ASAP 2.7 Extension Manual

Configuring the ASAP Extension

HP NonStop ASAP Extension Manual—425265-004

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Configuring Objectives

Metrics provide greater value when you evaluate them against their perceived

objectives. For example, knowing that the average transaction rate for the ATM

application is 1,000 transactions per second at 10 a.m. on a Friday morning provides

an objective to measure the collected metric values against. If the ATM application

processes only 500 transactions per second next Friday morning at 10 a.m., you can

immediately assume something is wrong.

An objective is a value that is compared against the computed metric at each sample

interval. For example, a transaction counter metric might have a normal value of 100

for each interval. If this rate is normal, you can set an objective for the metric at a value

close to 100 (such as 90) that would indicate some sort of degradation of service. All

objectives are placed in an Objectives table and stored in a file on the database

subvolume.

In most cases, you can expect different applications and even different domains of

service within an application to exhibit different statistical characteristics during normal

processing. For example, you might expect an ATM application to have a higher

transaction count than a Funds Transfer application, at least during most times of the

day. Even within the ATM application, you might expect the withdrawal function to

exhibit different values than the deposit function.

ASAPX supports the concept of application domains and lets you apply objectives

against metrics depending on the domain in which they reside.

Domains of Service

A domain is whatever you define it to be, but it is typically defined using the business

function, the application, functions within the application, components within the

application, and resources used or managed by the application. A domain name is

registered by applications when they call the ASAP_REGISTER_ procedure to register

with ASAPX. Domain names can be up to 64 bytes in length and can contain up to 5

levels separated by a backslash character. They cannot start with a backslash or

contain quotes, colons, or semicolons. These domain names are valid:

A\B

Banking\Atm

Banking\Atm\Deposit\Chicago\Branch47

Thedepositfunctionattheatminchicagoatbranch47

To support varying objectives for different domains of service, ASAP Extension

supports objectives for subdomains up to the fifth and final level of the domain name

using the ASAP DOTs infrastructure.