* Tracking applications response times with Computer Associate's APM
Computer Associates’ Application Performance Monitor (APM) is a nice tool for tracking application response times.
It’s excellent for measuring formal service-level agreements regarding acceptable response times. Less formally, it’s a good way to keep developers honest when a software vendor or group of your programmers has promised, for example, sub-2-second response times for a new application or transaction subsystem.
APM, a UniCenter component that’s separately available from CA, monitors response times by detecting the beginning and ending network events associated with a transaction. Its agent module collects the benchmark timings in a local data store throughout the day. Periodically, all the agents send the resulting statistics to the central APM Manager. Except for Web-based applications, you have to install the agent module on each client. Fortunately, the agent installation is simple and takes just a few moments.
For Web-based applications, APM works on the Web server to gather response time data. CA ships an extensive knowledgebase of transaction detection triggers for applications such as Microsoft Exchange and SAP/R3, but you’ll have to get your hands dirty with the technical details of your company’s network transaction messages if you want to monitor customized software. We found setting up knowledgebase entries for unique transactions to be technically challenging at first, but fairly easy once we understood the process.
APM also includes a Transaction Server module for recording and later replaying a transaction’s events and messages. Transaction Server stores transactions in the form of JavaScript or VBScript programs, whose replay you can schedule to occur when you like.
APM’s Web Reporting Server can produce several browser-based reports in four categories: Alerts, Applications, Clients and Servers. Different types of reports are available – Enterprise Reports summarize data from all agents; Group Reports reveal results for certain computers; Host Reports show information from a specific agent; and User Reports provide information based on Windows logon user names. In addition to the pre-configured reports in each category, the Web Reporting Server has report templates that make creating your own custom reports a breeze. Scheduling the production of the reports is similarly easy.
APM also includes a handy Data Viewer diagnostic tool for connecting to an agent to see real-time transaction statistics.
For the full report, go to https://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/1215rev.html
