Glossary

This glossary provides an explanation of the terms used in RUEI.

abandonment

When a visitor exits or leaves a transaction process on a Web site and does not return later in the session.

administrator

Assigned user responsible for maintaining the RUEI installation. This includes monitoring the system's health status, performing configuration backups, and defining the scope of network operations that will be monitored. They are also responsible for maintaining users and permissions.

alert

An automatically generated notification issued when a KPI moves outside its defined target range. When configuring alerts, you need to specify the duration the KPI must be up (or down) before an alert is issued, the severity of the incident, and whether additional notification should be created when the KPI has returned to its set target range.

alert profile

Defines the users who will be notified (and how they will be notified) if a business or technical KPI has been down (or up) for the specified duration required to generate an alert. Depending on how the KPI has been defined, users will also receive an up notification when the KPI returns to within its set target range.

alert schedule

Two types of alert schedule are available: business and technical. If your organization uses alerts to notify staff members about incidents that impact service levels, these schedules specify who should be notified and when.

application

Page identification mechanism. An application is a collection of Web pages. This is because pages on a Web site are typically bound to a particular application. Each application has a page naming scheme defined for it, which specifies its scope. This can be specified in terms of a domain name or a URL structure, or a partial match of both of these.

business users

Users who are concerned with evaluating visitor behavior according to business goals. As such, they use the business intelligence that RUEI offers them to monitor a wide variety of issues, such as identifying the most popular paths taken to your Web site, or how engaged visitors are on particular pages or sections. See also IT users.

calendar

A report or information within the data browser provides information about a particular date or period. The From and To sections within the Calendar provide a mechanism to specify the required period. This can be specified in terms of days, weeks, or months.

categories

A means of grouping KPIs and SLAs. These can be customized to contain related performance indicators. Typically, each category contains KPIs and SLAs relevant to a particular aspect of an organization's operations. For example, performance, page availability, visitor traffic, and so on.

client

Facility that enables you to enhance the information associated with visitor IP addresses. This is especially useful when monitoring Intranet traffic and you want to be able to use your own visitor classification. See also server.

cookie

A small file that is stored on the user's computer while browsing a Web site. It is used to track visitors. RUEI needs to know and understand the cookie technology you Web site is using. This will either be a standard technology (such as ASP or ColdFusion), or a custom implementation.

dashboard

A visual display of the most important information required to achieve one or more objectives, consolidated, and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance. You are free to configure your dashboards to reflect your organization's specific requirements, with each dashboard containing relevant performance indicators. For example, you could have separate dashboards for such things as availability issues, performance, and visitor traffic.

data browser

The information captured during monitoring is stored as a multidimensional data structure. The Data browser allows you to explore Web data by simply clicking down through increasing levels of detail, and view by different dimensions (such as period, referrer, visitor type, and so on). You can use it to understand the context of the data shown in a report.

domain

An area in the Internet specified by a URL address. The top-level domain is at the end after the dot and the second-level domain comes before it, and shows where in the top-level domain the address can be found. For example in www.webtrends.com, ".com" is the top-level domain, and "webtrends" is the second level domain.

error log

RUEI maintains an error log that contains a record of all system events. Normally, it should be empty. If any error is reported in the file, you should contact Customer Support.

escalation

An optional facility that can be defined with the alert schedule so that another group of users are automatically notification if a KPI remains failing for beyond a specified period. See also reminder.

exclusive filters

Specifies that only data items that do not match the data value in the filter should be shown. See also inclusive filters.

export

You can export the data currently shown in the data browser to a wide variety of applications, such as spreadsheets. In addition, you can customize how the data should be exported. You can modify the order of data columns, specify additional columns that will appear in a Microsoft Excel export, and specify the format in which the data will be exported.

favorites

Facility that helps you to quickly locate the reports you work with most often by creating shortcuts to them.

filter

A means of narrowing the scope of a report, KPI, or data displayed in the data browser. See also inclusive filters, exclusive filters, and toggle filters.

header

Contains general information about the report you are viewing. This includes the report's title, an indication of the reported metrics, and the date or period to which the report refers.

inclusive filters

Specify that only data items that match the data value in the filter should be shown. See also exclusive filters.

information screen

Each report contains an information screen providing a glossary of the terms used in the report. This is useful when you (or other report users) need an explanation of the metrics used in a report.

inline mode

When a report is opened, it is shown in inline mode. This offers a high-level overview of the report's contents, and provides ready access to more detailed information available through the report. See also print layout mode.

IT users

Users who are concerned with supporting the IT information that RUEI needs to monitor the Web environment, such as configuring the cookies used to identify users. Typically, they are responsible for deeper analysis of failed SLAs or KPIs. For example, they might identify that failed user visits are only occurring for users from a particular network domain.

key pages

Monitored Web pages that receive special attention. Typically, these are pages in which you have particular interest. For example, your organization's home page, or a series of pages in a transaction such as placing an order. For these pages, additional information is recorded. This includes client information (such as ISP, the country of origin, and so on), and the visitor browser information (such as operating system, browser version, and so on).

