Introscope Glossary. Release 7.1. CA, Inc Wily Technology Division 6000 Shoreline Court, Suite 200 South San Francisco, CA 94080

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1 Introscope Glossary Release 7.1 CA, Inc Wily Technology Division 6000 Shoreline Court, Suite 200 South San Francisco, CA GET WILY < US Toll Free > < phone > < fax >

2 Introscope 7.1 Glossary Copyright 2006, CA. All Rights Reserved. Wily Technology, Inc., the Wily Technology Logo and Introscope are registered trademarks of CA. Blame, Blame Game, ChangeDetector, Get Wily, Introscope BRT Adapter, Introscope ErrorDetector, Introscope Environment Performance Agent, Introscope LeakHunter, Introscope PowerPack, Introscope SQL Agent, Introscope SNMP Adapter, Introscope Transaction Tracer, Management 360, SmartStor, Web Services Manager, Whole Application, Wily Customer Experience Manager, and Wily Portal Manager are trademarks of CA. Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems in the U.S. and other countries. All other names are the property of their respective holders. For help with Introscope or any other product from CA's Wily Technology Division, contact Wily Technical Support at GET-WILY or support@wilytech.com. If you are the registered support contact for your company, you can access the support Web site directly at At Wily, we value your feedback. Please your comments and suggestions for documentation to us at Wily-TechPubs@CA.com.

3 Contents Symbols NET Agent A Agent Appache Ant application programming interface (API) applet application application server ASP.NET AutoProbe B backend bandwidth, metric Blame Technology C CICS (Customer Information Control System) cluster (clustering) container count, metric concurrency, metric D dashboard database diagnosis domain E Enterprise Manager Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) Environmental Performance Agent (EPA) EPA Introscope 7.1 Glossary 3

4 EPAgent exception, metric F frontend G garbage collection GUID H HTTP I Introscope-enabled IP address IP subnet J Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Java Agent Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) Java Management Extensions (JMX) Java Messenging Service (JMS) Java Server Pages (JSP) Java Virtual Machine (JVM) K L M Manager of Managers (MOM) Management Module median value memory, metric memory leak Metrics metric, types MIB (Management Information Base) Microsoft.NET Agent monitoring Introscope 7.1 Glossary 4

5 N NET Agent O P performance metrics persistence persistent collection platform ProbeBuilder ProbeBuilder Directives (.pbd) ProbeBuilder Lists (.pbl) Q R range rate, metric response time, metric S Secure Shell (SSH) Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) service-level agreement (SLA) set service-level objectives servlet Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) SmartStor stall stateful plugins stateless plugins spread stalled methods, metric system logs, metric T thread thread pool threads, metric triage Introscope 7.1 Glossary 5

6 transaction Transaction Tracer U user group V W WebLogic web server WebSphere WebView Windows services Workstation XYZ z/os Introscope 7.1 Glossary 6

7 Wily Introscope Terms & Concepts Symbols A.NET Agent The Introscope Agent used to collect Metrics in Microsoft.NET environments. More Information: Agent, Enterprise Manager, Microsoft.NET Agent Agent In an Introscope deployment, the Agent collects application and environmental Metrics and relays them to the Enterprise Manager. An application that reports Metrics to an Introscope Agent is referred to as Introscope-enabled. More Information: Enterprise Manager, Microsoft.NET Agent,.NET Agent, Java Agent, Metrics, Introscope-enabled Apache Ant Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to make but is written in the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects. The most immediately noticeable difference between Ant and make is that Ant uses XML to describe the build process and its dependencies, whereas make has its Makefile format. By default the XML file is named build.xml. Ant is an Apache project. It is open source software, and is released under the Apache Software License. application programming interface (API) The interface (calling conventions) by which an application program accesses operating system and other services. An API is defined at source code level and provides a level of abstraction between the application and the kernel (or other privileged utilities) to ensure the portability of the code. applet An applet is a program written in the Java programming language that can be included in an HTML page, much in the same way an image is included in a page. When you use a Java technology-enabled browser to view a page that contains an applet, the applet's code is transferred to your system and executed by the browser's Java Virtual Machine (JVM). More Information: Java Virtual Machine (JVM), Metrics application An application is a software program to which business transactions are associated (for example, Siebel, Avitek, or SAP). Introscope 7.1 Glossary 7

