IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Transactions, Version 7.4.0.0

Transactions: Historical Transaction Instances

This workspace enables you to view individual historical transaction instances that are collected after you create situations to store transaction instances that have failed or did not perform within set parameters. Use this workspace to compare historical transaction instances with current transaction instances that are failing in a similar way. Access this workspace by clicking a link icon from the table in the Transactions Summary workspace.

Enabling this workspace

Historical Transaction Instances are handled differently from the standard historical data management in IBM Tivoli Monitoring. Rather than using the time span to display Historical Transaction Instances, you instead define historical data collection and then enable situations that collect instance data for any aggregate record that exceeds certain thresholds. The Transaction Reporter does a full instance trace and provides the Instance Rows and Instance Interaction Rows to the Tivoli Data Warehouse.

To set up historical data collection, enable data collection for the following attribute groups:
  • Transaction Instance Context
  • Transaction Instance Interactions
  • Transaction Instance Instances
No summarization is required. Set pruning controls to limit growth of the database. Use the following guidelines to decide how much detail to keep:
  • The default query for this workspace view retrieves all rows from the Transaction Instance Instances table in ascending date order
  • Time Span is not available
  • Do not use Set Historical Navigation Mode which prevents the display of any data with the following message: "KFWITM491W Historical data not available for this view. KFWITM491W Query is unable to utilize time span filter"
See Setting up historical data collection for Transaction Tracking for more information.
To send the instance data collected by historical data collection to the Tivoli Data Warehouse, enable the following default situations:
  • Failed_Transactions
  • Slow_Transactions
See Situations for more information.

Using this workspace

A transaction instance is a single occurrence of a transaction within your system. The Historical Transaction Instances workspace uses situations to display stored data from your system. Compare current data with historical data to determine if there is a pattern in transactions failing or running slow.

This workspace contains three views in addition to the standard Navigator view:

  • Transaction Instance Topology
  • Transaction Instances for transaction name
  • Interactions
  • Contexts

When you first enter this workspace, the Transaction Instance Topology does not display a topology. To display a topology, select a transaction instance from the table in the Transaction Instances for transaction name view and click Link to Instance Topology. It then displays the topology for a single instance of a transaction.

Use the Transaction Instances table in the Transaction Instances for transaction name view to select further details for a transaction instance by clicking on a link icon. When the screen refreshes, you will see a topology for that instance in the Transaction Instance Topology view. In addition, you will see further information on the transaction nodes involved in the transaction instance in the Interactions table in the Interactions view.

Table 1. Description of the fields in the Transaction Instances table
Column Description
Instance Status Indicates the status of the transaction instance:
  • 10: Good status
  • 0: Slow status
  • -10: Failed status
Total Time Indicates the total time for the transaction instance, in milliseconds.
Total Time Deviation Indicates the percentage deviation from a baseline value for the transaction instance. Positive numbers indicate a slower total time than the baseline value, and negative numbers indicate a faster total time than the baseline value. A deviation of zero indicates either that there is no deviation or that the deviation has not yet been measured.
Timestamp Indicates the time a transaction instance started.

The Interactions table in the Interactions view does not contain information when you first enter this workspace. To display information about the transaction instance nodes involved in a transaction instance, select a transaction instance from the table in the Transaction Instances for transaction name view and click Link to Instance Topology. The Interactions table then displays information about the transaction instance nodes for the selected transaction instance.

Table 2 describes the fields in the Interactions table.

Table 2. Description of the fields in the Interactions table
Column Description
Instance Status Indicates the status of the destination of the transaction instance:
  • Good: No background color
  • Slow: Yellow background color
  • Failed: Red background color
Interaction Indicates the two transaction instance nodes involved in the transaction instance.
Parent Sub Transaction Time Indicates the sub-transaction time of the destination transaction instance as seen from the source transaction instance, measured in milliseconds.
Parent Sub Transaction Time Deviation Indicates the percentage deviation of the parent sub-transaction time from a baseline value for the interaction. Positive numbers indicate transactions taking more time than the baseline value, and negative numbers indicate transactions taking less time than the baseline value. A deviation of zero indicates either that there is no deviation or that the deviation has not yet been measured.
Timestamp Indicates the time a transaction instance started.
Enclosing Application Enclosing application aggregate if applicable.
Enclosing Component Enclosing component aggregate if applicable.
Enclosing Server Enclosing server aggregate if applicable.

The Contexts table in the Contexts view does not contain information when you first enter this workspace. To display context data for a specific transaction instance, select a transaction instance from the table in the Transaction Instances for transaction name view and click Link to Instance Topology. The Contexts table then displays context information for each node displayed in the topology.

Table 3 describes the fields in the Contexts table.

Table 3. Description of the fields in the Contexts table
Column Description
Transaction Displays the name of the transaction instance.
Name Context Name field.
Value Context Value field.
Timestamp Indicates the start time of the transaction instance.

Accessing this workspace

To display the historical instances of a particular transaction, click a link icon in the table in the Transactions view of the Transactions Summary workspace, and select the Historical Transaction Instances workspace.

Links to other workspaces

From this workspace, you cannot link to another predefined workspace.



Last updated: September 2014