Setting a time span to display

You can have the Tivoli Enterprise Portal log data samplings into history files or a database for display in a table or chart. These historical data enabled views have a tool for setting a range of previous data samples to be reported.

Before you begin

Historical data collection must be configured and distributed to the managed systems that you are querying data from. Otherwise, Time Span is not displayed in the toolbar of the query-based view.

Some attributes groups, such as Situation Status and the Windows Event Log, are historical in nature and show all their entries without you having to specify a time span. For these types of attribute groups, you do not need to configure history collection unless you want to roll off to a data warehouse for long-term storage or limit the amount of data displayed. Thus, the time span feature, rather than showing more data, limits the data reported to the time period indicated.

Even if data collection has been started, you cannot use the time span feature if the query for the chart or table includes any column functions. If this is the case, you can select or create another query to enable Time Span.

1. Open the workspace containing the chart, table, or relational table-based topology view where you want to see historical data.
2. Click Time Span in the view's toolbar.
3. Select a time frame: Real time plus Last _ Hours (enabled for bar, plot, and area charts only), Last _ Hours (or Days, Weeks, or Months, if the data is warehoused), or Custom.
4. If you selected Last or Custom, specify the range of data:
   • Detailed data is all the data collected for the agent.
   • Summarized data is data that is aggregated across the specified time frame. Set the time frame interval, work shift, and the days. This option is disabled if no data warehouse and summarization schedule were configured for this attribute group.
   • To set a custom time frame, click inside the Start Time and End Time fields to open the date editor. Use the spin boxes to adjust the time, year, or month; and click the calendar day. HH:MM:SS AM/PM is initially set to the current time.
   • To apply the time span to all views that use the same query as this view, select Apply to all views associated with this view's query. When this option is enabled, the query is modified to include the time span set here, so any other views using this query report the same time range.
   • The Timestamp column that is added to the historical view can show either the global timestamp (the default) or local. Select Use Hub time to reflect the time at the Hub Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server rather than at the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server or portal client.

What to do next

The sort function is incompatible with the historical reporting feature. If you are using Time Span to retrieve historical data, the chart or table is not sorted even if you have specified a sort order in the query. You can still sort a table by clicking a column heading.

After support for an updated product has been applied to the portal server, it is possible to get a request error message about a missing or unknown column name in the view's status bar after you set a time span with Use summarized data selected. Wait until after the next scheduled summarization and pruning procedure has taken place before viewing the summarized data. If need be, you can reschedule summarization and pruning to run sooner.