Bj® introduces a number of new and exciting features never before available in BASIS products. As a result, you can configure more items to make a system perform as needed by each individual Customer. The BBj Enterprise ManagerT is the tool that gets this done.

The BBj Enterprise Manager provides a central location for managing all of the BBj Services throughout the enterprise. This application gives the user a graphical interface for making all configurations to server settings, databases, user accounts and logging levels. Written entirely in Java, the BBj Enterprise Manager can run on any platform with a Java Runtime Environment 1.2 or higher, a GUI environment and TCP/IP support. It is also possible to run the Enterprise Manager as a Java applet on a Web page, making it easily accessible to the administrator from any machine with a Web browser.

One of the most important features of the Enterprise Manager is that it provides an interface for configuring any BBj Services that are installed in the enterprise. You can manage servers remotely from any machine that has access to the server. Administrators have the ability to enable or disable each of the servers contained within the BBj Services. It also allows an administrator to set the port on which any or all servers within the BBj Services run and to set log file locations and other optional settings.

User accounts are new to BBj. In BBj, you can utilize user accounts to authenticate users attempting to connect to a particular BBj Services server. For SQL access to data, a user and password are always authenticated before a connection is granted. This provides a level of security that can both prevent unauthorized access and limit access to sensitive information. You can configure databases to grant or deny several levels of access to specific user accounts.

Managing databases is a common task with which an administrator can use the Enterprise Manager. The Enterprise Manager provides an easy-to-use dialog for an administrator to provide the necessary information that BBj Services needs to connect to a database, such as the location of the data files, the location of the data dictionary files, which date format to use, whether advisory locking should be used and more. This information is specific to a single database, and because it is contained on the server you don't have to do any kind of database configuration on the client machine.

The Enterprise Manager also has some useful tools for testing database connectivity, getting information about the tables and views in a database, and changing some of the design information on tables. We'll be adding new features in this area with each new revision of BBj.

With all the new features in BBj that were never available in previous BASIS products, the BBj Enterprise Manager provides a powerful tool to configure just about anything. This tool comes as part of the Standard and Enterprise editions of BBj. If you have not yet worked with the BBj Enterprise Manager, I urge you to take some time to get familiar with its capabilities and the new possibilities it offers administrators.