Oracle® Real User Experience Insight Release Notes

12c Release 2 (12.1.0.3)

E37264-02

Oracle® Real User Experience Insight

Release Notes

12c Release 2 (12.1.0.3) for Linux x86-64

E37264-02

September 2012

Oracle Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) provides you with powerful analysis of your network and business infrastructure. You can monitor the real-user experience, define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and trigger alert notifications for incidents that violate them.

RUEI is a Web-based utility to report on real-user traffic requested by, and generated from, your Web infrastructure. It measures the response times of pages and user transactions at the most critical points in your network infrastructure. An insightful diagnostics facility allows Application Managers and IT technical staff to perform root-cause analysis.

This document provides information about the changes introduced to Oracle Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) in release 12.1.0.3. Known issues and limitations are also described. It is recommended that you review its contents before installing the product or upgrading to this version of the product.

This document contains the following sections:

- Section 1, "New Features Included in the Release"

- Section 2, "Installation/Upgrade Procedure"

- Section 3, "Known Issues and Limitations"

- Section 4, "Compatibility Issues"

- Section 5, "Bugs Fixed"

- Section 6, "Product Documentation"

- Section 7, "Documentation Accessibility"

Important

If you are upgrading from a release other than the most recent previous release, it is strongly recommended that you review the Release Notes for each of the intermediate releases for information about possible compatibility issues. This information is available at the following location:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/documentation/realuserei-091455.html

1 New Features Included in the Release

- Direct exposure of RUEI data in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R2
It is now possible to directly expose RUEI monitoring data within Oracle Enterprise Manager. This is achieved through the creation of a new Enterprise Manager target called Business Applications. These managed targets provide an intuitive representation of the relationship between your applications, business transactions, and the underlying IT infrastructure, and maximizes the performance and availability of your business-critical applications. In order to make use of this facility, a connection must be set up to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Repository. This is described in Appendix D of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight Installation Guide. For further information on the Business Application target, see the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Getting Started with Oracle Fusion Middleware Guide.

- Support for true browser render time reporting even in situations such as partial Cloud or CDN delivery
In many of today's deployment situations, content can be partially delivered through CDN or Cloud environments; locations where you cannot deploy a RUEI sniffer. To ensure this content is included in page-performance reporting, RUEI now supports processing additional information gathered by lightweight application instrumentation. This is based on a configurable onLoad object. When enabling this feature, the following additional metrics are available:

- Page download time and page browser time counters
Application reporting has been enhanced with the addition of two new counters: page download time and page browser time. Page download time represents the time elapsed between the first page object (normally the page request) and the last page object being delivered. Page browser time represents the time necessary for the page to actually be available to the user (that is, after the execution of such things as JavaScript code and Flash functionality).

- Page download time and page browser time counters for ADF framework based applications and/or Fusion Applications
When deploying RUEI against these type of applications, no onLoad object is required to get the true Page download time and page browser time. ADF has this information exchange natively built into the framework, and RUEI has been updated to process this information. The additional information can be used both in on-site and CDN/partial cloud deployments.

- Page object count and screen resolution information
You can obtain information about the number of objects on a page and the screen resolution. Use of this functionality requires that you download the generated JavaScript file, and include it in the required application pages.

For further information, see section 12.18 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide. If you are upgrading from a previous version, it is recommended that you review the information in the "Compatibility Issues" section.

- User flow duration reporting
The reporting of user flow durations has been enhanced to clearly indicate the time components when users were active, idle, and outside the user flow. These are available through the new User flow active/idle time, user flow outside/duration time, and user flow loading/active time views. For further information, see section 9.9 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide. If you are upgrading from a previous release, it is recommended that you review the information in the "Compatibility Issues" section.

- Parsing of user flow monetary values
It is now possible to specify how the source value for a user flow's monetary value should be interpreted. This is useful when you need to take account of national formatting variations. Note this facility only applies to the parsing of source values and does not apply to reporting. For further information, see section 9.2 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

- Enhanced reporting of Oracle Forms-based traffic
Previously, reported Forms names were derived from the Forms window title based on the mapping uploaded through the configuration script. Now, it is possible to specify that the Forms name should be obtained from the Forms server. This makes it possible to distinguish multiple Forms names with the same window title, and does not require re-running of the configuration script each time additional Forms are added to an application. In addition, you can use this facility to insert messages into Forms traffic that will be reported within the Session Diagnostics facility. For further information, see section M.13 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

- Human-readable element names in Oracle Forms
Previously, the reporting of element names within Oracle Forms traffic was based on technical names (for example, "Textfield 3605"). Now, when available, the human-readable element name is reported (for example, "Stock_Availability_Status"). For further information, see Appendix M of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

- Disable report categories
It is now possible for an Administrator to disable report categories for all non-Administrator users. This facility is particularly useful when modifying report structures or to restrict access to reports that contain sensitive information. Reports within a disabled category are also automatically removed from the Favorites and Report mailings facilities. For further information, see section 2.2 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

