### Signature

BEA Support has identified patterns in user domains that can cause problems. These patterns are described in XML documents called signatures.

Signatures describe potential problems based on information about your BEA WebLogic Servers and the environment in which they are deployed, including Java Virtual Machines (JVMs), operating systems, and databases. Signatures contain executable logic that can identify specific versions of these products as well as their configuration settings.

In addition to the potential problem description, signatures also contain a remedy recommendation and a severity level: 1-Critical, 2-Warning, or 3-Info.

To detect which signatures apply to your domain, you conduct an evaluation. When the evaluation is complete, the results are displayed in an Evaluation Summary. The Evaluation Summary lists all of the detected signatures, along with the severity level, description, and recommended remedy for each.

Signatures form a primary component of BEA Guardian, since they contain the distilled knowledge of BEA Support for both detecting potential problems and resolving them.