Tideway : Blog /community/blog/ en adrian_long@bmc.com Copyright 2012 2012-05-18T15:48:22+00:00 Winding down this blog, but the community lives on http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/winding-down-this-blog-but-the-community-lives-on/ http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/winding-down-this-blog-but-the-community-lives-on/ Moving the BLOG to communities.bmc.com

I’m sure you’ll have noticed that this blog has been a little bit quiet of late. That’s because we’ve been consolidating our blog posts with other Atrium Platform related posts over on communities.bmc.com. If you’re subscribed to us via RSS, you’ll need to update your feed addresses accordingly. Some of the more heavy, technical posts will be in the Discovery (ADDM) community space over there, but for the most part we’re contributing to the BMC Atrium Platform blog with regular updates from across the ADDM team.

I’d strongly advise going and having a look, as Tim Cannon has just posted an update to his ongoing investigations into ADDM performance over there.

I’ll put a bunch of handy addresses at the end of this post so you can find everything.

Everything else is staying put.

Whilst we’re moving the blog over to communities.bmc.com, and whilst we have a thriving Discovery Community over there as well… the forums here are set to stay for a fair while yet. Please go right ahead and stay using them – we like having you lot around!

The community dashboard channel

If you’ve got the community dashboard channel enabled on your ADDM instance, the forums from this site will stay right there, unchanged. So will all of the other tabs in that channel… except for the blog tab. The blog tab will probably change in the near future.

Handy links

Blogs – Viewing in your browser

Blogs – RSS Feeds

]]> 2012-05-18T15:48:22+00:00 Where’s the new stuff? http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/wheres-the-new-stuff/ http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/wheres-the-new-stuff/ Picture the scene: You’ve upgraded to a new version of ADDM, expecting a whole bundle of new features. You fire up a browser, log in to your appliance and fire up the dashboard, only to see… a complete absence of the shiny new bits. You go and check, and see that, yes, the upgrade did actually happen. But the new dashboard widgets just aren’t there. They’ve not shown up, and you feel lied to because stuff that’s supposed to be easy seems to lack a convenient jumping off point.

“Surely the ADDM team wouldn’t have just forgotten to give us a place to start?”, you think to yourself.

Well, you’re correct – one of the things we’re quite keen on is giving people clear and simple jumping off points for any new features. We like putting new features and components in the UI in places where you’ll already be looking. So that when you’re trying to do something, you’ll easily find the new user interface components that can help you. The natural instinct to think “hang on, that wasn’t there before” is a good thing when it comes to trying to encourage our users to explore and experiment with new features. It makes people curious, so they investigate and mess about with things until they understand what they do.

But sometimes, the new stuff just doesn’t show up for some people. They hear about it, and see it in the new videos, but it all remains curiously absent from their appliance’s UI. If you’re one of those people, the chances are that you’ve got some customization in place that’s stopping the new stuff from appearing. At some point, somebody has written some custom report definitions that override the normal dashboard channels. Because we respect those customizations across the upgrade process, It’s possible that new things might not appear because doing so would overrule your customization.

This recently came up as a topic in the forum, and it looks like an issue which is only going to get more common as the product advances. So I thought it was something worth talking about a little, just to make sure you don’t lose out on the new stuff.

Now, the best advice from the forum thread doesn’t come from me, but from Mark Wilkinson, so I’m just going to quote him here on how to rectify this:


Hi folks,

If you are not seeing the new Application Mapping channel, I suspect that you are on an upgraded appliance, and at some point a customised definition of the Applications page has been created, which is therefore overriding the current page layout.

Take a look in /usr/tideway/data/custom/reports and look for a definition in one or more of the reports definition files with a .xml suffix. It might look something like this:

<page name=“ApplicationHome”>
    <channel>Applications.Channel.Summary</channel>
    <channel>Impact.Channel.ApplicationImpact</channel>
</page>

If there is something like this, it is overriding the defined UI and hiding any product updates. There may be other page definitions too, doing the same thing.

