IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Transactions, Version 7.4.0.0

Defining reporting rules

You can specify the rules that the software uses for naming the collected data that displays in the workspaces.

Use this feature to rename the collected data so that it is grouped to meet the needs of your business. You can rename specific parts of your collected data in either of the following ways:
  • Dynamic naming, which uses variable substitution based on the data that is collected at runtime.
  • Fixed naming, which aggregates many unique transactions into a single reporting group.

    For example, the workspace typically displays the default application name, such as WebSphere® Application Server, but you might want to add a specific identifier to it, such as Camera Shopping, or you might choose to add information to the server name to make it more recognizable.

    Note: When defining reporting rules, note that if you replace one of the default variable strings with a simple fixed text string, all transactions will take on the fixed text string that you specified, and you will be unable to differentiate records that contain that string. For example, suppose that you create a new application in the Application Management Configuration Editor for Web Response Time transactions, and in the reporting rules for this application you define the Transaction Name as My Transaction instead of the normal variable replacement of $TransactionName$. Every transaction that is reported on for this application will have the name My Transaction. You will be unable to differentiate between transactions of different names. Similarly, every subtransaction will also reported as My Transaction. This may be useful when you want to combine aggregates and report them as a single node.
    For ITCAM for Transactions V7.2.0.2 and later, you can customize the reporting rules for all Transaction Tracking transaction types. For data collectors other than ARM and Web Response Time, including Robotic Response Time, you can use any of the following variables for any of the fields: ServerName, ComponentName, ApplicationName, or TransactionName. These values can be mixed with strings, enabling you to combine aggregates and rename fields. See Example: grouping MQ dynamic queues for further information.
    Note: If you customize reporting rules, the icon displayed in the topology may be different to that which is normally displayed for that node or it may be lost entirely.

    For ITCAM for Transactions V7.2.0.2 and later, you can report additional information for ARM Transaction Tracking transaction types if required. For example, you can include context information to help you isolate application faults such as file names and line numbers. This information is displayed in the Contexts table of the Transaction Instances workspace.

Before you begin

Procedure

Use the following procedure to define reporting rules:
  1. If you have not already done so, access the transaction for which you want to define reporting properties (see Procedure: Modifying an existing transaction.
  2. If you have not already done so, click the Reporting tab. The current reporting rules for the selected transaction are displayed in the Reporting tab, similar to the following example:
    Example of the Reporting tab
  3. Click Ellipsis button to the right of each field to display an additional menu of selections, similar to the following example, and choose from that selection.
    Example of the Reporting tab submenu for selecting additional reporting rules
  4. To specify additional reporting information for ARM Transaction Tracking transaction types for display in the Contexts table (see Figure 1), if required:
    1. On the Reporting tab, in the Extended Reporting Rules area, click Add.
      Screen capture of the Reporting Tab, showing Extended Reporting Rules for ARM Transaction Tracking transaction types, available in ITCAM for Transactions V7.2.0.2 and later.
    2. In the Reporting dialog box, specify a name for the additional ARM reporting information in the Name field.
      Reporting dialog box.
    3. Specify a variable value for the additional ARM reporting information in the Value field.
    4. Click OK.
  5. Click OK in the main window of the Application Management Configuration Editor.

Example - Recording all transactions for an application

In the following example (unrelated to the previous examples), all transactions are uniquely recorded with their full URL+QueryString for the application PlantsByWebSphere.
Example of changed reporting rules

Example - Identifying a web service call as a logout transaction

As another example, if you have defined a filter of type XML.POST on a Web Response Time transaction, you might choose to create a reporting rule on these XML tags, similar to this example:
Transaction Name:  $URLFile$/$XML.POST:methodName$
This reporting rule might result in the creation and display of the following transaction names:
  • CustomerService/login
  • CustomerService/lookupCustomer
  • CustomerService/logout

Using this function, you can identify a particular web service call as a logout transaction in a session, which prevents all web service sessions from timing out due to the lack of an associated logout transaction.

Non-ASCII characters: Any non-ASCII characters in application names are automatically replaced with an underscore character. A message explaining this character substitution is written to Agent Messages.

Example - Displaying additional information for ARM

The Extended Reporting Rules for ARM Transaction Tracking transaction types result in additional information being displayed in the Contexts table of the Transaction Instances workspace. For example, step 4 in the above procedure results in an additional row similar to that highlighted in Figure 1
Figure 1. Transaction Instance Topology - Contexts table showing extended contentTransaction Instance Topology with Contexts tables showing additional content from the Extended Reporting Rules for ARM.
Parent topic: Using the Application Management Configuration Editor


Last updated: September 2014