Operating relationships

You can start and stop relationships from the Web-based System Monitor.

This section covers the following topics:

"Relationship states"

Starting and stopping relationships

Relationship states

You can view the state of a relationship by logging on to the Web-based System Monitor and opening a view that contains relationship status. To log on to the Web-based System Monitor, follow the instructions in Logging on to the Web-based System Monitor.

Table 8 lists the relationship states represented by the System View traffic light display color and describes what actions can be performed during that state.

Table 8. Relationship States

Relationship State/Traffic Light Description
Active (green) Relationship is ready to run and available for use in the Business Integration Express for Item Sync system. To use Relationship Manager on a relationship, the relationship must be in the active state.
Inactive (red) Relationship is not ready to run or available for use in the Business Integration Express for Item Sync system. This state is entered when the relationship is stopped, where all current jobs in queue are completed and no new jobs are accepted. To modify a relationship definition, it must be in this state.
Unknown (grey) Relationship does not have a compatible runtime schema. To create a compatible runtime schema, from the Relationship Designer, save the relationship with the Create runtime schema option selected. The state changes to Inactive, at which point the relationship can then be started.

Starting and stopping relationships

Relationships are used to establish associations between business object attributes that cannot easily be mapped. The tool used for creating relationships is Relationship Designer.

When you expand the Relationships folder in System Manager, two subfolders appear: Dynamic and Static.

This section describes the following topics:

"Relationship activation"

Starting and stopping relationships

Relationship table caching

Relationship activation

For a relationship to be executable, it must be activated. However, you cannot modify a relationship when it is active. Therefore, you must stop the relationship, make the change to the relationship, and then restart the relationship.

Starting and stopping relationships

To start and stop relationships, do this:

  1. From the System View window, select Show Maps and Relationships from the View drop-down menu. The Maps and Relationships columns appear next to Collaborations and Connectors.
  2. Right-click a relationship, then select either the Start<name_of_relationship> or Stop <name_of_relationship> option.

Relationship table caching

As part of the design process of a static relationship, a developer can indicate whether the relationship's tables are to be cached in memory. A static relationship is one whose data does not change frequently. If the developer has indicated that the static relationship's tables can be cached, you can control whether to enable caching from System Manager. System Manager lists all static relationships in the folder labelled Static under the Relationships folder.

Enabling Caching

To enable relationship table caching for a static relationship:

  1. Expand the Relationships folder in System Manager.
  2. Expand the Static folder in the object browser to locate the static relationship whose tables you want to be cached.
  3. Right-click the static relationship to determine its current cached state. If the Cached option appears with no check mark to the left, caching for that relationship is currently disabled. Choose Cached from the context menu to enable caching.

When the Cached option appears with a check mark to the left, InterChange Server Express reads the relationship tables into memory the next time the runtime data is accessed.

Disabling Caching

To disable relationship table caching for a static relationship:

  1. Expand the Relationships folder in System Manager.
  2. Expand the Static folder in the object browser to locate the static relationship whose tables you do not want to be cached.
  3. Right-click the static relationship to determine its current cached state. If the Cached option appears with a check mark to the left, caching for that relationship is currently enabled. Choose Cached from the context menu to disable caching.

When the Cached option appears with no check mark to the left, InterChange Server Express reads runtime data from the tables in the relationship database.

Reloading the Cached Tables

You can tell InterChange Server Express to reread the relationship's tables into memory with the Reload feature, as follows:

  1. Expand the Relationships folder in System Manager.
  2. Expand the Static folder in the object browser to locate the static relationship whose tables you want to be reloaded.
  3. Right-click the static relationship to determine its current cached state. If the Cached option appears with a check mark to the left, caching for that relationship is currently enabled. Therefore, the Reload option is enabled.
  4. Choose Reload from the context menu to reload the static relationship's tables.

When you choose this option, InterChange Server Express reloads the cached relationship tables by rereading the tables from the relationship database into memory. This option is useful when the static relationship's tables are updated directly in the database through SQL statements. To get the more current version of the tables into cache, choose the Reload option.

Tracing Cached Tables

To tell InterChange Server Express to log a trace message each time it loads and unloads relationship tables in memory, set the RELATIONSHIP.CACHING configuration parameter to five (5) in the TRACING section of the InterchangeSystem.cfg file:

RELATIONSHIP.CACHING=5
 

ICS routes these messages to the trace file (if one is configured). By default, ICS does not generate trace messages when it loads and unloads the relationship tables. Trace levels less than five (0-4) do not produce messages either.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2003