Precise Alerts Glossary

An operation that Alerts FocalPoint automatically performs when detecting a warning or critical status for a specific metric. According to the defined action, Alerts FocalPoint opens a message box, sends an email or SNMP trap, or executes a program.

action item (manual)

AdminPoint

The central administration console of Precise that facilitates the maintenance, configuration, and management of all installed Precise components, such as monitoring the status of all Precise agents and PMDB processes, getting license information, starting and stopping the agents, getting log data on agents and events, changing PMDB settings, and installing patches.

See also PMDB. See also Precise Alerts Glossary.

A program that runs on a server machine to collect, process, or communicate performance information. The Precise installation consists of multiple agents.

The state of an Alerts metric that has reached a near-critical or critical status. An alert is issued by Alerts, triggering an action and informing of a problem that has occurred or is likely to occur within the area sampled by the specific metric.

See also Precise Alerts Glossary.

These product provide alerts to problematic conditions before they turn into performance problems, based on predefined metrics and thresholds. Alerts can automatically perform an action, such as displaying a pop-up message, sending an email message or SNMP trap, or running a program.

An agent that receives data from the InformPoint agents, stores it, and performs any action that has been user-defined for that specific alert, such as displaying a pop-up message, sending an email message or SNMP trap, or running a program.

See also InformPoint.

In Alerts, the status of all metrics belonging to a metric group or a monitored instance, indicating the current performance level through colors.

See also Precise Alerts Glossary. See also metric.

In J2EE, a metrics that is provided by the application server or by customer code. This can include metrics published by the Java Management Extension (JMX) APIs or vendor-specific APIs, such as IBM's Performance Management Interface (PMI).

In Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, and Sybase, the highest logical level in the SQL workspace hierarchy. A cabinet contains folders and, within folders, statements.

A subset of a stack trace including only those methods that have been instrumented.

In Web, a counter that keeps track of the percentage of requests taken from the client cache (http status 304).

See Web client browser-side.

A group of servers or instances that are configured to be treated as a single entity. In Oracle, all Oracle instances of the same Oracle database (RAC configuration) are treated as a cluster and presented in the Precise for Oracle UI as a Database. In J2EE, a group of JVMs that serve the same application can be defined as Cluster (even if they are not defined as a cluster in the application server configuration). All JVMs of the same cluster share the same configuration.

In SQL Server and Sybase, the access plan of a unique group of statements or batches that belong to the same collapsed statement or batch but have different access plans. This can differ due to the constants in the text of the original (not collapsed) statements.

See also explained statement. See also collapsed statement.

The program that runs on the monitored server to collect performance information.

Some technologies allow a single Collector (agent) to serve multiple instances running on the same server. Other technologies require a dedicated Collector per monitored instance.

In most cases, it must be installed on the monitored server. Collectors for SAP, SQL Server, and Sybase may reside on a remote server.

See also Precise Alerts Glossary.

In J2EE, the smallest unit of data presentation and storage. It can be configured as 30 seconds or five minutes. If SmartLink is configured, relevant Web and Microsoft .NET Collectors will report to SmartLink using the same collector slice size. Regardless of the defined collector slice size, the most granular slice size presented on both the Precise for Web UI and the Precise for Microsoft .NET UI will be 15 minute intervals.

In Web, a counter that keeps track of the percentage of users that completed the loading of a Web page.

The number of occurrences observed during a measurement interval.

The average amount of time consumed by the operating system actively processing instructions on behalf of a running activity.

In Alerts, the status represented by a red bullet indicating that the value of the sampled metric has exceeded the near-critical and critical threshold values.

See also metric.

In Insight, Report Manager, and Alerts, a perspective that provides high-level information about the performance of all AppTiers in an environment, including operating system data. It provides a holistic view of the entire environment and helps understand how the AppTiers interact.

See also Precise Alerts Glossary.

In SmartLink, the end-to-end activity, detected by Precise over the last five minutes, including activities that are still in progress. In all databases products, a workspace that presents Current Sessions and the SQL statements that were executed including statements that are still in progress.

Represents invocations of a type not specifically defined.

See also work time.

In Alerts, a user-defined metric that measures site-specific parameters.

Within Precise products and Insight SmartLink, the filtering of analyzed data by clicking a specific entity.

Then, additional information about the selected entity is presented, plus a breakdown of its activity by another entity. For example, drill down on a transaction and get an overtime graph of the selected transaction, plus a list of top users that executed the selected transaction.

The highest Precise logical group. It may contain multiple AppTiers of various technologies that serve an application together. For example, a Payroll Production environment may contain all Web servers, application servers, transaction managers, databases, and servers that serve this application. Alternatively, it may contain any set of instances that form together an administrative group. Since Precise version 8.5, an instance can belong to more than one environment. Let's say a single Oracle database serves two different applications plus the DBA wants to associate this database with a group of other databases under his responsibility regardless of served applications. In this case the Oracle database will be associated to three different Precise environments.

See also Precise Alerts Glossary. See also instance.

In Oracle, DB2, and SQL Server, an extension to the Collector that provides detailed information on the activities and resource consumption of packaged application components. It correlates the database information, and the packaged application information and lets you see users, transactions, reports, and other elements of ERP applications, such as Oracle Applications, SAP, PeopleSoft, and Siebel.

In Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, and Sybase, the number of times a SQL statement was executed during the selected time frame. In SmartLink and SAP, the number of times a transaction was executed during the selected time frame.

In Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, and Sybase, a statement whose access path (chosen by the RDBMS Optimizer) is clarified and translated into a visual display. Explained results include information on the objects referenced by the statement and the operations performed on these objects.

