Administering the PMDB

This section includes the following topics:

• About the PMDB
• About viewing and administering performance processes
• About viewing the status of the PMDB

About the PMDB

The PMDB helps you identify resource consumption patterns and predict future resource consumption and response times. The following methods perform the identification and predictions:

• Track historical resource consumption trends so you can understand and predict long-term performance behavior.
• Perform period-to-period comparisons so you can analyze performance improvements or performance degradation over time.
• Track load patterns, entity changes, entity statistics, and component parameter changes so you can understand their effects on performance.
• Track data growth and data distribution changes so you can optimize data storage management.
• Proactively detect performance bottlenecks before they turn into problems and issue alerts because performance degrades from established baselines.

By using the PMDB to store this information, you can better manage your applications, make knowledgeable decisions about application changes and hardware upgrades, and improve plans for the future.

The PMDB uses the following methods to store and manage the PMDB data:

• Schedule and run batch processes that load historical data from each instance in each AppTier.
• Manage the summary procedure.
• Provide a common interface for requests coming from the Precise user interfaces.
• Manage and maintain the PMDB by filtering unnecessary data, saving baseline data, summarizing data, and purging old data.

You can control all PMDB settings from AdminPoint, in the following way:

• Edit your Warehouse password from the Warehouse tab. See Editing your Warehouse password.
• Run, schedule, and change the parameter default values of the PMDB processes from the Processes view, under the Warehouse menu. See Viewing the PMDB processes.
• Examine the status of instances and the PMDB processes and check in which PMDB tables instance data is stored from the Status view, under the Warehouse menu. See About viewing the status of the PMDB.
• Manage hour groups from the Hour Group Settings dialog box. See Configuring hour groups, About the Dashboard tab, and About the Applications view.

Editing your Warehouse password

To change your Warehouse password

1. In the Warehouse Processes tab in AdminPoint, click Edit Warehouse Password. The Edit Warehouse Password dialog box appears.
2. Select whether to update the Precise registry only (set as the default option), or to update both the Precise registry and the warehouse database.
3. As indicated, enter your current password (when enabled), your new password, and confirm your new password.
4. Click OK. A confirmation window appears.

About viewing and administering performance processes

The Processes view shows information about batch processes performance on the Warehouse work station. The Processes table in the Main area includes the following columns:

The current status of a process can be any of the following statuses:

Under the Processes view (on the Warehouse workstation), you can run a process, view the execution history of a process, and configure the scheduling and the parameters of a process.

Manually running a process

All processes are scheduled to automatically run at the set interval, but you may also manually run a process whenever required. See Process parameters.

To run a process manually

• In the Process table, select a process and click Run.

The process starts and the page refreshes to show the updated status icon.

Viewing the run history of a process

You can examine additional information about the past executions of a process, for example to find out which tables were affected during a specific execution or which component has failed during a run.

To view the run history

1. In the Process table, select a process and click Run History.
2. In the Run History dialog box, in the top table, select the execution that you want to focus on, such as the last execution that failed (indicated by the status icon). The bottom table populates with detailed information on the performance processes tables that the execution affected.
3. Investigate all relevant data and click Close. For example, if an error occurred, focus on the details in the Error Message column.

Process parameters

Specific parameters define the execution behavior of performance processes. These parameters function as a filter in that they determine exactly which information is collected and saved in the Warehouse workstation.

You can manually configure these parameters according to the requirements of your environment. You can edit the default values or override them by defining instance-specific values. If a process does not include any configurable parameters, the Parameters button is disabled. See About configurable process parameters.

The following table lists all the processes that you can configure per monitored instance.

Table 5-1 Processes configurable per instance

The following table lists the processes that you cannot configure.

Table 5-2 Processes that cannot be configured

To configure process parameters

1. In the Main area table, select the process whose parameters you want to configure.
2. Click Parameters.

3. In the Parameters dialog box, perform one of the following actions:

   To edit the default values for the selected technology	Click Edit Default Values. In the Default Values dialog box, specify the values and click OK. Unless instance-specific values override these values, they apply to all monitored instances.
   To edit the values for a specific instance	Select an instance in the table. Click Edit. In the Edit Instance dialog box, clear the Use Defaults check box. Specify the values to be used for this instance. Click OK.

4. In the Parameters dialog box, click OK.

   After you change the default of the Minimum In Oracle time to load parameter in the Load Data process, you must stop and then restart the Precise for Oracle FocalPoint. The next step is to restart the Collector agents.

   Changing the “Load Data” value from “300” to “30” for Precise for J2EE can take up to ten minutes to take effect.

   You can also configure the Precise for Web URL mapping rule for a domain in a system: "Treat pages with different titles as different pages." Select to view the URL along with the various titles that belong to it. The collected data includes page URLs and page titles. When cleared, you can only differentiate between different URLs, not between page titles. In this case, the collected data includes the page URL and the first page title for any URL in the system.

