Viewing and Monitoring Transaction Performance

After a transaction is defined and if monitoring is enabled for the transaction, Business Transaction Management applies the default transaction measurement policy. In addition, if instance logging or message content logging is enabled for the transaction, it starts logging the appropriate information.

As traffic flows through the services that participate in a transaction, Business Transaction Management displays core measurements for the selected transaction in the Main area. This includes the number of started and completed transactions, the throughput, and the average response time. In the Tabs area it displays more detailed information about transaction performance and its definition. This includes the following:

  • A Summary tab that presents summary performance information for the transaction and a map of the operations it includes.

  • An Analysis tab that presents a graphic view of transaction performance over time as well as summary information for conditions, performance segmented by consumer usage or client address, and violation alerts. This tab also gives you the option of creating your own custom chart and breakdown.

  • An Alerts tab that lists the alerts triggered for this transaction in a given period.

  • An Instances tab. If you have instance logging enabled, you can use this tab to assemble an instance and view performance information for the instance.

  • A Message Log tab. If you have message logging enabled, you can use this tab to view the contents of any request or response message for a logged operation.

  • An SLA Compliance tab that shows the status and definition of service level agreements currently associated with this transaction.

  • Definitional tabs. These tabs contain information about the transaction definition and the policies, conditions, and properties associated with the transaction.

This section explains how you use transactions attributes to filter your transaction view, how you view summary and analysis performance information for a transaction, and how you view and respond to alerts.

See About Instruments for a detailed discussion of the instruments used to measure transaction performance.

Filtering the Main View of Transactions

By default all transactions are shown in the Main area when you select Transactions from the Navigator. You can have Business Transaction Management display a subset of currently defined transactions by using the Filter link or drop-down list. Using filters allows you to customize your view and to focus on the characteristics of interest.

Summary and Analysis of Performance Information

Business Transaction Management uses the Summary and Analysis tabs of the Transaction view to present summary and detailed analysis of transaction performance. This section describes these views.

Summary Tab

The Summary tab uses four panes and a grid view to present performance information in a Transaction Summary Dashboard. These are mostly self-explanatory, except for the Delay Analysis pane, which is described in greater detail below.

The Transaction Summary Dashboard includes the following:

  • A Status pane showing the overall compliance for the transaction.

  • A Measurement and Baselines pane showing the number of started and completed transactions, average response times and maximum response times. If you have defined baselines, these are shown as gray lines in the picture.

  • A map of the transaction showing average response times for each transaction link. Place the cursor over each service icon to get detailed performance information for that service. The thickness of the arrows indicates throughput.

  • The Delay analysis pane, which you can use in conjunction with the map pane, shows graphically what proportion of the overall response time is spent in each hop (link) of the transaction.

    Each colored area of the grid corresponds to a transaction link. Clicking in a colored region highlights its corresponding link in the map and displays the percentage of the response time taken up by that hop.

    At the bottom of this pane, a graph shows the average and maximum response times and the started transactions. Clicking in the pane displays a vertical red line that shows how the colored proportions correspond to message traffic flows.

  • A grid view showing the logical and physical operations that make up the transaction, and the following instruments for each: violation alerts, average response time, maximum response time, throughput, and faults.

Analysis Tab

The Analysis tab of the Transaction view allows you to see the measurements in the Summary tab graphically rendered as trends across time. The Analysis tab offers six views of transaction performance data. These are described in the table below.

View Description
Performance Provides two color-coded charts: one that tracks started transactions, completed transactions, and conditions; the other tracks average response time versus maximum response time.
Conditions Lists information about the conditions that have been triggered in a given time period: the name of the condition that was met, the endpoint where the condition alert was triggered, and the number of condition alerts triggered.
Consumer usage If you have chosen to segment by consumer: Lists service consumers and the number of started and completed transactions in which they were involved and the average and maximum response time for each consumer.
Breakdown by Client Address If you have chosen to segment by ip address: Lists the hosts for the services involved in the transaction, the number of transactions started and completed on each, and the average and maximum response time for each host.
Custom charting Displays performance results for custom charts. Lets you set up a customized chart and table with instruments of your choosing.

Click Choose Instruments and select the instruments you want displayed in the chart and table. You can select multiple instruments.

Custom breakdown Defines the custom performance information to measure and the segment on behalf of which measurement is done.

Click Choose Instruments and select the instruments you want displayed in the table. You can select multiple instruments. Click Choose Segments and select how you want to segment the measurements. You can select multiple segments.


Viewing and Responding to Alerts

Alerts are shown on the Alerts tab for the selected transaction. You can use the Filter button in that tab to determine the range of time for which alerts should be displayed.

The system automatically generates alerts when one of the following happens:

  • An SLA enforcement policy issues a failure, warning, or compliance alert.

  • A condition evaluates to true

You can respond to alerts triggered by a condition by examining the assembled transaction instance and taking appropriate action.