are classified according to the type that they monitor, for example, JAX-WS, JAX-RPC, EJB, JDBC, etc. Installation of observers is not explained in this guide. Refer to the Business Transaction Management online help for information about installing observers.
Monitors (btmMonitor.ear) – Monitors collect application performance and usage measurements from observers. The monitor is an application EAR file that you deploy to an application server. For large systems, you can deploy multiple monitors, either as singletons or replicates. For performance reasons, you should not deploy the monitor on an application server where the central servers are deployed.

Business Transaction Management Database

Business Transaction Management requires an Oracle RDBMS.

Example Environment

Although you can install all the Business Transaction Management components into a single container, this is not the recommended deployment scenario. Single-container installation is useful for demonstrations and for learning how to use the product, however this scenario might not scale successfully, depending on the number of business services or volume of message traffic, just to name a few factors.

For example, we recommend that you deploy the btmPerformanceServer and btmTransactionServer components on separate machines than that containing btmMain. These components typically perform a large amount of performance analysis computations. Dividing processes across CPUs/environments will allow you to control memory and processor resources.

You should also deploy btmMonitor on a machine separate from the other Business Transaction Management components. Depending on your monitoring requirements, you might need to deploy multiple instances of btmMonitor. You can deploy multiple instances of btmMonitor either as individual instances or as replicated instances behind a load balancer. For information about replicating btmMonitor, refer to the online help topic entitled, “Replicating the Monitor”.

The diagram below shows a typical distributed application environment, and the relationship of the Business Transaction Management components to that environment.

Figure 1-1 Deployment of Business Transaction Management components in a typical application environment

Description of "Figure 1-1 Deployment of Business Transaction Management components in a typical application environment"

Installation Overview

Installation of Business Transaction Management consists of deploying the Business Transaction Management application components on the appropriate nodes in your environment. As described above, Business Transaction Management is designed for distributed installation and Business Transaction Management components are typically deployed on multiple nodes in your environment.

Table 1-1 Business Transaction Management software distribution packaging

Deployment Name	Sub-deployments	Deployment strategy
btmMain	btmcentral btmcontainer btmhelp btmui f5Intermediary	Deploy once per Business Transaction Management environment.
btmPerformanceServer	btmcontainer btmperformance	Deploy once per Business Transaction Management environment, on a separate node from btmMain and btmTransactionServer.
btmTransactionServer	btmcontainer btmtransaction	Deploy once per Business Transaction Management environment, on a separate node from btmMain and btmPerformanceServer.
btmMonitor	btmmonitor	Deploy on as many nodes as needed. The monitor is used in conjunction with the observer (see the online help for more information about observers or replicating the monitor).

Configuration Overview

Once you have deployed Business Transaction Management, you configure it using the browser-based configuration wizard. You can also use a command line script (see "Scripted Configuration of Oracle Business Transaction Management" for more information). For first-time configuration, we recommend that you use the browser-based wizard. The wizard produces an XML output file that can be used with the command line script for subsequent configurations.

The general configuration procedure includes the following steps:

Provide the connection information for your database.
Identify the sphere URL—the default provided in the wizard is usually correct unless you are running HTTPS.
Specify the URL of the performance component.
Specify the URL of the transaction component.