- Masking of page contents within the Full Session Replay facility
It is now possible to specify XPath search expressions for the contents of pages that you want masked within the Full Session Replay facility. This allows you to manage the security of sensitive information within displayed pages. Note that this facility is only available to users with Security Officer permission. For further information, see section 13.7 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

- Diagnostics facility available for all Web services
The Diagnostics facility is now available for the All functions group. This allows you to perform performance analysis of not only failed and slow function calls, but all function calls. For further information, see section 4.1 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

- Application-specific session tracking
Session tracking has been enhanced with the ability to specify the cookie technologies used by specific applications and suites. When specified, these take precedence over global session tracking definitions. For further information, see section 12.2 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

- Support for the monitoring of jumbo frames
It is now possible specify the maximum size of incoming frames accepted by the Collectors within a Collector profile. The default is 2 KB. Note that frames that exceed the specified maximum will be discarded, and messages posted in the Event log. For further information, see section 10.13 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

- Extended support for XPath content scanning
Support for the use of XPath queries has been enhanced so that processing can be optimized to prevent the unnecessary scanning of large numbers of documents which can lead to excessive memory and CPU usage on a Collector system. In particular, content strings can now be configured to be compared to the start of the document's message content to determine its content type. In addition, a default content type (HTML or XML) can be configured for unmatched documents. For further information, see section F.5 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

- Monitoring mixed VLAN and non-VLAN traffic
It is now possible to specify that traffic monitored by the Collectors within a specified Collector profile can contain both VLAN and non-VLAN traffic. For further information, see section 13.4.2 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

2 Installation/Upgrade Procedure

The installation procedure, together with the procedure to upgrade an existing RUEI 11.1 or 12.1.x installation to version 12.1.0.3, is fully described in the Oracle Real User Experience Insight Installation Guide.

Note:
It is recommended that you check the availability of all hot fixes for the release to which you are upgrading, and apply (if relevant) before starting the upgrade procedure.

Important: Filtering Network Traffic Based on Domain Names

Article 1320386.1 describes how network traffic can be filtered based on domain names. If you are using the implementation described in this article, you should follow the procedure described in the article 1198923.1 after upgrading to 12.1.0.3. Otherwise, you may experience traffic flooding.

Default Tablespace Mode

As of version 12.1.0.3, the USERS and UXCONF tablespaces within new installations are by default set to force logging mode. Previously, the default mode was nologging. The procedure for changing this configuration is described in the Oracle Real User Experience Insight Advanced Administrator's Guide.

The upgrade procedure does not change your database's current setting. However, be aware that changing the tablespace mode to force logging can considerably increase disk I/O.

Increased Database Usage

As of version 12.1.0.3, additional statistics and facts database tables are created to facilitate RUEI integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager. Be aware that these tables increase the level of database I/O activity and storage requirements.

3 Known Issues and Limitations

The following issues are known to exist with the release:

- Vertical bar chart visualizations not available within dashboard items
Due to size constraints, the vertical bar chart visualization is only available for time-based dashboard items.

- External JavaScript files need to be downloaded within Replay viewer
If you are using the Internet Explorer browser within the Replay viewer, when clicking a link to an external JavaScript file, you are first prompted to download the external file. In addition, when replaying a page which includes a download hit file (such as an .exe or .rpm), you are prompted to save the file. This does not occur with Mozilla Firefox.

- Long dimension level values are truncated
All dimension level values (such as page names) are limited to 254 characters. If a name is longer than this, it is automatically truncated. Note truncated data is indicated by ending with an ellipse (…).

- Mismatches between previewed reports and generated PDFs
Some characters are not rendered in the generated PDF file as they appear in the preview. This is because the preview facility uses locally installed client fonts, while the PDF generation facility uses the RUEI server installed fonts. The default font will cover most customer requirements. However, there are known issues with Asian and Eastern European bold characters. If necessary, you can install a suitable alternative font to resolve this issue. For further information, see the Oracle Real User Experience Insight Installation Guide.

- URL reporting
RUEI reports URLs in a human-readable format. This means the reported URLs, although they appear to be real URLs, cannot always be copied and pasted into the browser address bar. It is not possible to distinguish between the raw format (received by the Web server) and the more readable format (reported by RUEI). As a result, the following characters might receive a different meaning:, (comma), [, ], :, @, !, $, ', (, ), *, and +.

- Pages within the Replay Viewer
Application pages may not be available via the Replay Viewer within the Session diagnostics facility, or may appear garbled, if they are based on Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Examples of RIA frameworks include Ajax, Curl, GWT, Adobe Flash/Adobe Flex/AIR, Java/JavaFX, Mozilla's XUL, OpenLaszlo, and Microsoft Silverlight. However, if the page contains JavaScript code, the JavaScript replay facility can be used to modify the rendering of replayed pages. This is described in section 6.3 of the Oracle Real User Experience Insight User's Guide.

