June 07, 2007

Siebel Sarm links

Siebel SARM is one of the most ambitious implementations by any application vendor of a monitoring protocol, and is sorely needed. SARM, in theory, is what the answer for dealing with very complex applicaiton monitoring should be. Application components, via instremenations points in the code, track their own performance and publish it.

The complexity of an operation that courses though a browser, a network, a web server, into cascades of application layers, the database... and back of course, is by definition difficult to track, and riddled with potential points of slowness. Tracking what a user is doing, and what they are really experiencing, and what is going on these layers accross an enterprise app has bedeviled users and adminstrators to no end.

The switch to browser based architecture for Siebel in a dot com fueled euphoria has generally led to reduced useability for users, a crippled programming environment for developers, and very questionable promised reduction maintenability/cost vs non browser architecture. Almost all enterprise software systems have gone the same direction, including SAP, all of the Oracle apps, Onyx, etc. That is contrasted of course from the true internet apps like Yahoo mail, and Salesforce.com, which don't have gigabit LANs and standardized desktops as an alternative.

Perhaps back in the day a fancy application monitoring and tracking protocols weren't necessary. You checked the network, pings back and forth. Then, the database. Done. Even before that, you check the mainframe, guess what its always fast! That approach doesn't work anymore.

Now how usefull that is in production situations: I'm not totoally sure. From my production experience in many past versions, SARM hasn't played a big production role, as it used to be a development tool. But SARM is evolving fast. The intention behind it, and the depth of implementation is really impressive. Except for the licensing scheme Oracle is using with Siebel Diagnostics, which could well cripple the real lead they have in this area, SARM is on target to be the most sucesfull, and in certain respects the only signifcant application vendor supported protocol.

Here are some links about SARM:
SARM presentation from OAUG from Peter Tung

And an interesting blog post from Rick ONeill about SARM implmenetation
Oracle

Posted by choppen5 at 09:05 PM