Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Building Real-time
Dashboards
The key objective driving service-oriented architecture is to move the IT organization
closer to the business. Creation of services and their assembly into composite
applications and processes is how IT can become more responsive to business.
However, it is the provision of real-time business information via dashboards that
really gives business the confidence that IT can add value. In this chapter, we will
examine how to use
Business Activity Monitoring
(
BAM
) to provide real-time
dashboards that give the business an insight into what is currently happening with
their processes, not what happened yesterday or last week.
How BAM differs from traditional business
intelligence
The Oracle SOA Suite stores the state of all processes in a database in documented
schemas so why do we need yet another reporting tool to provide insight into our
processes and services? In other words, how does BAM differ from traditional BI?
In traditional BI, reports are generated and delivered either on a scheduled basis or
in response to a user request. Any changes to the information will not be reflected
until the next scheduled run or until a user requests the report to be rerun. BAM is an
event-driven reporting tool that generates alerts and reports in real-time, based on a
continuously changing data stream, some of whose data may not be in the database.
For example, BAM may gather data from the currently executing state of BPEL
processes to track how many orders are at each step of the order process. As events
occur in services and processes, they are captured by BAM, transformed to business-
friendly reports and views, and delivered and updated in real-time. Where necessary,
these updated reports are delivered to users. This delivery to users can take several
forms. The best known is the dashboard on user desktops that will automatically
update without any need for the user to refresh the screen. There are also other means
to deliver reports to the end user, including sending them via text message or e-mail.
