Monitor WCS Cache

Cache monitor is a web application which gives you the ability to monitor object/Servlet cache in your application, it is important to note that this is not a WCS component, instead it is available for any J2ee applications in WAS environment which leverage cachespec.xml to define various caching strategy in the application. 

If you are trying to set this up on commerce toolkit it is important to note that this EAR file is not available with the commerce toolkit, you can get a copy of cache monitor EAR WAS installation from your server, It will be in the installableApps directory for either your deployment manager or stand alone application server.

I was able to get a copy from my SDP folder which get's created at the time of Commerce V7 toolkit installation, the location of the cahemonitor will typically be "C:\IBM\SDP\runtimes\base_v7\installableApps"


As an alternative option, you can always download the trial version of WAS from following location
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ws/was/
install it and then copy the cachemonitor EAR file.


Step 1: Log on to WAS Admin console.
https://localhost:9043/ibm/console

Step 2: Execute all the steps as mentioned in following Info Center link
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wchelp/v7r0m0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.commerce.admin.doc/tutorial/tdcperf1b.htm

Note: although the info center link specifies to select detailed installation, I preferred to perform a "Fast Path" installation.

Step 3: Start Cache Monitor from Enterprise applications option in WAS admin console.



One final enhancement...
There is an IBM extended cache monitor available which adds the capability to monitor the content of object cache instances and dynamic Cache mbean statistics for cache instances

Details are available at following location.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/downloads/cache_monitor.html


It is a good development practice to have it configured in developer toolkit to let developers take advantage of unit testing various caching parameters, remember good application development starts with early performance / unit testing.