- Overlapping or repeated tagging definitions
Specifying identification definitions, as well as functional error definitions, that overlap (or are identical) across multiple applications, suites, or services can lead to unexpected results. This restriction applies to page-naming schemes, and any configuration based on custom tags, custom functions, and response content.

- Service naming schemes within ruling facility
When a group and name source exist for both service group and name schemes, two levels can be delivered for each source resulting in 4-level service names.

- Users with application-specific permissions unable to view data within the All user flows group
Users who have only application-specific permissions cannot view generic user flows, even if these contain parts (such as conditions or triggers) that meet the user's authorization.

- Not all time periods available for non-generic user flow dashboard widgets
Non-generic user flow dashboard widgets (that is, those that are application, service, or suite specific) are only available when the selected period is the last hour or last 5 minutes. Selection of any other period results in these widgets reporting "N/A".

- User flow funnel dashboard widgets need to be re-created after upgrading
When upgrading to 12.1.0.1, existing user flow funnel dashboard widgets will no longer work. They must to be re-created (or existing ones edited) by selecting "User flow completion" as the data source, "User flows" as the View category, and "Funnel" as the view name.

4 Compatibility Issues

If you are upgrading from a previous release, you should be aware of the reporting differences highlighted in this section.

- Reported page load times
In the case of Oracle Fusion applications, the page load time is now reported as the time between the start of the load action and the page being available in the client browser, while the page browser time is reported as the page load time minus the page download time. If you have defined KPIs for these applications based on the page load time metric, it is recommended that you review their operation.

- Location of suite-specific configuration scripts
The location of suite-specific configuration scripts (such as create_EBS_info.pl) has changed from the RUEI_DATA/processor/local/download/suite directory to the RUEI_DATA/processor/local/download directory.

- Increased database space requirements
Due to the addition of hourly information within Data Browser groups, the amount of required database space has significantly increased. It is recommended that you regularly review database utilization and your data retention policies in order to ensure that they meet your reporting requirements.

- User flow activity reporting
Be aware that the enhancements to user flow activity reporting highlighted in the "New Features Included in the Release" section cannot be applied retrospectively to historical data. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you review the design of any custom reports that include user flow activity information in order to ensure that they meet your reporting requirements.

5 Bugs Fixed

The following bugs have been fixed in this release:

Collector

- Sitestat tags are not picked up in SSL traffic (14543199).

- Traffic missed in HTTPS logon initiated with the Chrome browser (14494244).

- Collector remains in loading status when using IP address filtering (14331349).

- Not possible to specify XML content prefixes that should be skipped (14118869).

- Collector fails after adding new filter (14102777).

- It is only possible to specify mixed VLAN traffic via command-line interface (12814185).

User Flows

- Users cannot delete user flows they created themselves (14354059).

- Session diagnostics information not available for completed user flows (14138349).

- Client location not correctly reported for completed user flows (14133572).

- Not possible to specify how monetary source values should be parsed (13497387).

Suites

- Uploading the EBS configuration file returns the internal error "zipfile contains empty file EBS_msgid2details.txt" (14532152).

- Error reported when uploading PeopleSoft configuration file (14493388).

- Adding second Oracle FLEXCUBE suite fails (14278992).

- Unknown EBS forms reported as login forms (14197259).

Processing Engines

- Processing reported lagging when using a Processing Engine (14336704).

- Oracle database errors reported when using Processing Engines (14317658).

Installation/Upgrade

- ruei-prepare-db.sh script fails when upgrading from 6.5 to 11.1 (14283814).

- Internal web server errors reported after upgrading to 12.1.0.1 (14230081).

Miscellaneous

- Internal merge errors reported in Event log (14304868).

- Invalid UTF-8 byte reported after enabling robot traffic exclusion (14267794).

- Functional diagnosis should be available for all web services (14228762).

- Division by zero reported within Data retention policies screen (14209922).

- Internal processing errors reported in Event log (14154533).

- Network diagnostics facility does not report traffic seen by Collector (14209583).

- Adding customer dimension leads to project restart fail (14141620).

- Reported page names truncated when using custom tag page-naming scheme (14025134).

- Not possible to disable access to sensitive report categories (13782890).

- Not possible to invert KPI filters (10427647).

- Existing dashboards are not overwritten after restoring a saveall (14488867).

- Not possible to specify application/suite-specific session tracking (9941703).

- Inconsistent current values reported for KPIs (14577155).

- Internal merge errors reported in Event log (14304842).

6 Product Documentation

The latest version of the product documentation is available via the link below:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/documentation/realuserei-091455.html

7 Documentation Accessibility

For information about Oracle's commitment to accessibility, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program website at http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=docacc.

Access to Oracle Support

Oracle customers have access to electronic support through My Oracle Support. For information, visit http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=info or visit http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=trs if you are hearing impaired.

Oracle Real User Experience Insight, 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.3) for Linux x86-64

E37264-02

Copyright © 2012,  Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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