The content of data/custom/reports is all customisation; if you don’t know what it’s customising, you could start by moving all the xml files somewhere else and restart the services, which will return everything to default, and therefore reveal the current UI. Then if necessary, you can selectively re-apply any required customisations.

We’ll investigate how we can at least detect and highlight any potential overrides like this during upgrade, though it probably won’t make the next release.

To close off, I’d like to reiterate Mark’s parting comment. It might not happen straight away, and I can’t comment on when you’ll see any changes, but we’re going to look into how customizations like this interact with upgrades. If you have any thoughts on that, feel free to drop by the forums to let us know.


Web Admin’s Note: Since this topic is already under discussion in the forums, rather than starting a new thread, we’d appreciate it if you join in with the ongoing one. You can do so by clicking the link below.

]]> ADDM, User Experience 2012-01-20T11:14:30+00:00 Another year of discovery.bmc.com http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/another-year-of-discovery.bmc.com/ http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/another-year-of-discovery.bmc.com/ Nearly a year after my previous post about the state of the BMC Atrium Discovery web presence, I thought it was about time I put together a bit of information about what’s been happening here in the past few months.
The more observant of you may have noticed a few changes around here lately. First, the site’s had a bit more of a visual refresh, bringing us closer to the rest of the BMC web presence. Second, the “Configipedia” area has been tidied up and a lot of the more dated content has gone the way of the dodo.

The latter of those is still an ongoing process, and we’d like to apologise for any links you might find that lead to restricted pages – those will be either fixed or tidied away in the very near future. We’ve got a lot of content that’s been moved to a locked-down “holding pen” whilst we determine where it needs to go and what patching up is needed. If the pages only need a lick of paint and a bit of a polish then they’ll be back shortly. If they’re beyond saving then we’ll patch up the holes they’ve left.

You should expect to see more changes to discovery.bmc.com in the coming months as we focus in on ways of getting our web content and community tools to be as useful and intuitive as possible. We’re also continually looking into ways to get them to work with other tools within BMC so you don’t have to waste time checking around different places quite so often.

Last time I posted, I mentioned our “Migration Masterplan”. As you might expect, that’s undergone a few revisions in the past year as the landscape has changed around us. But we’ve not been standing still. Our approach to documentation is starting to spread within BMC, and Vitaly Burlai (discovery.bmc.com’s fearless developer) is heavily involved in that process. Some other BMC products are now producing their documentation on the Confluence platform, and we plan to eventually bring our own product documentation into that. Our approach to community is also gaining some traction, although that’s a slower process… After all, a community is a group of people, not a piece of software. It takes a bit more time… you can’t just upgrade to a new version!

In line with what I said in my previous post, our focus is on doing the right things and working with our community. We plan to keep moving forward, rather than just migrating to existing platforms.

]]> Web & Community 2011-10-05T11:13:45+00:00 What’s up with Tideway.com? http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/whats-up-with-tideway.com/ http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/whats-up-with-tideway.com/ What just happened?

About a year ago, Tideway was acquired by BMC, and Tideway Foundation became BMC Atrium Discovery & Dependency mapping. As you might expect, there will be changes to tideway.com and the Tideway Community as a result. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably noticed that Tideway.com has a new look – one that is much more BMC-ish. This is the first of a series of significant changes that you’ll see over the coming months.

We have a fairly involved plan for the gradual migration of this website into various different places within BMC, but we (being a mix of BMC and ex-Tideway folks) realise that we can’t just lift things up from one platform and drop them onto another. It’d be like trying to mix two drinks by putting them in different cups, and then banging the cups together. In other words, it’d be both counter-productive and messy. Instead, we’re taking our time and migrating our web content a piece at a time. Since this is going to take a while, we’ve redesigned this site to bring it in line with other BMC web properties, and soon you’ll be able to reach it via BMC web addresses as well as Tideway ones.