8 application server A server program in a network that provides the business logic for an application program; often refers to a J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) application server such as IBM WebSphere or BEA Weblogic. More Information: WebLogic, WebSphere ASP.NET ASP.NET is a set of web application development technologies marketed by Microsoft. Programmers can use it to build dynamic web sites, web applications and XML web services. It is part of Microsoft's.NET platform and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. B AutoProbe Introscope, through the ProbeBuilder, adds Introscope probes to your application. AutoProbe automates this process by dynamically adding probes to the application when the application starts. More Information: Introscope-enabled, ProbeBuilder backend A backend is an external system that an application relies on for some portion of its processing. Normally, this is a database, but it can be any external system such as a mail server, a transaction processing system (such as CICS or Tuxedo), or a messaging system (such as MQ Series). Introscope automatically identifies databases as backend systems by the name of the database. For other external systems, Introscope analyzes the socket activity of the application and names the backend based on the IP address and port that the application is communicating over. More Information: CICS (Customer Information Control System), database, IP address bandwidth, metric C Blame Technology The Wily Introscope term that describes tracking component interactions and component resource usage in an Introscope-enabled application. In Introscope, you can mark the frontends and backends of your application, so that you can investigate a problem by viewing metrics to that level. More Information: frontend, backend, Introscope-enabled, Transaction Tracer CICS (Customer Information Control System) CICS (Customer Information Control System) is a transaction server that runs primarily on IBM mainframe systems under z/os or z/vse. CICS is available for other operating systems, notably i5/os, OS/2, and as the closely related IBM TXSeries software on AIX, Windows, and Linux, among others. Introscope 7.1 Glossary 8

9 CICS is a transaction processing system designed for both online and batch activity. On large IBM zseries and System z9 servers, CICS easily supports thousands of transactions per second, making it a mainstay of enterprise computing. CICS applications can be written in numerous programming languages, including COBOL, PL/ I, C, C++, Assembler, REXX, and Java. cluster (clustering) Clusters. and clustering, refers to a number of different implementations of shared computing resources. Typically, a cluster integrates the resources of two or more computing devices (that could otherwise function separately) together for a common purpose. Clustering allows an Enterprise Manager to manage other Enterprise Managers, or serve as a Manager of Managers (MOM). container A Java run-time environment for enterprise beans. A container that runs on an EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans) server manages the life cycles of enterprise bean objects, coordinates distributed transactions, and implements object security. count, metric concurrency, metric D dashboard Introscope dashboards combine and present application Metrics in views to monitor the overall application environment. Dashboards also deliver the in-depth performance information for rapid problem diagnosis and resolution of production applications. More Information: Metrics database A database is a collection of information stored in a computer in a systematic way, such that a computer program can consult it to answer questions. The software used to manage and query a database is known as a database management system (DBMS). More Information: backend diagnosis The process of defining and determining the root cause of a problem in a subsystem. More Information: triage domain Introscope uses domains to partition agents and management logic, to define which users can see what information. Introscope 7.1 Glossary 9

10 E Enterprise Manager The Enterprise Manager stores Metrics reported by multiple Agents. More Information: Agent, Metrics Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) are managed server-side components used for modular construction of enterprise applications. The Enterprise JavaBeans specification is one of several Java APIs in the Java Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE). EJBs are server-side components that encapsulates the business logic of an application. More Information: Metrics Environmental Performance Agent (EPA) The Environmental Performance Agent (EPA) helps integrate Metric data from non-java sources into Introscope. The EPA takes advantage of the operating system process that spawns a sub-process and receives standard output from the sub-process via operating system pipes (a standard IPC mechanism). When the ability to initiate a sub-process is combined with a flexible scripting environment (such as Perl) the result is an adaptable and powerful facility for gathering application performance information from virtually any source. More Information: stateful plugins, stateless plugins EPA See Environmental Performance Agent (EPA) EPAgent See Environmental Performance Agent (EPA) exception, metric F frontend A frontend is the component of an application that first handles an incoming transaction. In most typical J2EE applications, this is a Servlet or a JSP. In some Java instances, it can be an EJB or some other component. Introscope automatically identifies Servlets and JSPs as frontends, but not any other component. To explicitly mark something as a frontend, use the FrontendMarker tracer. More Information: backend, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs), Java Server Pages (JSP), servlet Introscope 7.1 Glossary 10