In Oracle, a function that proactively specifies a future period during which Oracle activity data is collected and organized for subsequent analysis. Extended collections are an easy means to view collected information, assess application resource consumption, and identify bottlenecks that are inhibiting application performance and end-user productivity.

Federated Precise is a version of Precise (starting with version 8.5) that can manage multiple Precise installations within the AdminPoint screen, displaying and managing all environments, instances, and installations.

In Web, a counter that keeps track of the time that it takes from the moment a new Web page is called until the first byte arrives back from the Web server.

An agent that communicates with the Listeners installed on the monitored servers, receives data from the Collectors, periodically processes and stores this data in the PMDB, and serves UI requests.

In SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, and Sybase, the intermediate logical level in the SQL workspace hierarchy. Folders are grouped into cabinets and contain SQL statements.

See also cabinet.

The application that facilitates the installation of Precise framework components. It can be invoked from the installation DVD to install a new Precise deployment. It can also be invoked from an existing Precise deployment to install an additional framework node and attach it to the originating Precise deployment.

See also Framework node.

A set of FocalPoint agents that are installed together and manages a set of monitored instances. The performance data of these instances will be loaded into a dedicated PMDB. A single Precise deployment may contain multiple framework nodes (using a separate PMDB for each node). An environment cannot span over multiple framework nodes.

An automatic process in the Java runtime environment that periodically reclaims memory used by objects that are no longer referenced. The process can impact an application's performance while memory is being reclaimed. Java programmers may initiate garbage collection explicitly.

In Web, the identifier that is used to group other identifiers, such as sites or URLs.

In Oracle, an instruction directed at the Oracle Optimizer that includes considerations for an execution plan.

The Oracle Optimizer will build an execution plan based on the hint, ignoring its own set of considerations.

In Alerts, an agent that retrieves performance data from all installed Precise products, analyzes it, and sends an alert to the Alerts FocalPoint when the predefined thresholds are exceeded.

See also Precise Alerts Glossary.

The Precise product family that facilitates the process of monitoring and correlating system performance. It consists of Insight.

See also Report Manager. See also Precise Alerts Glossary.

An agent that receives performance information from Insight Savvies, which monitor the environment.

Insight FocalPoint then correlates, processes, and stores this information in a centralized location. The Insight performance history is stored in the PMDB.

See also Savvy. See also PMDB.

A monitored object of a specific technology. The following list specifies what constitutes an instance for the various supported technologies: J2EE - a Java Virtual Machine (JVM - a logical name set by the user), Microsoft .NET - a Common Language Runtime (CLR - a logical name set by the user), Oracle Applications - an Oracle Applications Form server, Oracle - an Oracle instance, SAP - a SAP system, SQL Server - an SQL instance, Sybase - a Sybase instance, Tuxedo - a Tuxedo domain, Web - a Web server, WebSphere MQ - an IBM WebSphere Queue Manager, DB2 - a DB2 non-partitioned database or a DB2 database partition. During installation, the instance is associated with one AppTier and environment. An Instance can be moved to a different environment or associated with multiple environments without re-installation nor losing historical data.

See also Precise Alerts Glossary.

See performance counter.

In SQL Server and Oracle, the part of the Collect Schema Changes process that captures instance definition changes and database option changes and saves them in the PMDB.

The process of inserting fault-tolerant recording hooks in Java byte code, .NET MSIL, HTML pages, or other monitored components, resulting in the capture of performance metrics. In J2EE, a mechanism that enables collecting performance information when an application is executed. The process involves inserting special fault-tolerant recording hooks into application class objects. In WEB, the insertion of recording hooks into HTML pages can either be in memory (Dynamic Instrumentation) or file-based (Static Instrumentation).

See invocation context.

The process of invoking a request from an HTTP request (Servlet or JSP) or an EJB. J2EE displays an internal invocation like any other invocation.

An execution of a J2EE entity (a Servlet, EJB, SQL Statement, method, and so on). When mentioned in plural (Invocations), means the amount of times that the entity was executed.

The context within which a method is invoked. For example, if Method A is invoked both from Method B and from Method C, there will be two different invocation contexts for the performance metrics collected for Method A, one for when it is invoked from Method B and one for when it is invoked from Method C.

See also call path and instrumentation context.

JRE (Java Runtime Environment)

As the runtime part of the Java software, the combination of the components that enable the execution of a Java program: a Java virtual machine, the core class libraries, and the files that form the Java platform.

JSP (Java Server Page)

An HTML page with special tags for Java scripting. An application server processes the tags and generates a Servlet.

JVM (Java Virtual Machine)

An instance of a JRE that executes Java programs. A server-side Java application server is itself a Java program that runs inside a JVM. Servlets, JSPs and EJBs are Java programs (applications) that run within the application server's JVM. J2EE monitors the JVM running the application server and the server-side Java applications within the application server.

The amount of real computer memory that is allocated to the JVM for executing Java programs.

The agent that facilitates the communication between the various Precise agents across different servers must be installed on every server where Collectors or FocalPoint agents are installed. The Listener allows communication with all other agents installed on the monitored server, while only the Precise Listener port is known by other servers.

In SQL Server and Sybase, the session identifier that represents the credential used to connect to the database. When an ERP extension is installed, the user name of the packaged application's client overrides the login name. For example, when SAP extension is installed, the SAP user name overrides the login name.

A session identifier. A machine as sampled, for example, by the SQL Server Collector is the identification of the machine where the client process executes. Machine is also sampled by Oracle, DB2 and Sybase. In Insight terminology Machine is called Client machine.

A main framework node is the single point for login and also serves as the Precise FocalPoint for the entire deployment.