How can I configure email alert to check if an Essbase Application is running or not?

Question

I want to develop a script which will check the state (running or not) of an Essbase application (say, every 15 mins.).

If the Essbase application is not running then it will send an alert via email to user or application admin .

Answer 1

There isn't anything built in to Essbase that is going to do this for you. You really need to look at this in terms of two different things you are trying to accomplish:

1. How to tell if an Essbase cube is running
2. How to send an email from a batch/scheduled process

As for item 1, there are at least a couple of ways to go. I believe you could use MaxL (the automation language for Essbase) to determine if an application/cube is running. For example, you could use MaxL to check the status of the cube, output the script to a text file, and then scan that text file for the proper line/indicator that the cube is running or not. This may technically work but it wouldn't be my preferred option. You would also have to develop this so that in case the server itself isn't running, it triggers the specific action you want.

Another way to go (and this is my preferred option) is to use the Essbase Java API to determine if the application/cube is running. Although you may not be familiar with Java, this to me is the cleanest way to implement this functionality. You would use the API to connect to the server, and if the connection to the server was successful you could then check the status of the application/cube. In case the cube or server is down/stopped, you can do the appropriate action. You could also send the email from Java itself, using one of the Java email libraries.

You can also send emails from the command-line. It varies in specifics between Unix/Windows but in general if you can specify an SMTP server, email address, subject, body, and other parameters, it works just fine. There are freely available email clients I have seen and used that work completely on the command-line and handle this use case fairly well.

Once everything is all developed and tested it's just a simple matter of scheduling it to run every 15 minutes or however often you want to run it.

As I mentioned, MaxL is the scripting language for Essbase. There is a program on the Essbase server that interprets MaxL scripts. The MaxL language is documented extensively in the EPM documentation. As a very simple example, you could write a MaxL script like the following:

login "admin" "password" on "localhost";
display application "Sample";

If you are running on a Linux/Unix server then you might then run the script as follows:

startMaxl.sh your_script.msh

This script would then output a text-based grid of different application properties to the console.

One of the columns that the display application command will display is related to the application status, if the app is loaded/started or whatever. Theoretically to get this solution to work you'd need to send MaxL's script output to a file and then scan the file for the proper text and decide if action needs to be taken. While this approach can work, it comes with risks. That's why I think Java (the preferred API for Essbase) is much better suited to solving this.