11 G garbage collection Automatic memory management. Memory can be allocated and used, and garbage collection automatically frees any chunks of memory no longer referred to; garbage collection is the process of reclaiming the memory of objects no longer in use. H GUID The GUID (Globally Unique IDentifier) is a unique number that is produced by the monitored application to identify an application, file, database entry, or user. GUIDs can be created in a number of ways, but usually they are a combination of a few unique settings based on specific point in time (for example, an IP address, network MAC address, date and time). HTTP HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to commands. I Introscope-enabled When AutoProbe inserts probes into application code, the code is instrumented to send Metrics to the Agent. Introscope-enabled is another term for instrumenting application code. Once an application has been Introscope-enabled, it reports metrics to the Agent. More Information: Agent, AutoProbe, Metrics, ProbeBuilder IP address The IP address (Internet protocol address) is an identifier for a computer or device on a TCP/IP network. Networks using the TCP/IP protocol route messages based on the IP address of the destination. IP subnet An IP subnet is a portion of a TCP/IP network where all devices have the same IP address prefix. For example, all devices with IP addresses that start with nnn would be part of the same subnet. J Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) A programming platform for developing and running distributed multi-tier architecture applications, based largely on modular components running on an application server. More Information: Java Virtual Machine (JVM) Java Agent The Introscope Agent used to collect Metrics in Java environments. More Information: Enterprise Manager, Introscope-enabled, Metrics Introscope 7.1 Glossary 11

12 Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) A Java API that enables Java programs to execute SQL statements, allowing Java programs to interact with any SQL-compliant database. Because most relational database management systems support SQL, and because Java runs on most platforms, JDBC makes it possible to write a single database application that can run on different platforms and interact with different database management systems. More Information: Metrics Java Management Extensions (JMX) A way to manage and monitor applications, system objects, devices, and serviceoriented networks. JMX is a universal, open extension of the Java language for management that can be deployed across all industries. More Information: Metrics Java Messaging Service (JMS) Java Messaging Service (JMS) is a Java Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) API for sending messages between two or more clients. JMS is a specification developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 914. Java Server Pages (JSP) JavaServer Pages (JSP) is a Java technology that allows software developers to dynamically generate HTML, XML or other types of documents in response to a Web client request. The technology, developed by Sun Microsystems, allows Java code and certain pre-defined actions to be embedded into static content. The JSP syntax adds additional XML tags, called JSP actions, to be used to invoke builtin functionality. Additionally, the technology allows for the creation of JSP tag libraries that act as extensions to the standard HTML or XML tags. Tag libraries provide a platform independent way of extending the capabilities of a web server. JSPs are compiled into servlets by a JSP compiler. A JSP compiler may generate a servlet in Java code that is then compiled by the Java compiler, or it may generate byte code for the servlet directly. More Information: Metrics, servlet, web server K L Java Virtual Machine (JVM) A Java Virtual Machine (JVM), originally developed by Sun Microsystems, is a virtual machine that executes Java bytecode. This code is most often generated by Java language compilers, although the JVM has also been targeted by compilers of other languages. The JVM is a crucial component of a Java Platform. The availability of JVMs on many types of hardware and software platforms enables Java to function both as middleware and a platform in its own right. More Information: Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) No terms at this time. No terms at this time. Introscope 7.1 Glossary 12

13 M Manager of Managers (MOM) Clustering allows an Enterprise Manager to manage other EMs, serving as a Manager of Managers (MOM). The managed Enterprise Managers are called Collectors. More Information: Enterprise Manager, Management Module A Management Module contains a set of Introscope monitoring configuration information. Management Modules are listed for each Domain, and contain Elements. Elements are objects that contain and organize data with monitoring logic such as Alerts, Actions, and Dashboards. More Information: dashboard, WebView, Workstation median value The median value is a single value representing a data distribution. The median value is preferred to the average value as a single-number representation of a distribution when the distribution is not a normal (bell curve) distribution. Calculation: The middle point of a data set, where 50 percent of values are below, and 50 percent above this point. memory, metric memory leak Occurs when an application allocates increasing amounts of memory over time, and never frees it. For example, an application might repeatedly instantiate objects but never remove references to them, thereby preventing them from being garbagecollected. More Information: garbage collection Metrics Measurements of application performance that Introscope tracks and reports. Introscope Metric types are: bandwidth JVM and CLR-level file and socket activity count number of method invocations to date concurrency number of methods started but not yet finished exception captures exceptions memory memory allocated to the JVM or CLR in use, as related to garbage collection response time average method execution time in milliseconds rate number of method executions per second or time interval stalled methods number of methods started but whose invocation times have exceeded a threshold system logs monitors system out and system error output threads number of Introscope-enabled threads Introscope 7.1 Glossary 13