The first thing that you’ll notice is that the “brochureware” side of the site isn’t up there in the tabs anymore. If you’re here instead of on bmc.com, you’re probably one of our users already and you don’t need all of that. We’re filling that need by building up the product pages on the BMC website instead.

This means that the focus of this site is now squarely on the community. This isn’t an accident – our community of users is important to us and we’re not going to take this place away until we’re certain that there’s a good home ready for us in the BMC Developer Network.

So what is the plan?

We’re working to something I’ve been calling The Tideway Migration Masterplan. It’s all very involved, and contains a lot of interdependencies, so I’m not going to go into it in very fine detail.

It’s got six steps, and we’ve just completed step 3 – migration of marketing material. We’re also well underway with step 4, which will be the major step of bringing everything under a bmc.com domain name and branding. Why are we doing this? So it’s less jarring for folks who’ve only ever dealt with BMC and have never heard of Tideway! It will also make it easier for us to gradually tie into other systems within the BMC web presence, and gradually pull the two communities together in a way that makes sense.

Once that’s done, you should expect to see our documentation start to integrate with the rest of BMCs product documentation. This isn’t going to happen right away as there are changes afoot in how BMC handles and presents its documentation. We’re heavily involved with those changes, but we’re waiting for them to fully bed in before moving our documentation into BMC’s new (yet curiously familiar) platform.

Lastly, you’ll see our forums and other community features merge in with the BMC communities. As with documentation, there is work taking place within BMC to evolve their website’s community features, and we’re not going to bring the two together until we’re sure it’s a good fit.

When should we expect to see all this?

We’re not working to a strict timeline at the moment. This might seem odd, but doing it right is far more important to us than meeting arbitrary deadlines. We’ve always worked with the idea that a community is a group of people with common interests, not just some software on a website. We support that community by trying to keep the tools we all use to communicate from getting in the way, and by trying to make our communication as seamless and easy as possible. We want to make sure that when we change the tools around, we don’t damage the community that they’re meant to help. We want to make sure that the move from one platform to another doesn’t get in the way of the community, and that we can maintain the level of communication and interaction that you’re all used to.

]]> User Experience, Web & Community 2010-10-28T07:31:49+00:00 TKU Update Announcements Move to BMC Communities Site http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/tku-update-announcements-move-to-bmc-communities-site/ http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/tku-update-announcements-move-to-bmc-communities-site/ We have now transitioned the monthly TKU announcements to the BMC Communities site which can be found at:

http://communities.bmc.com/communities/community/bmcdn/bmc_atrium_and_foundation_technologies/discovery

]]> 2010-03-24T08:50:42+00:00 TKU January 2010 Extends Coverage of BMC Products http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/tku-january-2010-extends-coverage-of-bmc-products/ http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/tku-january-2010-extends-coverage-of-bmc-products/ Today we release the January Technology Knowledge Update (TKU). For those who aren’t familiar with TKUs they are monthly updates of patterns that extend and enhance BMC Atrium Discovery’s software discovery capability.

The January release includes 6 new products taking the total to 369 software products and over 29,000 software product configurations discoverable.

The release focuses on extending discovery coverage of BMC products and includes patterns for:

You can visit the In the Spotlight page on Configipedia to find out more about the release so you can confident in the discovered results returned.

]]> CMDB, Software 2010-01-18T10:55:55+00:00 TKU December Extends Coverage of BMC Products http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/tku-december-extends-coverage-of-bmc-products/ http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/tku-december-extends-coverage-of-bmc-products/ Today we release the December Technology Knowledge Update (TKU). For those who aren’t familiar with TKUs they are monthly updates of patterns that extend and enhance Tideway’s software discovery capability.

The December release includes 8 new products taking the total to 364 software products and over 29,000 software product configurations discoverable.