Scheduling processes

When the default scheduling settings do not match the requirements of your environment, you can manually schedule processes. Processes on the Warehouse workstation let you enable or disable each process. You can also schedule each process individually and run it at any frequency and interval - every 8 hours, hourly, daily, weekly, or by slice.

In environments with several instances, each instance creates a different amount of data and has its own frequency of activity. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary to schedule each instance according to the specific instance’s behavior. Processes on the Warehouse workstation let you schedule some processes per instance.

The following table provides information on the default execution intervals of all Precise batch processes.

Table 5-3 Default intervals of Precise processes

The following table lists processes that cannot be scheduled per instance.

Table 5-4 Precise processes not scheduled per instance

To schedule a process

1. Select a process in the Main area table and click Scheduling.
2. In the Scheduling dialog box, perform any of the following tasks:
   • Clear the Run this process in the PMDB check box to disable the process. This action removes the process from the PMDB Scheduler, but you can still run the process manually. See Manually running a process.
   • Change the time that the process is scheduled to run. Each process runs at a predefined interval by default: Every 15 minutes (slice), hourly, daily, or weekly. You cannot change this interval, but you can set the exact time that the process runs, for example every 2 hours, 15 minutes after the hour.
   • Schedule the process per instance (only available for some processes). This mechanism lets you perform the following tasks:
     • Disable a process for a specific instance by clearing the relevant check box in the first table column.
     • Set the interval of an instance within the process. For example, if you set the Run Every... column to 2, the instance executes every 2 minutes (or other) run of the process.
3. Click OK.

Batch processes in Precise

The following sections provide a description of all existing Precise batch processes. The following table lists all batch processes on the Warehouse workstation.

Table 5-5 Batch processes on the Warehouse workstation

The following table lists all Precise for Oracle batch processes.

Table 5-6 Precise for Oracle batch processes

The following table lists all Precise for SQL Server batch processes.

Table 5-7 Precise for SQL Server batch processes

The following table lists all Precise for Sybase batch processes.

Table 5-8 Precise for Sybase batch processes

The following table lists Precise SmartLink processes

Table 5-9 Precise SmartLink processes

Modifying the Precise Load Data slice size

Most process are specific to one technology. The Load Data process that does not have a Technology value is shared by SmartLink and J2EE. All changes to this value affect the slice size not only in SmartLink tabs, but also in all J2EE instances in that environment.

To modify the Precise SmartLink/J2EE Load Data Performance slice size

1. Go to AdminPoint>Warehouse>Processes.
2. From the table, select the Load Data process with an empty Technology value. Click Parameters.
3. Select the relevant environment and click Edit.
4. Mark the Use Defaults check box to enable editing.
5. From the drop-down menu, select the desired slice size.

6. Click OK>OK.

   Changing the Load Data value from “300” to “30” may take up to 10 minutes to take affect in Precise for J2EE.

About the PMDB Summarize Data process parameters

The table below describes the configurable process parameters and default values in the PMDB Summarize Data process.

Table 5-10 Configurable process parameters and their default values

About viewing the status of the PMDB

Under the Warehouse menu, the view shows information on the PMDB load status of each instance in your Precise installation. The Status table in the Main area includes the following columns:

• Server. The name or IP address of the server on which the instance runs.
• Technology. The technology type of the instance.
• Instance. The name of the instance.
• Unmonitored. Indication by an icon when the instance is unmonitored.
• First Loaded. The date and time the first instance information was loaded into the PMDB.
• Most Recently Loaded. The date and time the latest instance data was loaded into the PMDB.
• Status. Icon indicating the status of the last load.

Using the Warehouse command buttons, you can get more detailed information on the actual PMDB tables that hold information on the specific instance. You can select any instance from the list and click Details to receive First Load and Most Recent Load information about specific tables in the PMDB.

You can also use the Warehouse Status Command selector to refresh the information that is displayed on the screen.

Viewing PMDB tables

You can examine additional information about the PMDB tables that are loaded for each instance, for example to understand their summary level.

To view the PMDB tables

1. Select an instance in the Main area table and click Tables.
2. In the PMDB Tables dialog box, investigate all relevant data.
3. Click Close.

Viewing the PMDB processes

You can examine additional information about the processes that are involved in loading information for this instance, for example to find out which tables were affected during the last execution of a process, which process failed during its last run, or when the next process is scheduled.

To view the run history

1. Select an instance in the Main area table and click Processes.
2. In the PMDB Processes dialog box, the top table lists all processes involved in loading information for this instance. Select the process you want to focus on, such as a process that failed during its last run (indicated by the status icon).
   The last run of this process affects the bottom table populated with detailed information on the PMDB tables. If an error occurred, focus on the details in the Error Message column.
3. Investigate all relevant data. Then click Close.

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