Express (Distributed operating systems), v8.0 > Troubleshoot and support > Analyzing application server Java system dumps with the IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java - Dump Analyzer > Write a new analysis module or script > Write and running a new analysis script
An overview of the scripting language
It is possible to write all analysis modules in Java and that may be an appropriate route in many cases. There are times however when a user might want to avoid the full sophistication of Java and instead use some very simple scripting capability to invoke existing analyzers. For those occasions we have provided a language based on the concept of a state machine which is entered and then proceeds to move between states until it has completed its analysis. We deliberately avoid the inclusion of a looping construct and further constrain the language to ensure that a state can only be visited once. The aim is to ensure that a script can be quickly constructed and will not result in endless repetition of analysis. The language is comprised of a number of keywords
import {name}
define the full package name of an analyzer and make it available in its short form in the script
state {name}
define the name of the current state
{variable} = {analyzer}:{rule}
set a variable to be the result of running an analysis
if ({boolean expression})
the only conditional statement
else
handle the case where the condition is false
fi
end the if statement
newState {state name}
change to a new state defined by the 'state' keyword
report {analyzer}
invoke the produceReport on the given analyzer
help {analyzer}
show help for the given analyzer
print {message}
print a message for the user
error {message}
print an error message in the result summary
terminate {result}
end the script with the given result which can be OK, ERROR, FATAL, TRUE, FALSE. a script must be stored in a file with the extension .sml (state machine language). The next section shows an example of a script used to link together a couple of analyzers into a simple analysis flow.