14 metric, types MIB (Management Information Base) A directory listing the logical names of all information resources in a network that are pertinent to the network's management. A key element of SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) management systems. The SNMP Agent produces a MIB to integrate with SNMP-compliant frameworks such as CA Spectrum, BMC Patrol and HP OpenView, so that these systems can query the Introscope Enterprise Manager regularly to retrieve metric values. More Information: Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Microsoft.NET Agent The Agent used to collect Metrics in Microsoft.NET environments. More Information:.NET Agent, Agent, Metrics monitoring Introscope monitors end-to-end browser performance, Java components and their dependencies, CLR components and their dependencies, connections to back-end systems, and resource levels (including third-party software) and application server resources. N O P.NET Agent The Agent used to collect Metrics in Microsoft.NET environments. More Information:.NET Agent, Agent, Metrics No terms at this time. performance metrics Performance metrics should be familiar to IT professionals and are calculated on transactions and business transactions. Performance metrics represent distributions as averages. persistence Persistence refers to the characteristic of data that outlives the execution of the program that created it. Without this capability, data only exists in memory, and will be lost when the memory loses power, such as on computer shutdown. persistent collection Persistent collections are a way to save metrics for use with external tools such as Oracle; you can write persistent collections to flat CSV files or to a database. Introscope 7.1 Glossary 14

15 platform A framework and collection of features that allows software to run and that can be used by different applications for example, J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) is a platform. ProbeBuilder The Introscope-enabling process is performed using Wily s ProbeBuilding technology, in which Tracers, defined in ProbeBuilder Directives (.pbd) files, identify the Metrics an Agent will gather from applications and the virtual machines at run-time. More Information: AutoProbe, Introscope-enabled, ProbeBuilder Directives (.pbd) ProbeBuilder Directives (.pbd) ProbeBuilder Directive (.pbd) files tell the ProbeBuilder how to add Probes, such as timers and counters, to.net or Java components that Introscope-enable the application. ProbeBuilder Directive files govern what Metrics Agents report to the Introscope Enterprise Manager. Custom Directives can also be created to track classes and methods unique to specific applications. More Information: Agent, AutoProbe, Enterprise Manager, ProbeBuilder, ProbeBuilder Lists (.pbl) Q R ProbeBuilder Lists (.pbl) A ProbeBuilder List (.pbl) file contains a list of multiple ProbeBuilder Directive files. Different.pbl files can refer to the same.pbd files. More Information: Agent, AutoProbe, Enterprise Manager, ProbeBuilder, ProbeBuilder Directives (.pbd) No terms at this time. range The range is the interval between the minimum and maximum values. More Information: dashboard rate, metric More Information: response time, metric S Secure Shell (SSH) Secure Shell (SSH) is a security protocol that uses strong cryptography to protect your connection (for example, from a Windows-based client computer to a UNIX-based server) against eavesdropping, hacking and other attacks. Introscope 7.1 Glossary 15

16 Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) SSL (secure sockets layer) is a protocol developed for transmitting private documents over the Internet. SSL uses a public key, known to everyone, and a private key, known only to the recipient of the message. service-level agreement (SLA) A contract between an IT organization and the business for which it is managing one or more applications. The terms of the contract depend on the needs of the parties involved for example: detailed lists of service-level objectives that must be met cost of providing the service and payment schedule financial penalties for not meeting service-level objectives (SLOs) description of hardware and staff to be used to provide service conditions for termination of contract arbitration procedures The core of the service-level agreements are the service-level objectives that define the conditions under which service-level agreement is or is not being met. set A set is a compound object (for example, a set of transactions). Measurements are calculated on a set; measurements are aggregated in a group. More Information: dashboard service-level objectives Define the measurable conditions that determine if the service-level agreement is being met. A service-level objective is a mutually agreeable understanding between the business users of a system and the IT organization that manages the system. The categories of SLO measurements include: Availability whether the system is up and running or not Performance how well the system is responding to, and keeping up with, user requests IT effectiveness how well the IT organization responds when there is a problem More Information: servlet A server-side Java program that provides additional features to the server. A Java application that is different from applets, runs on the server and generates HTML-pages that are sent to the client. Servlets can run on browsers that are not Java-enabled. More Information: applet, HTTP, Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) The protocol governing network management and the monitoring of network devices and their functions. Introscope 7.1 Glossary 16

