OSI/FTAM Programming Guide

FTAM Application Management
HP NonStop OSI/FTAM Programming Guide—528612-001
6-5
A Few Words of Advice
application programs as they run. For a full description of Inspect, refer to the Inspect
Manual.
The Subsystem Control Facility (SCF) is a tool for managing NonStop FTAM initiator
processes, as well as other communications software on your NonStop system. You
use SCF not only to set up your FTAM configuration, but also to monitor the
performance of initiator and APLMGR processes. The SCF STATS and STATUS
commands allow you to gather status and statistical information that you can use in
making tuning decisions, as well as to troubleshoot problems. The SCF reference
manuals for APLMGR and NonStop FTAM provide information about these commands.
To see an example of using SCF to monitor associations, see Checking Association
Status on page 6-6.
The SCF TRACE command allows you to trace an APLMGR, initiator, or responder
process. (The responder, here, is the NonStop FTAM responder, not the one with
which your FTAM application communicates across the network.) The PTrace utility
formats the output of SCF TRACE. You can use PTrace to select and format trace
records. PTrace can help you find and reconcile interoperability problems between the
NonStop system and a remote system by providing detailed information for that
association. For detailed information on PTrace, see the PTrace Reference Manual,
and for information about the trace records generated when APLMGR and initiator
processes are traced, see the OSI/FTAM and OSI/APLMGR SCF Reference Manual.
The Event Management Service (EMS) reports occurrences that might be important to
people or applications managing the system or network. (This definition of an event is
completely different from the definition of that term in the FTAM standard.) EMS event
messages can be displayed at an operator’s console, stored in a file, or included in
printed reports. Events often occur as the result of a problem, and the operator
message can provide valuable information about the problem. For information on
NonStop FTAM operator messages, refer to the Operator Messages: Distributed
Systems Management (DSM) Display Format.
A Few Words of Advice
If your program executes but you have a problem with the FTAM interface, it might be
appropriate to use Inspect, PTrace, or both. The use of these tools depends very much
on the nature of the problem. If you encounter an error message during the operation
of your application, see the OSI/FTAM Programming Reference Manual for a
description of the cause, effect, and recovery action for the error.
When evaluating a problem, try to test your application first in a loopback fashion,
using only NonStop products, to verify that your use of NonStop FTAM is correct. (You
might need to modify your application to run it in loopback if the responder for which it
was written behaves very differently from the NonStop FTAM responder.) If you find no
problems during loopback testing, but continue to have problems when testing with
another vendor’s FTAM implementation, the implementations might not be
interoperating correctly. For more information on interoperability, refer to the OSI/FTAM
Programming Reference Manual.