This section includes the following topics:
About the Activity workspace
The Precise for Web Activity workspace displays an invocation tree of all monitored instances and various analysis tabs, enabling comprehensive and effective drilling down in the monitored instances and their invoked URLs to locate specific performance issues and their underlying causes.
The Activity workspace allows you to analyze performance behavior over time. The information displayed in the Activity tab is derived from historical data and enables you to access information for different time intervals at varying levels of detail. You can analyze what happened at a specific time, pinpoint problematic time periods, and drill down to analyze a bottleneck that caused a performance problem.
The Activity tab was designed to answer questions such as:
- What happened yesterday, as well as a month ago or a year ago?
- What has been the performance level of my applications over time?
- Which activity suffered from poor performance? Which user was affected?
- What caused the poor performance? A problematic network? Poor page design?
- Should I analyze the performance of the internal back-office servers, such as the J2EE servers or the RDBMS, to find the root of the problem?
How the Activity workspace is structured
Figure 1 Precise for Web Activity workspace structure
The Activity workspace is divided up into two main areas. The Main area (left pane) features an invocation tree of all monitored instances. The Association area (right pane) features analysis tabs that provide specific information about the node selected in the invocation tree in the left pane. The workspace heading displays the instance name, the server name, and the field the by which the tree is sorted.
About the Main area in the Activity workspace
The Main area shows a tree structure with information on the selected entity. You can select a branch of the tree to examine the entity from different angles. For example, if you are analyzing an Instance entity, you can focus on its URL in the sub-branch.
About the Association area and Associated Findings area in the Activity workspace
The Association area and Associated Findings area provide corresponding information on the selected entity in the tree. The information that is shown depends on the chosen entity:
Table 1 Chosen entity overview
| Entity | Tabs | Information |
|---|---|---|
| Instance | Highlights | Summary, Average Response Time vs. Executions graph, SLA Compliance graph, Findings. |
| Client Activity | Heaviest Web Client Transactions table, Average Response Time vs. Executions graph, Users table. | |
| Server Activity | Content Types by Response Time table, URLs by Response Time table, Average Response Time vs. Executions graph. | |
| Users | Users table, Average Response Time vs. Executions graph, Transactions Executed by Selected User table. | |
| Locations | Locations table. | |
| URL | Highlights | Summary, Average Response Time vs. Executions graph, SLA Compliance graph, Findings. |
| Users | Users table, Average Response Time vs. Executions graph, Transactions Executed by Selected User table. | |
| Locations | Locations table. |
In the Association area, you can also drill down to another entity by clicking a table row. A drill down affects all tabs. You can also learn more about a finding (online help will open) or proceed with the steps provided in the finding (you will be taken to the relevant window.
How the Activity workspace is structured
The Activity workspace analysis tabs display in-depth information about and in context of the node selected in the invocation tree, shown within the tree in bold for referencing. While navigating through the analysis tabs, you can select different hyperlinked entities associated with the originally selected node. When you select a hyperlinked node in an analysis tab it selects that node within the invocation tree, and all information displayed in the analysis tabs are refreshed to correspond to the newly selected node.
The following table describes the analysis tabs available in the Association area of the Activity workspace and the node types for which each tab is displayed. As you navigate through the invocation tree, the available analysis tabs change according to the selected node.
Table 2 Analysis tabs available in the Precise for Web Activity workspace
| Tab | Description | Displayed For ... |
|---|---|---|
| Highlights | Displays a comprehensive performance overview of the node selected in the invocation tree. This view reveals performance problems of the entire call tree invoked under the selected node. | All entities. |
| Client Activity | Displays Web Pages related data:
Displays the First Byte time. The time it takes from the moment the user asks for a new Web page until the first byte arrives back from the Web server. Displays the Rendering time. The time it takes for a Web page to be loaded from the moment the first byte arrives until the Web page is fully loaded, or the user interrupts or abandons the loading process. |
|
| Server Activity | Designed for the Web server administrator. Displays a breakdown of activity according to content type (Images, JavaScripts, style sheets, etc.). For each content type it shows volume of data, errors and cache % and the underlying URLs. Displays The time spent on network activity from the server side perspective. This includes the time it takes to read the request from the network and the time required by the network to send the response back to the client. If the Insight Savvy for Network data is not associated with the server side performance data, this counter will be 0. |
|
| Users | Displays the Application users that where active in the corresponding time frame on the selected entity. Displays an overtime graph of Avg. Response time vs. Executions. Displays the Platforms and Browsers that the user used to run the selected entities. According to this information you can determine how your application runs on different browsers. | All entities. |
| Locations | Displays and compares performance data of all the Locations. (A Location is based on IPs and can be set from the adminpoint). Here you can see if there is a problem connecting to your application from a specific location. | All entities. |