A look into Atomic Scope 3.0 – Part 2
In the first part, I started with BizTalk BAM, and Atomic Scope primers.
I went through some of Atomic Scope cool features, such as the enhanced search experience, archived data control, tracked messages encryption, and user access policy.
In this second and final part, I will continue exploring some of the other exciting features in Atomic Scope, I will also be looking into some of the new features in the upcoming 4.0 version.
Finally, I will highlight on some of possible new features that could be included in future releases.
Message Batches Tracking
This a feature that was introduced in version 2.0, in addition to tracking the batch message, it is also able to track the debatched messages and correlate them to the original batch message.
This is achieved by using two Activity Logger pipeline components that update the corresponding defined Business Stages at different BizTalk pipeline stages, before and after XML disassembler component pipeline stage, as shown in the screenshot below. In addition, the BizTalk Batch ID context property is configured in Atomic Scope portal for tracking in the stage prior to disassembling of the batch message.
This technique also sheds some light on the level of flexibility that can be reached by adding Atomic Scope pipeline components, or instrumentation code in different business stages in complex business processes. For instance, in case of pipeline message manipulation milestones, or along orchestration milestones in business process flows.
As shown in the above screenshot, the first pipeline component is track the batch message itself, before the message is debatched by the XML dissembler, to track the batch message ID, this is like tracking any other message. While, the second pipeline component, you will mark the corresponding Stage as a Debatching Stage in Atomic Scope portal, as shown below.
You will be able to view the tracked batch transactions, as well as the correlated individual transactions in that batch, as shown below.
Message Re-processing
This feature is quite reminiscent of BizTalk ESB Portal’s Message Repairing and Resubmitting feature. For BizTalk solutions, Atomic Scope can leverage a dedicated receive location with SQL adapter to poll the messages to be re-processed from Atomic Scope DB and publish those messages again into BizTalk message box.
Atomic Scope can also be configured to leverage a Web endpoint for re-processing, which can be literally, any type of on-premises, or cloud-based workloads that have an incoming HTTP endpoint along with the corresponding re-processing implementation logic of those passed messages.
In any case, you need to configure the stage definition in Atomic Scope, to include the SQL receive location, or the Web endpoint needed for re-processing the message at the selected stage from Atomic Scope portal.
Unlike BizTalk ESB portal, here you have to granular control to define the exact stage at which re-processing for failed transactions is enabled, this ensures that the intention is clear. In other words, you are consciously aware of introducing the re-processing capability at the specified stage(s) that make sense for the business scenario, or that are allowed, from a business perspective, to have this feature in the first place.
Exceptions Monitoring
Notifications can be based on business, or technical exceptions within a given business processes. You also have some nifty features, like setting maximum thresholds for the number of alerts sent, as well as confining these thresholds to the scope of exception types, specific transactions, or both.
Setting alerts threshold can mitigate the usual case of having numerous notifications being sent to operators for the same exact issue. We have all been there, too much notifications can cause people to become overwhelmed, drawn away from the important issues, or completely tune out!
Query-based Monitoring
In addition to exceptions monitoring, Atomic Scope also provides monitoring and notifications that is based on specific, pre-defined business-related queries which will run with the specified frequency.
Query-based notification is an extremely useful feature, it lends itself well to service level agreements (SLAs) validations for important business processes, and allows the businesses to keep an eye on these business processes, for which notifications will be sent to all the configured notification channels.
In the example below, it shows how the business could get notified if huge amount of Purchase Order quantities are being ordered within a short period of time.
In this example, I am looking for Purchase Orders transactions having tracked property (Quantity) that exceed (1000) within a period of (2) minutes, I configured that this query should run every (5) minutes, to check for the occurrence of this business case.
I also configured it to send a warning if this case is encountered more than (3) times, and send an error if it is encountered more than (6) times.
For this particular scenario, a possible follow up action could require a human intervention for inventory replenishment manually on another system, or it could require to trigger an automated process, deployed somewhere, which will handle the proper inventory inventory logic, using the WebHook notification channel.
New Notification Channels
Atomic Scope 3.0 provides additional notification channels for the different types of alerts, to cater for diverse notification scenarios, it is also a nod towards how relying on emails alone could be an inefficient way for providing alerts for operators in today’s world, as touched upon in the Exceptions Monitoring section.
Interestingly, you can also leverage a WebHook to trigger a complementary business process which could be encapsulated in a cloud-based, or on-premises workload.
You can also have notifications through PagerDuty, Slack, MS Teams, or Operations Management Suite (OMS). Furthermore, alerts could be configured to send to multiple notification channels simultaneously. In the example below, you can see Atomic Scope notifications displayed in OMS.
4.0 Sneak peek
During the time I was writing this second part, The product team contacted me, and I had a chance to see some of the new features that will be introduced in the upcoming Atomic Scope 4.0.
- Different Charts Types can be used to visually display business-relevant dashboards for the captured business data
- The charts can be configured and defined within widgets, for re-usability in different dashboards
- Auditing for all the users’ actions in Atomic Scope portal
- Specific business processes can be selected during the business process definition importing
- Business process definition importing can also optionally create a backup for the existing business process definition, in case you need to revert back
- Message re-processing will keep track of the number times a message has been re-processed, so far. This number will also be displayed in the confirmation message, before taking the new re-processing action
Possible New Features
This is a list of features that I think would be great to have in Atomic Scope:
- More fine-grained access control roles for actions and scopes, for instance, a role for the message re-processing action
- The ability to mark specific tracked message properties containing sensitive data, to be masked in tracking
- Manually trigger and test query monitoring notifications through the portal
- Business charts could be interactive, to drill through and display relevant business data
- Easily design and display business charts and tables with dimensions similar to BizTalk BAM
Next Generation BAM
In this 2-part series, I tried to capture some of the interesting features in the latest two releases of Atomic Scope versions 2.0, 3.0, and the upcoming 4.0.
It is truly amazing to witness Atomic Scope evolve so fast, with 3 releases in less than a year since the first release and a fourth release in the pipeline.
The product team have always been keen to listen for the community feedback, their effort and diligence can be clearly seen in the product and its continuously improved, new features.
Atomic Scope is moving steadily towards earning the well-deserved title of Next Generation BAM.