KPI

Key performance Indicator. A means of measuring and benchmarking specific aspects of an organization's performance. These are based upon metrics. KPIs can be set independently of SLAs. What distinguishes an SLA from a KPI is that an SLA must have a target associated with it, while for a KPI a target is optional.

mailing facility

Allows you to obtain a ready overview of the reports you receive through automatic e-mails, and the frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly) with which they are sent to you. See also favorites.

masking

The Collector can be configured to omit logging of sensitive information. This is called masking, and it allows you to prevent passwords, credit card details, and other sensitive information from being recorded on disk.

messages

Can be issued to system's users to keep them informed about important system events or operational issues. For example, scheduled maintenance periods, or reported problems. They are displayed in the Message area of the Home tab.

metric

The underlying benchmark for a KPI. It is the parameter or quantitative assessment of the aspect of the monitored Web environment to be measured. It defines what is to be measured. For example, the number of current sessions or page views per minute.

network filters

You can use network filters to manage the scope of monitored traffic. They allow you to restrict monitoring to specific servers and subnets, and to restrict the level of packet capture. See also scope.

page

Every page monitored by RUEI must be identified to it. Information about any pages not defined to the system is discarded. Page identification is based on applications.

page tag

A piece of JavaScript code embedded on a Web page and executed by the browser when the page is viewed. RUEI supports the use of a standard scheme (such as Coremetrics) or a custom scheme.

page view

A single viewing of a web page.

parameters

These are located in the URL immediately after a question mark and followed by an equal sign and a return value, in the format name=value.

permissions

For all users, other than the administrator, their Business and IT access permissions define the system functionality they are authorized to use.

These are described in Table 1-1, "Roles".

print layout mode

This report layout can be thought of as the report's template: it defines the report's structure and appearance. This is the mode you will use when modifying reports, or creating new reports. See also inline mode.

reminder

A facility whereby the users defined within an alert profile receive periodic additional notifications if a KPI remains failing. See also escalation.

report

Provides you with the insight you need to assess the performance of your network infrastructure. RUEI comes with an extensive library of predefined (standard) reports. Reports are grouped into categories, dedicated to specific aspects of the monitored traffic. Each report is made of aheader, information screen, and a number of sections.

requirements

Specifies any additional conditions for a KPI. Using this facility, you can build compound KPI conditions.

return code

The request return status specifies whether the transfer was successful and why. See Appendix E, "Explanation of Failure Codes" for more information about the HTTP result codes that can be sent to visitors as replies to requests.

role

Within RUEI, four predefined roles are available: administrator, security officer, IT users, and business users.

sample interval

Specifies the interval over which a KPI will be monitored in order to determine its value. Note that the selected value does not affect the level of monitoring. However, selecting a longer period of time (such as 15 minutes) is useful for Web sites with low traffic levels, and where a sample time of 5 minutes would mean that often nothing was measured.

scope

Within RUEI, you control the scope of traffic monitoring by specifying which TCP ports RUEI should monitor. Obviously, no information is available for unmonitored ports.

sections

Typically, a report contains several sections. For example, a daily traffic report could contain two sections: one reporting traffic in terms of page views for the requested period, and the other reporting traffic in terms of bytes.

security officer

Assigned user responsible for managing security-related issues. These include defining which sensitive information (such as credit card details) are omitted from logging, and the installation and management of SSL keys to monitor encrypted data. Se also masking and KPI.

server

A facility that enables you to obtain more detailed insight into the visitors to your monitored Web sites. It allows you to assign ranges of visitor IP addresses to a Web server group, and individual Web servers. See also client.

service level schedules

Specifies when the service levels defined for your organization should apply. Typically, an organization has a core time (for example, 9 am - 5 pm, Monday - Friday) when the committed service level should be achieved. However, you may need to define exceptions to this, such as for public holidays and planned maintenance periods.

session

A period of activity for one visitor to a Web site. A unique user is determined by the cookie IP address. Typically, a user session is terminated when a user is inactive for more than 15 minutes.

severity

Specifies the seriousness to the organization when a KPI moves outside its defined boundary. Possible values are Harmless, Warning, Minor, Critical, or Fatal.

SLA

Service Level Agreement. An agreement between a provider and a customer that explains the terms of the provider's responsibility to the customer, and the level of service that the customer can expect. For example, an SLA for a given service might promise that it will be up and running 99.99 percent of the time. Because this is monitored, it must be based on a KPI.

SSO

Single sign-on (SSO) is a method of access control that enables a user to log in once and gain access to the resources of multiple software systems without being prompted to log in again. Because different applications and resources support different authentication mechanisms, single sign-on has to internally translate and store different credentials compared to what is used for initial authentication.

suite

A collection of predefined applications. Currently, three suites are delivered: E-Business Suite (EBS), Siebel, and PeopleSoft. They save time in the configuration of applications, and ensure the applications within them are more compatible, and are correctly monitored.

target

For KPIs with SLAs associated with them, a target must be specified. You can define it in terms of a fixed range (for example, between 80 and 100), or specify a number of days over which the KPI is sampled for small, medium, or large deviation from its upper or lower limits.

toggle filters

Allows users opening a created report to select the information they view.

For example, if you are viewing client location information (within the all sessions group), you could create a report that allowed its users to select on client location. See also inclusive filters and exclusive filters.

transaction

A sequence of pages that define a logical task. For example, a ferry booking application might have the following pages defined for the transaction booking: route and date details, passengers and vehicle details, payment details, and confirmation.

up notification

An automatically generated notification received by the users specified in an alert profile when a KPI returns to its defined target range. See also alert.

users

RUEI uses predefined roles and permissions to determine the actions that users can perform. These are the administrator, security officer, IT users, and business users.

value lists

By default, data in report sections is shown in graphic form. However, you can choose to view the data in a tabular form. You can also specify the number of values that are shown in the displayed table.

web service

A clearly defined business function that operates independently of the state of any other service. It has a well-defined contract with the consumer of the service. Services are made available through service descriptions, which describe how to call the service, and what information is required to request the service and get a response.

XPath

XML Path Language (XPath) is a language for selecting nodes from an XML.