Blog
Maximo Glossary
In the following table I have listed the most important terms and acronyms that are commonly used in the Maximo/TPAE world. Term Description BIRT Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools is an Open Source software embedded in TPAE that provides reporting. CCMDB IBM Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database (official product page). EAM Enterprise Asset Management. KPI Key Performance Indicators. Visual indicators displaying status against predefined targets. MAM Maximo Asset Management. Maximo It was the original product developed by MRO and acquired by IBM in August 2006. The term ‘Maximo is commonly used both to identify IBM Maximo Asset Management product and the underlying infrastructure on which many IBM Service Management products are built.Additional details here. MBO Maximo Business Objects are data beans provided by TPAE and used to access data. The MBO term is generally used to indicate the TPAE business object layer. MEA Maximo Enterprise Adapter. MEA has been renamed in release 7.1 to Maximo Integration Framework (MIF). MIF Maximo Integration Framework (previously Maximo Enterprise Adapter). QBE Query By Example. Using your application’s filter and/or query, you can immediately generate reports and download the results. SCCD SmartCloud Control Desk (official product page). The new IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is the merge of TSRM, TAMIT and CCMDB in a single solution for IT service management. TAMIT Tivoli Asset Management for IT (official product page). TPAE Tivoli Process Automation Engine also known as Base Services. Additional details here. TSRM IBM Tivoli Service Request Manager (official product page). Do you see mistakes or missing items? Send me your requests and I will improve this listing.
August 15, 2012
Rapid Java class deployment on WebSphere
This entry is part of the Maximo Java Development series. In this post I will describe how to minimize the time needed to redeploy the custom Java code in Maximo running on WebSphere during the development phase. Note: The techniques explained in this article (except the first one) are recommended only for development environments. Here are the four methods I know to perform this task (the last is the fastest). Rebuild and redeploy (30 minutes)
August 13, 2012
Field Flags for setValue methods
The Mbo class exposes a lot of setValue methods but we can categorize them in two big groups. The first group accepts only two arguments that are the name of the attribute to be set and its value. The second group of methods have three arguments that allows to pass an additional accessModifier flag. The values that can be passed into this flag are defined in the MboConstants interface and Mbo class. The most important values are the following:
August 11, 2012
How to set the default value of a field in Maximo
There are five ways to set the default value of a field in Maximo. Database Configuration The first way is to set the default value at the database level using Database Configuration. All you have to do is the object and then the attribute for which the default is to be set. In the right hand side of the Details section there is a Default field. This is where you would enter your literal value for the default value. Some system constants can be used:
August 10, 2012
Variables for Dynamic Queries in Conditional Expressions
Conditional Expressions can be used in TPAE applications in several ways. One powerful feature of Conditional Expressions is the capability of creating dynamic queries using substitution variables. Here is the complete list of variables available in Maximo. :YES – True :NO – False :&DATE& – Current date :&DATETIME& – Current date/time :&USER& – Logged in user (or &USERNAME&) :&PERSONID& – Person ID of the logged in user :&APPNAME& – Application name :&MBONAME& – Name of the current business object :&OWNERNAME& – Name of the owner business object :[relationshipname]****.[attrname] – Value of an attribute of a related business object of the current business object :&OWNER&.****[attrname] – Value of an attribute of the owner business object :&OWNER&.[relationshipname].[attrname] – Value of an attribute of the related business object of the owner business object :$OLD_****[attrname] – The initial value of the attribute Sample Expressions
August 8, 2012
IBM EMEA Tivoli and Security Technical Conference 2012
Are you looking to increase your personal skills in the Asset Management and Service Management arena? Are you responsible for a team of Tivoli professionals who need to delve deeper into the products? Would you or your team benefit from learning deep technical skills from real experts in their fields? Then the EMEA Tivoli & Security Technical Conference 2012 is just what you need! I really think that ETSTC conference will be a great opportunity to improve your knowledge IBM Tivoli products and solutions and to network with IBM products experts, Business Partners and fellow participants.
August 6, 2012
Detect if an MBO method has been invoked by an user session or by a background process
You are in the middle of a Mbo class and you have to perform some logic only if your piece of code is invoked by a user sitting in front of of Maximo UI. How would you understand if the Mbo method has been invoked by an interactive user session or by a background process like an escalation, crontask or MIF? Here is a Java snippet to retrieve this information.
August 1, 2012
Change the default table sorting
Many Maximo applications have a default sort in the tables that displays objects both in the ‘List’ tab and in the details of the objects. Those default order by clauses can be easily changed with the Application Designer. This technique, used in conjunction with the automatic display of table results, can greatly improve the usability of a Maximo application and speedup the completion of user’s tasks. For example you may want to show the work orders with nearest Scheduled Start in the Work Order Tracking application. Open the WOTRACK application in the Application Designer and select main table. Right click on it and select ‘Properties’ to bring up the Control Properties dialog. Type ‘WOPRIORITY’ the Order By field and then select the ‘Start Empty’ checkbox and untick it again.
July 30, 2012
Integrating Maximo with Java application through RMI
This entry is part of the Maximo Java Development series. In this article I will describe how to call Maximo business objects methods remotely using a Java RMI connection. This technique can be useful to integrate Maximo in custom applications written in Java or to perform a particular processing of data stored in Maximo database using an external application. For simplicity I will describe how to create a sample Java project using Eclipse to print the list of assets. However, this technique can be used in any Java application. First of all you have to copy some jar files from the Maximo server to your development system. Go in the application deployment directory (e.g. WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\ctgAppSrv01\installedApps\ctgCell01\MAXIMO.ear) and copy the businessobjects.jar file and the entire lib directory. Launch Eclipse, create an empty Java project and add the businessobject.jar and icu4j.jar files to the project classpath. Your project should look like this.
July 30, 2012
How to log all Maximo SQL statements
Here is a useful IBM Technote that explains how to capture all SQL statements issued from Maximo/TPAE when using DB2 database. I think it may be useful to analyze users queries and performance bottlenecks.
July 19, 2012