The release focuses on extending discovery coverage of BMC products , particularly the CONTROL-M family.

You can visit the In the Spotlight page on Configipedia to find out more about the release so you can confident in the discovered results returned.

]]> Home Page, Software 2009-12-20T23:14:09+00:00 TKU November Strengthens Coverage of IBM Products http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/tku-november-extends-strengthens-coverage-of-ibm-products/ http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/tku-november-extends-strengthens-coverage-of-ibm-products/ Today we release the November Tideway Knowledge Update (TKU). For those who aren’t familiar with TKUs they are monthly updates of patterns that extend and enhance Tideway’s software discovery capability.

The November release includes 13 new products taking the total to 356 software products and over 29,000 software product configurations discoverable.

The release focuses on extending discovery coverage of IBM products specifically to support license audit initiatives and provides broad coverage across the all the major IBM software product brands such as:

  • Cognos
  • DB2
  • FileNet
  • Infosphere
  • Rational
  • Tivoli
  • Websphere

To ensure quality, pattern developers leverage our relationship with IBM by either accessing product expertise or accessing products in IBM Innovation Center labs.

You can visit the In the Spotlight page on Configipedia to find out more about the release so you can confident in the discovered results returned.

]]> Featured, Home Page, Software 2009-11-26T13:43:53+00:00 Products Reaching End Of Life In November / December 09 http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/products-reaching-end-of-life-in-november-december-09/ http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/products-reaching-end-of-life-in-november-december-09/ This month’s installment of my regular update. Products reaching end of life in November and December that can be discovered by Tideway Foundation…..

Why is it important to track software going end of life? Here’s a few reasons Tideway customers tell us why they are using Foundation to track software nearing end of life.

  • Identify operating systems and software that are exposed to security / stability risks as they are no longer supported by patch updates
  • Identify operating systems and software that we may be paying a premium maintenance subscription for
  • Identify operating systems and software that are no longer shipping may lead to increased costs and risks associated with variance

Products Reaching End Of Life In November 09

  • HP Client Automation 4.2, 5.0
  • HP DevInspect 4.0, 5.0, 5.1
  • IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus 7.0

Products Reaching End Of Life In December 09

  • Borland StarTeam v9.0
  • CA Directory v8.1
  • Ingres Ingres Database v2.6
  • McAfee VirusScan Enterprise v8.0
  • MySQL AB MySQL Database Server v5
  • Oracle Berkeley DB v4.3
  • Oracle Database Lite v10.2
  • Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise v12.5
  • Sybase jConnect for JDBC v5.5
  • Sybase Replication Server v12.6
  • VMware Consolidated Backup v1.1
  • VMware VirtualCenter v2.5
  • VMware High Availability v2.5
  • VMware VMotion v2.5

]]> Featured, Home Page, Software 2009-10-30T11:47:59+00:00 Identify Oracle October CPU Candidates with Tideway Foundation http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/identify-oracle-october-cpu-candidates-with-tideway-foundation/ http://discovery.bmc.com/community/blog-post/identify-oracle-october-cpu-candidates-with-tideway-foundation/ On 20th October Oracle released its latest critical patch update (CPU). Looking at the list of products requiring the CPU it is clear that Tideway Foundation patterns provide the level of precision (5 digit version identification) needed to help organizations quickly identify instances requiring the patch.

Go to Oracle October CPU web page

Oracle recommend that organizations “have a complete inventory of Oracle products across the IT enterprise, with full version numbers” however do not appear to have a solution for this. As a result we hear that many organizations are unable to apply the CPUs and as a result are exposing themselves to critical security vulnerabilities.

Follow these links to the find out more about how Tideway identifies Oracle Application Server , Oracle Database , E-Business Suite , Weblogic and JRockit inventories.

Or why not try out Tideway Foundation by downloading the Community Edition

Steve

]]> Featured, Home Page, Software 2009-10-22T09:17:56+00:00