17 SmartStor SmartStor records all application performance data (Introscope Metrics) at all times while it is in production. This enables users to analyze historical data, to identify root causes of application downtime, or perform capacity analysis without the need for an external database. SmartStor is enabled by default during Introscope installation. SmartStor data is set to age-out over time, so the data store will not get excessively large. More Information: Metrics stall In Introscope, a stall usually refers to the number of methods started but whose invocation times have exceeded a threshold. More Information: Metrics stateful plugins Stateful plugins are expected to be long running scripts (i.e. daemons). Stateful plugins start when the Environment Performance Agent (EPA) starts and run forever. These stateful plugins feed data back into Introscope through the standard output channel of the plugin. Should a stateful plugin terminate, it will be restarted by the EPA. More Information: Environmental Performance Agent (EPA), stateless plugins stateless plugins Stateless plugins are designed to run on a recurring schedule and are configured with the frequency (specified as delay between runs) at which they should be run. Stateless plugins are expected to be short-running scripts that simply collect some data, send it to the Environment Performance Agent (EPA) through the standard output channel, and terminate. No special error-checking is done by the EPA to ensure only one instance of a stateless plugin is running at one time, so plugin developers are required to design their stateless plugins to run and complete in a reasonably short period of time. More Information: Environmental Performance Agent (EPA), stateful plugins spread The spread of a process represents how far data points are distributed away from the mean, or center. Standard deviation is a measure of spread. More Information: dashboard stalled methods, metric system logs, metric T thread A way for a software program to divide itself into two or more simultaneously running tasks. Execution threads represent a single sequence of instructions executed in parallel with other sequences. Introscope 7.1 Glossary 17

18 thread pool A means by which the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) allocates resources to a set of threads that are continuously executing user requests. More Information: Java Virtual Machine (JVM) threads, metric More Information: Metrics triage The process of gathering information relevant to a problem, deciding its severity, and assigning it to the person who can fix it most quickly. More Information: WebView, Workstation transaction A CEM transaction represents a collection of transaction components that represents one Web page. A Web page typically consists of an HTML component, followed by zero or more subcomponents (for example,.css style sheet,.js JavaScript files,.gifs and.jpg images). U V W Transaction Tracer The Introscope Transaction Tracer reduces the time required to identify problem components in a transaction, enabling users to trace transaction activity at the component level. The Transaction Tracer traces the activity of individual transactions as they flow through the boundaries of a single JVM. More Information: Blame Technology, Java Virtual Machine (JVM), WebView, Workstation user group A user group is a logical grouping of Introscope users. The Introscope administrator has the ability to define user groups, and then manually assign users to groups. Alternatively, Introscope can automatically assign users by way of their IP subnet. For example, a new user with IP address could be assigned to an existing user group Menlo mask / IP start. Or, if the Menlo user group didn t exist, then a new group, UserGroup , would be created. More Information: IP subnet No terms at this time. WebLogic A multi-platform J2EE application server as well as an HTTP web server from BEA Systems for Unix, Linux, Microsoft Windows, and other platforms. WebLogic supports Oracle, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, and other JDBC-compliant databases. Introscope 7.1 Glossary 18

19 XYZ web server A server that manages and shares web-based applications that are accessible anytime from any computer connected to the World Wide Web. Every Web server has an IP address and possibly a domain name WebSphere WebSphere refers to a brand of proprietary IBM software products, although the term also popularly refers to one specific product: WebSphere Application Server (WAS). WebSphere helped define the middleware software category and is designed to set up, operate, and integrate e-business applications across multiple computing platforms using Web technologies. It includes both the run-time components (like WAS) and the tools to develop applications that will run on WAS. WebView Introscope WebView presents Introscope's customizable dashboards and Explorer tree views to authorized users in a browser interface so critical information can be viewed without the aid of the Workstation. More Information: Workstation Windows services Windows services are applications that run outside of any particular user context in Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. Workstation The user controls Introscope and accesses performance metrics through the Introscope Workstation. Users can set alerts for individual metrics or logical metric groups, view performance metrics, and customize views to represent their unique environment. More Information: WebView z/os z/os is a 64-bit server operating system from IBM. It is the successor to the IBM mainframe operating system OS/390, combining MVS and UNIX System Services (a POSIX-compliant mainframe implementation of UNIX formerly known as MVS Open Edition, or OpenMVS). Introscope 7.1 Glossary 19